meaning of theoretical by coupling it with scientific. Ever since Francis Bacon turned from the easy method of authority to the toilsome method of verification by observation and experiment, scientific has meant verifiable and has been synonymous with a non-speculative attitude toward all the phenomena of life.

The phrase "theoretical and scientific education" is therefore interpreted as including the laws of education that are capable of being worked out practically and also a definite attitude toward the working out of these laws.

Whether agreeable to us or not, the topic under discussion involves the purpose of a practice school in a normal school. The ends to be attained. by a practice school constitute, to my way of thinking, a trinity. First of all, if there is any theory or conception of education held by those responsible for the conduct of a normal school, the practice school should be the living embodiment of this theory. If such is not the case, the normal school is untrue to its duty of being a norm, or standard-setting institution. I think every practice school inevitably embodies some theory of education, altho it is often true that the theory so embodied is not the theory taught in the classes of the normal school. This only proves that there is something fundamentally wrong either with the head of theoretical and scientific education or else with the practical control of the school.

In the second place, the practice school exists to afford concrete illustrations of the theoretical and scientific education taught in the classes of the normal school. If, for example, students are studying discovery as a method of learning, they should be afforded an opportunity of observing children who are actually learning something by the method of discovery. This example will serve as a type of what I mean by the second end to be secured by the practice school.

In the third place, the work of a normal school is never really completed until the student has shown some power in actual teaching. One may comprehend the theory and yet be unable to exercise the actual control demanded by the theory. From this point of view, the practice school exists as an opportunity for students in the normal school to gain some small measure of skill in actual teaching.

We are now ready to take up the question involved in the assigned topic. The topic does not ask as to whether the head of theoretical and scientific education should be the president of the school or a member of the faculty, probably because the amount of executive work demanded by the size and organization of the school controls the answer. Be the size and organization of the school what it will, the head of theoretical and scientific education should sustain an advisory relation regarding the general organization of the practice school and the general aspects of the course of study. I urge an advisory relation rather than control, because control of a practice school of any considerable size, if effective and constant, is enough, of itself, to occupy the time and prowess of any one person. This advisory relation makes it possible for

the executive head of the practice school to give a less-divided attention to the actual details of the work and also to look for suggestions to the one who is so far removed from the concrete details of actual control as to have a reflective perspective. This general proposition is subject to modification, however, when the head of the practice department or any of the supervisors of practice have unusual teaching power in certain lines, and when the head of theoretical and scientific education has unusual teaching power with children or in supervision of practice teaching.

In order that the advisory relation set forth above may have some influence upon the general organization and the course of study in the practice school, as well as upon the practice teaching of normal students, frequent conferences are necessary. These conferences should be with all those concerned in the actual administration of the practice school, and should, in general, have for their purpose the definitizing and actualizing of the ideal of education to which the school as a whole is committed. In these conferences the discussion of difficulties encountered in honest effort to realize the ends set up for practice-school pupils and normal-school students alike should be a regular part of the program. The head of theoretical and scientific education ought to be able to advise wisely regarding both classes of difficulties; and the necessity of considering these practical difficulties will do much to keep one's feet on the earth.

Another relation is to what is called observational work. Separate classes in observation may or may not be desirable; but observation of children at work, in amount sufficient to give concreteness to the theoretical and scientific education taught to normal-school students, is imperative. The planning of this work should be done by the head of theoretical and scientific education. To plan such work advantageously requires that one be actually conversant with the work done day by day by the different groups of children in the practice school. Simply to observe children has little value. It is the working over of successive observations, the perception of a relationship between or among observed things that really counts in the education of one who aspires to be a teacher. This means that the observations by the classes must be worked over by discussions. This discussion of observed work is really a very difficult matter to conduct profitably. The mere twaddle of repeating what was done and passing final judgment upon separate acts by teachers and pupils should be replaced by a form of discussion that involves some genuine thinking; but, at the same time, the seeing of things that were not actually in the recitation is to be avoided. By means of such discussions, students should build up some standards of judging and criticizing their own teaching as well as that of others. These same standards, if well established, will tend to prevent jealousy, gossip, and backbiting-three sins not yet obsolete among teachers.

The head of theoretical and scientific education is particularly susceptible to illusions, especially those relative to what we ought to do in schools. We

ought not to do the impossible, and even the possible is accomplished only with great difficulty. There is nothing quite so sobering to the judgment as the necessity of facing one's own work. The head of theoretical and scientific education ought therefore to teach in the practice school and before his own classes in order that he and his students may appreciate the difficulties involved, and in order that he become not visionary. Such work, when well done, also exerts a wonderful effect on students by giving them standards to which they can recur. Above all, such concrete illustrative work by the teacher of education tends to break up the tendency to teach as one has been taught.

To summarize by generalization: I have urged that the head of theoretical and scientific education should have an organic and vitalizing relation to the practice school, tho not its executive head; that it should be his constant endeavor to bring to the practice school an inspiring and illuminating theory; and I have shown that, if this is done, it will react most helpfully upon the content of the theoretical and scientific education taught to the normal students.

In setting up all these relations as desirable, I have outlined more than any one person can accomplish. This fact does not, to my thinking, vitiate the conclusions reached in any way, for the question at bottom is as to what relation should exist between instruction in education and the concrete process of education that goes on in the practice school.

DISCUSSION

JOSEPH H. HILL, president, State Normal School, Emporia, Kan.—The point of view of my discussion is that of practical agreement with the paper with possibly some difference of emphasis in matters of detail. The practice, or as I prefer to say, the training school, is the heart of the normal school. It exists, as has been said, as a concrete realization of the view of education held in the normal school. It not only exemplifies, but tests that theory of education; and more, it may be, to some legitimate degree at least, an experimental school, a place for the investigation and the discovery of educational truth. The conjunction of theory and practice in the training school is the distinctive feature of normalschool education that more than any other gives it efficiency professionally as compared with the general training that has been assumed so often to be the only preparation necessary for teaching school. Yet it must not be forgotten that the normal training school defeats its own purpose if it be thought of as existing only for the sake of exemplifying or even discovering pedagogic theory or if it be thought of as existing only for the sake of the intending teacher. It is a school; and if it is a real school, not an artificial one, its supreme interest is in the boys and girls who are to be taught; the supreme end of its processes is their growth and the development of their powers and character.

This side of the case is emphasized to bring out the idea, not overlooked, as I feel, by the writer of the paper, but perhaps needing emphasis in order that two halves may make the concentered whole, that the work of administration in the training school, and the direction of its instruction, in order to secure the most efficient results, must be maintained under conditions as nearly natural as possible, and involving the maximum degree of freedom on the part of those immediately concerned with the work. I should preserve the integrity of the training school as such, and in matters pertaining to its organization and the general aspects of its course of study as well as the working out of its details, I should exercise great care not to impair the power and hence the efficiency of its principal and those immediately associated with him in daily work.

Considering, therefore, the principal of the training school and the head of theoretic and scientific education as co-ordinate workers in the same field, I should be in substantial accord with the detailed suggestions of the paper as to the recognized functions of each; I should think of neither as in any sense to be subordinate to the other, but should regard their relation ideally to be that of sympathetic and intelligent co-operation. Such a relation can be maintained successfully only when at least three things are implied: (1) A spirit of cordiality, frankness and tolerance in their personal relations; (2) A general accord as to the theory of education in its psychological and philosophical aspects; (3) An actual understanding by frequent conference, full discussion, and, as much as possible, observation of the work of each by the other.

Given these three elements and details may safely be left to be determined as conditions, largely local or temporary, may demand. Given these elements, and there need be little concern as to differences of detail in the presentation of theory and the places and methods employed in daily work. The qualities of an educational philosopher and an efficient administrator are not necessarily, perhaps rarely, united in the same man. Two men, totally unlike, yet one in spirit and in purpose, may admirably supplement each other. Unity is not necessarily uniformity. There are a thousand ways to exemplify good teaching in a given lesson with the same subject-matter, all in harmony with the same educational philosophy, if there be a thousand teachers, each naturally and freely giving expression to himself; and there are ways innumerable for the same teacher to teach the same lesson, if he be seer enough to choose the way not looking within at himself but following the line of vision from himself to the mind yonder of the waiting and expectant child. "Not the form, but the spirit,"is the true motto of the training school, and, when that is realized, then may he that teaches reverently and not boastfully say to the taught: "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life."

JOHN E. MCGILVREY, principal of Cleveland Normal School, Cleveland, O.-The practice school is sometimes planned and conducted with the purpose of giving the greatest possible degree of skill to the beginner in the shortest possible time. And in many of our city normal schools this, even though an unconscious presupposition, is the standard by which the effectiveness of the entire work is finally judged. This undue emphasis upon immediate skill, demanded especially of the city normal school by an overshadowing system, tends to control matters of organization and steadily to narrow the view of the individual student in the practice work. The beginner, losing sight of the theories and principles of education previously studied, substitutes therefor empirical knowledge, generalizes from a few facts, and fixes the habit of relying on direct and individual observation. This means an early end to the period of growth by the limit of self-satisfaction; and the instruction in the department of theoretical and scientific education has thus failed in its chief purpose.

This tendency in the mind of the student toward the divorcement of scientific knowledge from practice finds its counterpart in the movement toward a complete separation of the two departments, with the head of theoretical and scientific education in merely nominal control of the practice teaching. And such a relation I believe to be the natural and inevitable result wherever the dominating aim of the practice work is to give to the student-teacher a high degree of skill in the immediate problems of management and in the teaching of a special and limited subject matter in a particular grade.

If, on the other hand, the aim of the practice work is not specialized skill but a deeper comprehension of educational principles and problems previously studied, the studentteacher's attitude toward the work of the day and in the years to come will be entirely different. When confronted with the confusion of unrelated facts the tendency is forming to look deeper into the facts for an organized system; and this power of insight and comprehension achieves results beyond the reach of mere mechanical skill in a narrow field of action. In the words of Emerson: "By a deeper apprehension and not primarily by the

painful acquirement of many manual skills does the artist attain to the power of awakening other souls to a given activity."

The question of normal-school organization under discussion is subordinate to, and must be answered in light of, what constitutes preparation for teaching. And in teaching the science of education, as a part of that preparation, we are subject to the same laws and conditions that govern the teaching of any science. What the experimental laboratory is to the study of physics the practice-school laboratory is to the study of education. One might, in the teaching of physics, present the entire subject from the theoretical standpoint before the experimental work was begun, but so doing would be very unusual and would rightly meet with opposition and criticism. One might, and it is not unusual, attempt to equip the student with the entire body of the theory of education in the abstract before the practice work is begun, and it would provoke little or no criticism; which means that in the generally accepted view of the fundamental law of knowing-namely, that concrete conscious experience must constitute the material of generalization-controls the teaching of the science of physics but not of the science of education. But the stubborn fact remains that only concrete conscious experience with the actual teaching process can give content to the philosophy of education and general method, and that a law or principle in education, as well as in physics, enters the mind only thru the medium of the facts or things which it is meant to explain. Such being the well-established fact, the practice work must be considered an integral part of the instruction in theoretical and scientific education in the same sense in which the laboratory practice is a necessary part of the instruction in physics, and, therefore, the head of theoretical and scientific education should have immediate and direct control of the work in the practice schools; not merely an advisory but a supervisory relation.

The most difficult problem confronting the normal school in preparing a teacher is to establish in the mind of the beginner a connection between theory and practice. To enable the would-be teacher to recognize in the concrete situation confronting him in the act of instruction the controlling principles and governing laws of the mental exercise is the one all-inclusive aim of normal-school instruction. Failure in this means failure in all things else, so far as the preparation of a teacher is concerned. With this realized, standards of judgment and self-criticism are established which will save future experience from the fate of deadly routine and will develop that spirit of self-reliance and power through which the teacher's personality becomes a matter of greater moment to the pupil than the subject matter of instruction.

Because of the importance and difficulty of maintaining in the thought of the student this connection between the principle and the practice it seems to me that the head of theoretical and scientific education in the normal school should personally supervise and direct the teaching of the students in the practice rooms. And when, because of numbers, such personal direction becomes impossible, the supervision should be continued by those under his immediate direction.

THE RELATION OF OBSERVATION TO PRACTICE-TEACHING IN THE PREPARATION OF THE YOUNG TEACHER

L. H. JONES, PRESIDENT, STATE NORMAL COLLEGE, YPSILANTI, MICH. The comparison which I am to make between these two vital processes in the training of teachers does not require me to discard either, but rather to state, if I can, the appropriate relationship between the two when both are used. Each of the two will doubtless be found better than the other for the attainment of certain ends in training, while neither will be found competent to displace the other or attain its ends. The normal school proposes efficiency