Amy Blanche Bramwell

“ The well-equipped High Schools can do the academic work of the Normal Schools with less effort than can the Normal Schools themselves; and were the standards of admission such as to necessitate a thoroughly sound preliminary knowledge in common school subjects, might not the Normal School students be found more capable of themselves reviewing old facts from a new standpoint, and the schools have more time and opportunity to carry out other means of training? ”

“ There are many battles yet to be fought, many experiments yet to be tried, many failures yet to be faced, ere all shall be agreed on the best kind of professional training that can be given to teachers; yet I have returned from America encouraged in the belief that the decisive battle in favour of training has been fought and won on both sides of the Atlantic, and that the old world and the new may with advantage to both join hands in the endeavour to discover the best ways and means of such training. ”

“ There is room and welcome in the Normal Schools for the graduates of the elementary and secondary schools, and even for those who have made substantial advancement in the elementary course without technical graduation, provided that they give promise of becoming successful teachers, and possess the desire to become such; but there is no room for students who have laid no real foundation for professional training, and who have no well-determined purpose about the matter and no fair conception of the responsibilities and obligations of a teacher’s occupation. ”

“ The State Schools there have few private rivals, and the University none. In the State of Massachusetts, on the contrary, although Primary, Grammar and High Schools are maintained at the public expense, yet the children of a large proportion of the inhabitants attend private schools and academies, which undertake to prepare them for Harvard or the Women’s Colleges, such as Wellesley. In fact, few of those who enter upon a University career do so straight from the common school, as is the case in the Western States. ”

“ IN America, as in Europe, it is becoming increasingly recognised, that the fact of having received a good education, even if that education have included a University course, is no guarantee of fitness for the teaching profession. That some special professional preparation is also necessary before a teacher can be safely entrusted with teaching responsibility can hardly be said to be any longer a matter of debate among those who have devoted time and thought to educational questions. ”

“ When one science, or possibly two, are chiefly taken up, and others considered merely accessory to the main subject of study, a more adequate knowledge of science and scientific method can be gained, especially if the sciences taken up are such as botany, and physics, which illustrate respectively different methods of scientific research.
It may be maintained that the Normal School students must be prepared for their future work in the Primary and Grammar Schools, in most of which the elements of several sciences are taught. This, of course, must be remembered. ”

“ A course of study is a means to an end, and that end the full development of all the possibilities for good and growth in a human being. It should consist of all the subjects of thought, the germs of which a child spontaneously assimilates and enjoys before he enters school. ”

“ It is a noticeable fact, that in both Training Schools and Training Classes, the beginners usually practise first in the lowest grades. It is considered easier to teach little children than older ones, and less dangerous to the pupils. Indeed, the heads of many schools, far from adopting the theory that the primary teaching should be in the hands of the most skilled and efficient teachers, give their youngest classes into the care of those disqualified to teach in higher grades, on account of lack of knowledge, or want of skill. ”

“ Much importance is laid upon the observation of the teaching in Model Schools. It is possible, however, that this is insisted on too early in the course; indeed, the hearing of lessons is usually the students’ first work in the school. It would be much more profitable, and there would be less danger of blind imitation, if the student had herself previously gained experience in teaching. As it is, the danger of imitation, and one-sided and narrow lines of teaching is increased by the fact that one student is chiefly under the supervision of one teacher. ”

“ Having enquired as to the cause of the greater number of women students, I was told it was due to the fact that teaching, as a profession, offers few attractions to men in the United States, and that in those few Normal Schools where the attendance of men and women students is almost equal the courses are such as to allow of their being used by the men as preparatory courses for college. Such an explanation seems to be corroborated by the relative numbers of men and women teachers in many of the States. In Massachusetts, the number of teachers is 10,965, and of these only 992 are men. ”

“ At Willimantic, as at New Britain, especial stress is laid on preparing the teacher for the practical part of the profession. The child, however, is the unit of the school, and on the right understanding of the child depends the teacher’s success in teaching. The child has both a body and a mind to be trained, and the two cannot be separated. It is therefore necessary that a teacher should know something about each, and students are therefore expected to devote a good deal of time to the study of Physiology in the Junior year, and to the study of Psychology in the Senior. ”

“ The discussion of “methods” in any subject, with a specialist, who is constantly teaching that subject, must be most valuable to the future teacher, and especially so when the specialist can illustrate his methods by actual class work, and the learner is himself somewhat of a specialist. The existence of these double lines of work is also important, where it occurs, as illustrating unity of opinion among the presidents and professors of colleges as regards the needs and means of training of secondary teachers. Thus it will help on the cause of secondary training generally. ”

“ The feature of the school, perhaps, the most interesting, was the anxiety shown by these rural teachers to lose no opportunity for improvement, and the keenness with which they followed their daily lessons. Some of them were so untrained as to find great difficulty in following the word of command during drill, but these, who were painfully conscious of their defects, made rapid progress even in a week’s time. Summer Schools like that of Benton Harbour may give real help to the ill-prepared and untrained country teachers, in increasing their knowledge, and widening their interests. ”

“ I think that it is in this genuine love and care for children that the real strength of the School lies, and that if it can continue to send out teachers who really love and understand children, it need fear no outside criticism. ”

“ It would seem better, especially in the case of training institutions like that at Albany, designed to give purely professional training to teachers of higher grades, to encourage more specialization, and to allow all students some choice of method subjects, so that dead forms of method might be made as few as possible. The system of giving detailed methods to all stimulates, too, a tendency to rigid forms of lesson-giving, and somewhat encourages the idea that there is only one good arrangement of subject matter for a particular lesson, and one good way of giving it. ”

“ There appears to be a growing feeling in the States in favour of the complete separation of the professional from the academic course, and it is interesting to note that the question is agitating the minds of those who have to do with the training of teachers in America, at the same time that it has become a burning question in England in connection with the training of our Elementary Teachers. The Normal Schools correspond more or less closely with our English Elementary Training Colleges, and an examination of their points of likeness and difference may not prove unprofitable. ”

“ Chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, mineralogy, zoology, botany, physiology, are studied by all. In order that students may be able to take up all these, the plan usually adopted is to concentrate attention on one science for a short time, and then to pass on to other sciences, until five or six have been taken. It is seldom that even one branch of science is allowed to run through a whole course of two years. The division of science studies for the Normal School at New Britain, Connecticut, where the science work is most carefully done, will illustrate this point. ”

“ A delightful visit to the Drexel Institute, which provides for the technical instruction of the city, a glance at one of the largest Friends’ Schools, and an unavailing attempt to see over the James Forten Manual Training School, was all we had time for in Philadelphia.
Ten miles from Philadelphia, on the Pennsylvania railroad, one reaches the Old Welsh settlement of Bryn Mawr, with its college for women, which bears the same name. Several halls and laboratory buildings, standing in fifty acres of ground, make [5] an imposing show. ”

“ Not only scientific workers, but teachers and parents throughout the country, are beginning to realize the important bearing of child-study upon all educational questions, and nowhere is their enthusiasm for matters educational more shown than in their united devotion to the solution of this new problem. ”

“ As a rule, the students of the elementary course teach in the Primary or Grammar Schools, those of the advanced courses become teachers of secondary schools and colleges.
The State Universities of America, as a whole, follow, more or less strictly, the lines of German Universities. This is not only so as regards organization merely, but as regards methods of study, and lines of thought. In no department is the German influence more seen than in that of pedagogics, where methods of the German “Seminar” are increasingly used and valued by professors and advanced students. ”

“ The methods of teaching various subjects were set forth, and we were especially struck, as again later at the education exhibit of the World’s Fair, by the apparatus and illustrations made by the children themselves.
The power of “making,” whether of maps (drawn, painted, modelled) , models (in clay, putty, paper, wood) , pictorial illustrations of lessons (history, geography, literature, natural science, and even mathematics) appears to be much more encouraged in America than in England. ”

“ The tendency to bookishness and slavery to word-forms, which may seem to be encouraged by the recitation method of teaching science in the Normal Schools, is opposed by a greater tendency to emphasize the concrete, to refer in all science teaching directly to the objects themselves, to use laboratory methods wherever possible. Observation and experiment are essentially the methods of many of the American science teachers, and no pains are spared to illustrate all facts and principles by an appeal to the senses. As a result, much of the science teaching is excellent. ”

“ A practising school, organized as a part of the University, and having as its principal one of the University Faculty, might, besides affording such a practising ground for secondary teachers, be the means of supplying tested facts to the teaching world in general, and would greatly help the University Department to fulfil its true function—that of stimulating teachers and unifying education in the State. ”

“ As part of the course on gymnastics, each student, besides studying the theory and doing daily drill, must act for one term as leader and teacher of drill, and must criticise drill lessons.
Practical work in the schools is arranged for each term. In the first half-year, the students’ work in the training school consists chiefly in observing methods of teaching, and hearing lessons, under the guidance of the critic teacher. She does not begin to teach in the school until the second term, two weeks of which she spends in a primary grade, and two weeks in a higher or grammar grade. ”

“ At the Worcester Normal School there is no Model or practising School, but the students teach in the public schools of the city. For the first six months of her last year at the Normal School, the student acts as an apprentice or pupil-teacher, serving in at least three grades during this time. Each teacher has the direction of only one student, who may be left in sole charge of the class for hours or days. One day in the week the apprentice-student attends the Normal School, where she shows her class diary for the week, and discusses any difficulties that may have arisen. ”

“ It may be urged in support of the plan of allowing teachers unqualified for other grades of teaching to become teachers in the primary schools, that the knowledge actually used in the teaching of little children is much less than that needed for work with elder children, and that certain devices for keeping children quiet, and for interesting them, can be followed empirically by the unskilful teacher. ”

“ No pure psychology is studied, but school subjects are taken up one by one, and their facts and methods of treatment are used to illustrate psychological principles. The history of education is studied side by side with this applied psychology; but not much time is given to this subject in class. The lives and works of the chief educators only are taken, and private reading is much encouraged as accessory to the class work. ”

“ The students merely watch the class, the teaching being entirely in the hands of two experienced kindergartners. As the class exists for the acknowledged purpose of experiment, tuition is free, and the teachers in charge have full liberty to follow any course they wish. When I saw the school, a long series of daily experiments were being made, with a view to finding out whether, when left perfectly free, the boys secured places next to girls by preference. ”

“ This difference appears to produce one curious and instructive result—namely, that while a large number of men [132] students are to be found in the Pennsylvania Normal Schools, they are conspicuous by their absence from those in Connecticut. This is easily understood when one remembers that an overwhelming majority of the teachers in the Common Schools are women, and that as few men intend to take up teaching as a permanent profession, they are not likely to be found in those Normal Schools, the courses of which will not serve as stepping-stones to a future college or other career. ”

“ The Model School at New Britain, Connecticut, is preserved strictly as a Model School. After observing teacher and class for some time, the student usually gives one trial lesson in the school, but there is no systematic teaching by the student. For the actual independent practice, the student must go to a practising school outside New Britain, and be entirely responsible for a class for four months. At the large practising school in connection with the New Britain Normal School, at South Manchester, I saw students dealing with the actual difficulties of discipline and class-management. ”

“ In many instances, students are urged to take Normal School courses as well.
It may indeed be stated generally, that the work of Training Classes is to supplement a longer and more thorough course in training, rather than to train. Training Classes, for the most part, provide practice under supervision for those who have already gained some insight into the science of education and methods of teaching, but the small amount of time given to other sides of training prevents their work being at all adequate as the sole preparation for teachers. ”