PREPARATION FOR TEACHING. NORMAL SCHOOL. INSTITUTES. TEACHERS. STATE UNIVERSITY. UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. NORMAL SCHOOL. The attention of the legislature is most respectfully called to the condition and pressing wants of the state normal school, as found in the reports of the directors and president of that institution. They have in no degree over-estimated the things which they need in order to enable them to do the work that the state expects of the school. Since the last biennial report of this department the school has grown in numbers, in efficiency of instruction, and in the character and maturity of the teachers who attend it. The law, as amended by the twenty-third general assembly, by which the graduates of the state normal school, who have had thirty-six weeks' experience, are granted a state certificate from the state board of examiners, has had a most excellent effect. It has raised the school in the estimation of teachers, and it gives its graduates a better professional standing in the neighboring states. The introduction into the school, of instruction in the art of illustrative teaching, has been productive of good results, but to insure success in a high degree we need more space for laboratories and work rooms. Part of the aim of illustrative teaching should be to enable those who are to teach in village and country schools to construct forms, solids, maps, charts, and simple apparatus, at very little expense. Without in any respect disparaging professional reading, we believe no depths of pedagogical lore, no study of educational history, no knowledge of methods learned from books, can compensate for a lack of that power which enables the village school mistress to stand, crayon in hand, before the blackboard, and illustrate the lesson, or to construct her apparatus from the cheap articles obtained at the country store, or to use the things of common life to make clear the truths of nature to the minds of her wondering pupils. The purchase of expensive charts and apparatus for the country schools is not necessary. Dr. Klemm, in his European Schools, |