Teacher training college

“ They have no desire to follow out a course of study whose purpose is a technical preparation, nor is such a course well adapted for them. The demand which their presence in the college makes is for what we may call a general preparation for life, some knowledge of facts, some training of judgment and taste, sympathy with a variety of intellectual interests, such broadening and liberalizing of mind as is possible. To the instructor who teaches in the eager atmosphere of an active university such a demand may seem illegitimate, because it seems vague and weak. ”

“ Aside from these three types of public normal schools, another important type of teacher-training organization is the department of education and psychology in our best colleges and universities, exemplified notably by the School of Education of the University of Chicago, and Teachers' College of Columbia University, the last-named being perhaps the most efficient teachers' college in the world. ”

“ Had you been under eighteen, you might have become an apprentice as a pupil-teacher in an elementary school; but as you are eighteen already, you had better pass the Queen’s Scholarship Examination, and then seek employment as an assistant teacher, or, much better, enter a teachers’ training college. You could study all the requirements more fully by obtaining through a bookseller a copy of the New Code, issued by the Education Department. If you wanted further advice, it is probable that some Board School or National School mistress in your own town would give it. ”

“ The colleges, besides providing the future teachers with subjects, almost always offer to provide them with instruction in the principles of education, and frequently offer to provide them with instruction in the very technique of classroom work.
Our verdict, therefore, which we hope will be satisfactory to counsel on both sides, is that the college is by no means a trade school, but that if the woman who is going to earn her living will choose the one trade of teaching, she can almost always get a pretty fair trade training by going to college. ”

“ An increase in the number of colleges and a higher standard of efficiency would be the natural result of retaining the students under instruction for a longer time, and this again would improve the quality of teachers. Probably something more would still be required in the way of training for teachers. It seems to be the opinion of the persons best qualified to judge, that some technical instruction is required as a preparation for teaching, and that such instruction might be obtained by taking a short course at a training-college at the end of a general education. ”

“ The four-year state teachers' colleges of the United States can be counted on the ten fingers, and their ultimate sphere of influence is being debated. It would seem, however, that the adequate teacher-training institution must be as broad in its facilities and standards as are the conditions of modern life with which teachers must cope. ”

“ The failure to realize this is doubtless the cause of the increase of bad teaching as we go from the primary school to the university. The lack of opportunities for professional training for secondary and college teachers has caused some normal schools intended originally for the training of elementary teachers to undertake the preparation of secondary ones as well. It is probable that such work can not be done in teachers’ colleges connected with universities or in universities the departments of education of which possess practice schools. ”

“ If you take an academy or a private school, constituted and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own will give you influence over others. A successful teacher of an academy raises the general standard of academic instruction. A college professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction, and thus aids in infusing a continually renewed life and vigor into those venerable seats of learning that might otherwise sink into decrepitude and decay. ”

“ It is, doubtless, presumptuous for criticism of an educational system to emanate from one who has no closer contact with education than the training of a professional student and the practice of a profession, yet the general tendency of colleges to adapt their methods and aims to conform with the demands of practical life, encourages the writer in pleading in behalf of the worker in the great university of the world, who still desires to keep in touch with the scholarship of the college. ”

“ At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college is merging with the university or professional school, the necessity for the able teacher is a paramount issue. ”

“ The utmost that can be said of our college system, as a system, is that it stands on a somewhat higher plane than the schools, that it is supposed to finish a young man's education, and consequently that the men whom it employs for such a purpose—its professors—are, or at least ought to be, abler men than the teachers proper. The difference, then, between professor and teacher is one of degree, and not of kind. ”

“ Hitherto practical training has been thought necessary for teachers of primary schools only, but similar training is very desirable for teachers in high schools and colleges also. Indeed, it is already becoming increasingly difficult for college graduates without practical and theoretical pedagogical 72 knowledge to secure good positions. In addition to the lectures open to undergraduates, courses will be organized for graduate students only, conducted with special reference to preparation for the headship and superintendence of schools. ”

“ If college graduates are put directly into teaching without special study and training, they will teach as they have been taught. The methods of college professors are not in all cases the best, and, if they were, high school pupils are not to be taught nor disciplined as college students are. High school teaching and discipline can be that neither of the grammar school nor of the college, but is sui generis. ”

“ Of what use is a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the question raised—we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help you to know a good man when you see him. ”

“ The strong-minded and mature student appears the exception to this statement, but in general will be found to be pursuing a self-imposed curriculum with a definite vocation in mind. The prospective ministers, lawyers, doctors and teachers were excluded from consideration because their college course is not necessarily a broadly cultural one, but a selected vocational training. For the same reason must the mature student be excluded. A college instructor can separate his class into three groups, those who set the pace, those who follow, and those who fall. ”

“ At least, this holds good for the majority of institutions; a small number of colleges devote their whole effort to cultural training, and some of the larger institutions, particularly in the East, find it possible to postpone most of the professional preparation to a period of graduate work. But on the whole the average well-equipped college includes the training of teachers as one end of its foreign-language work. Ordinarily, such mastery of the subject as would prepare for teaching cannot be gained within the four years' college course. ”

“ Many elementary and secondary teachers have undergone training for their life work, as investigators have, by a different regimen, of course, for theirs. But if college and university teachers do their work well, it is because they are born with competence for their calling, or were self-taught, or happened to grow into competence accidentally, as a by-product of training for other and partly alien ends, or learned to teach by teaching. ”

“ We set up no standards aside from character and scholarship. We do not demand evidence of teaching ability, a knowledge of applied psychology and of accepted teaching practices, skill in presentation, power of organizing material in graded sequence, or ability to frame a series of questions designed to stimulate and sustain the self-activity of the pupils. The born college teacher remains the successful teacher. The poor college teacher finds no agent which tends to raise his teaching to a higher level. The temperamentally unfit are not weeded out. ”

“ Why doesn’t it send them into the world to be useful?”
“That’s what a good many people say, about us students,” I replied. “But books and professors and courses of study are only a part of what a student gets in our college, sir. It’s a very peculiar situation. I’m older than most of the students, and have had the advantage [312] of a professional training, and so can look on the college through somewhat serious eyes. You would be astounded, for instance, at the tremendous education that the men receive from purely student affairs.” ”

“ The teacher with colorless personality and without interest in, and knowledge of, the world of reality, will fail, whatever be the purpose of his teaching. The higher the teacher's aim, the farther may he fall below its attainment. A college teacher whose message is delivered on the mental level of grammar school children should, of course, score a pretty high percentage of success in giving a passing mark to sophomores, juniors, and seniors in American colleges. ”

“ It is no longer possible for college professors to conduct classes and give lectures upon subjects unrelated to the student’s ability or to his year in the college course. All the world knows what each instructor is doing; questionnaires quiz him about methods and subjects; associations require him to talk about his work and consciously to face its problems.
Neither is it possible for a high school teacher to drag listlessly along, or arrange his history topics as he wishes. ”

“ It brings together a body of students whose outlook to the future is identical, it encourages, therefore, narrow views, and breeds the exclusive professional spirit in a profession whose usefulness depends on its power to assimilate the thought of the time and to sacrifice its interest for wider interests. The training college system as a means of equipping teachers for their work is not satisfactory, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was well justified when he said: “The thing which mattered most in the educational work in England to-day was the question of the training colleges”. ”

“ Too often the college provided rooms for teaching, the instructor provided the rest. Yet it must be conceded that the colleges did admirable work. They imparted not a great deal of knowledge, for the courses were very narrow, but there was a system in the training which sharpened many a dull intellect and made the already sharp intellect keener. The purpose confessedly was not to impart knowledge, but to train the intellect, to fit the man for professional study. ”

“ To increase its power for good, it ought to be accessible to any student who has passed through the preliminary training of the common, grammar, and high schools. It is not at all true that those who oppose the present college preparation desire to make education less efficient; rather ought it to be said that many intelligent friends of education wish to make a more efficient collegiate education available for a larger number. The college should not be a school for one specialty, but rather a school in which many specialties are taught by the very best specialists. ”

“ Teachers are born, not made, it is said. Can pedagogy furnish better teachers than specialized scholarly training? it is asked. If we train definitely for teaching, we shall diminish scholarship, cramp and warp native teaching faculty, and mechanize our class procedure, it is objected.
Had the subject of training for college teaching been discussed, no doubt other objections would have been advanced. But it has not been discussed, as will be seen from the very scant bibliography at the end of the chapter. ”

“ The most principal reason for going to college is so as to prepare myself for teaching. While the room was not very large, yet it had a good-sized closet in which to put a trunk would be easy and lighted by a small window. A college education is supposed to be general and thorough by training a man not only into something definite, but give him a wider scope from which to choose from. ”

“ There are at least two other reasons for the sort of difference between students which makes it so difficult oftentimes to adjust teaching to the material it has to work upon. The first is the lack of preparation in the foundations of intellectual culture which the student brings to the college—particularly in the power of good observation, accurate thinking and clear English expression. A large share of the difficulties of the college teacher consists in overcoming the handicap with which the student starts. ”

“ For the first of these the small college has a great advantage. It can come close to its students; it can 'know its men by name.' The value of a teacher decreases with the square of his distance from the pupil. The work of the freshman and sophomore years in many of our great colleges is sadly inadequate, because its means are not fitted to its ends. In very few of our large colleges does the elementary work receive the care its importance deserves.
The great college can draw the best teachers away from the small colleges. In this regard the great college has an immense advantage. ”