mately, as rapidly as practicable, the normal schools should cease the elementary and nonprofessional work, which can as well be done in the ordinary schools of the State. Professional work which can be done in the training classes should be left to them. Graduation from the classes should entitle admission to the normal schools.*

So soon as practicable after the passage of the law making it the duty of the State superintendent to supervise the training classes, a conference was held between that officer, the normal-school principals, and a committee of the principals of academies and union schools, at which the whole subject was very carefully considered and a plan of operations was agreed upon.

About sixty institutions were designated to organize classes for the fall term. The selection of these institutions was determined by the following considerations:

(1) The proper distribution of the classes among the counties of the State.

(2) The location of the classes to accommodate the greatest number of suitable candidates.

(3) Such equipment of the institution as will give assurance of doing substantial work both in the theory and practice of teaching.

Candidates for admission must be at least 16 years old; must hold the third-grade certificate or the regents' preliminary certificate and a pass card in physiology; and must subscribe to a declaration to the effect that their object in asking admission to the training class is to prepare themselves for teaching in the public schools of the State, and that it is their intention to become teachers. The trustees, principals, and school commissioner are required to satisfy themselves that the candidates have the moral character, talents, and aptness necessary to success in teaching.

Each class must consist of not less than 10 members and must be instructed for not less than 10 or more than 13 weeks. The institutions in which these classes are taught receive $1 for each week's instruction of each member, but the whole number of weeks allowed each class must not be more than 25. The money paid by the State goes to the management of the institution, and not to any individual. The violation of this rule is considered as a sufficient reason for discontinuing the assignment.

Each class, besides being under the inspection of an officer who devotes his entire time to that work, is subject to the visitation of the school commissioner of the district in which the institution in which the class is organized is situated. It is likewise his duty to advise and assist the principals of those institutions in the organization, management, and final examination of those classes, and to make a report to the State superintendent, in the manner prescribed by him, concerning their instruction and the qualifications of their individual members.

Two periods of 45 minutes each must be devoted to instruction in the topics laid down in the course of study. In addition, such members of the class as have time and ability may be permitted to pursue such other studies as are taught in the institution and as will be most profitable to them, for which, however, no tuition may be charged.

The following was the course of study for 1889-90:

First term.-The mental powers and the laws of mental development (1 week), school economy (3 weeks), reading and spelling (3 weeks), numbers (3 weeks), regents' examination (1 week).

Examination of training class for a second-grade license under the State uniform examination at the close of the term.

* This paragraph was written, it will be remembered, before the passage of the law transferring the supervision of the classes to the department of public instruction.

Methods in form study and drawing, 1 day each week through the term.

As one term is not considered long enough to give teachers the training they need, institutions with ample facilities and a good record may be appointed to instruct two classes during the year.

The course of study for the second term was as follows:

History of education (2 weeks), school law (1 week), language (3 weeks), primary geography (2 weeks), methods in physiology (2 weeks), examination of training class for a second-grade license under the State uniform examination at the end of the term; methods in form study and drawing, 1 day each week through the term.

It will be noted that the above course devotes 13 weeks to the study of methods during the two terms. Part of this time is spent in observation and practice work under the direction of the teacher of the class. He is expected at least twice a week to give the class an opportunity to witness practical work, in order that they may be trained how to observe critically and to intelligently interpret the principles of teaching. In addition, it is desired that each member of the class be given actual work in teaching as often as consistent with the work of the school.

CHAPTER X.

GENERAL SURVEY AND SUMMARY.

We have traced the development of the normal idea in this country from the time when it was first faintly conceived by Elisha Tiknor, in 1789, until the founding of the New York College for the Training of Teachers.

Has there been progress, and, if so, what are its moments?

That there has been progress, no candid student of educational history will deny, but as to its moments there will be a much greater diversity of opinion.

The first chapter in the history of State aid in the preparation of teachers-the history of the teachers' classes in the New York academies up to 1844-is valuable chiefly as a warning. The first and most important lesson which it teaches is that institutions which undertake the training of teachers should make that their sole business, or at least should put their department of pedagogy in the hands of a man who devotes his entire attention to it; to treat the science of pedagogy as a matter of secondary concern is fatal, because its value is far from being universally conceded. For a similar reason it is important that normal departments and departments of pedagogy should be in charge of men of first-rate ability. Until the just claims of the science of pedagogy are universally recognized, it is more than doubtful whether chairs of pedagogy will not do more harm than good when filled by men of ordinary ability, whose feeble and commonplace treatment of their subject fails to show the necessity of such departments.

Another lesson taught with great emphasis by that history is the necessity of taking into account the condition and circumstances of teachers in determining the courses of study of training classes and normal schools. No one can read President Gray's account of what a normal school should be without being struck by the almost pathetic contrast between his ideal normal school and the reality forced upon him by cir cumstances. An institution which is in its conception a school of philosophy, admits students without examination who hold second-grade certificates! But whatever may be thought of his theory, we shall agree that his practice is right. The fierce struggles between the ideal and the real doubtless result in concessions on both sides, but the largest concessions are wrung from the ideal, though in the nature of the case it is sure to get the better in the long run; for the ideal never ceases to be the ideal, while the real of to-day is not the real of to-morrow.

Each adjustment of the real in favor of the ideal is the death of one real and the birth of another, but ideals are tireless and merciless, and each new real must meet the fate of its predecessors in the course of time. But the final victory of the ideal is won only by an uninterrupted series of apparent defeats. Hence institutions which undertake to train teachers must begin where they can. However lofty the ideal they allow themselves to cherish, they must base their courses of study on the solid ground of actual facts. The teachers' classes in the New York academies neglected to do this, and hence they failed to accomplish their purpose.

The significance of the normal schools of Massachusetts, up to the time when Dr. Dickinson became principal of the school at Westfield, consisted not so much in the teaching of any particular philosophy of education as in the recognition of the fact that there is such a philosophy, and that teaching is good or bad according as it conforms to it. Their insistence upon this truth was of course of capital importance, inasmuch as it completely changed the point of view of those who accepted it. Perhaps the most valuable doctrines taught by these schools related to discipline and in general to the motives which teachers should appeal to. When Cyrus Peirce began to teach he was a firm believer in corporal punishment, and he put his theory into practice with conscientious energy. Little by little he began to have doubts of its value, and long before he was made principal of the school at Lexington he had come to disbelieve in it thoroughly. As he said in his letter to Barnard, his theory went to the entire exclusion of corporal punishment, and also of the premium and emulation system. He was able to dispense with such motives in part through his power of appealing to his pupils' sense of duty, in part through his ability to arouse their interest in the subjects they studied, and he insisted that they could reach the same results in the same way.

Another very valuable contribution to educational doctrine by these schools was their theory as to the kind and amount of knowledge of the so-called academic subjects which intending teachers should have. From the first they were organized on the theory that the knowledge which suffices to make an intelligent citizen is not sufficient to make a good teacher; that the teacher should know more of what he undertakes to teach than an intelligent citizen does, in order that intelligent citizens may know as much as they ought to know, and that therefore the distinction drawn by some normal schools between academic and professional work is unsound and illogical. They have held from the beginning that the specific and peculiar knowledge of the subjects he undertakes to impart, which the teacher needs simply because he is a teacher, is as much entitled to be called professional as the study of the science and art of teaching.

And the Lexington Normal School from the first set an example which the normal schools of this country would do well to follow; it did what

it could to keep out of the profession of teaching those who have no natural aptitude for it, and it recognized itself as under an obligation, not to its pupils to help them to good positions, but to the public to assist them to select teachers suited to their needs.

The normal school at Oswego certainly made some important advances. The objective method of teaching, the method which brings the mind of the pupil into direct contact with facts, and thus seeks to stimulate it to the proper kind of activity, first received its complete illustration in all grades of schools in the practice school of this institution. In the beginning, I imagine that the objective method, as conceived by Dr. Sheldon, was nearly identical with the system of primary instruction by object lessons. But little by little his conception of its scope enlarged. He saw that as pupils can gain clear and definite concepts of objects, not by memorizing lessons about them, but by direct examination of them, and in that way only, so the only way to stimulate the mind to any kind of activity is to bring it into contact with those facts, the knowledge of which has a natural tendency to occasion it. Whatever the subject of study, he saw that the true order is, first, the reality, and then the play of the mind about it. And when he grasped the idea he put it into practice and illustrated it in all the grades of his practice school. In doing this, I say that the Oswego school made a distinct advance. I do not, of course, mean to intimate that the objective method, as a method of teaching, was new when it was taught to the students of the Oswego training school. As a method of teaching it is certainly as old as Socrates, probably much older. Indeed, no more perfect illus tration of it could be given than is given by the Socratic method, and it is safe to say that all first-rate teachers from and before Socrates down to the present have used it more or less consistently. No one can read the letter of Cyrus Pierce to Barnard and doubt that he taught objectively. He taught his pupils what they should do in certain emergencies, not by telling them what they ought to do, but by asking them what they would do, doubtless helping them, Socratic fashion, to see their mistakes when they answered wrong. But to use a method of teaching is one thing; to formulate it so clearly as to be able to teach it to others is a very different thing. Men reasoned a long time before Aristotle wrote his Logic, or Bacon his Novum Organum, and good teachers taught objectively a long time before Comenius, with more or less clearness, first formulated the theory. As a theory, it was first taught in this country by Dr. J. W. Dickinson during his principalship of the normal school at Westfield, but it was first illustrated in all grades of the public school, from the primary department to the high school, in the practice school at Oswego.

The school at Oswego marks an epoch in the history of the normal schools of this country in another respect, and that is, in the emphasis which it laid upon the importance of practice teaching. In the halfdozen State normal schools of Massachusetts to-day there is but one