I am of the opinion that the professional certificate should stand for more than it does at present. The life certificates given in many of the other States call for proficiency in many branches which are not mentioned and often not thought of in granting professional and permanent certificates in this State.

"

At present, I see nothing else for us to do as Superintendents but to grant professionals for satisfactory work done in what are familiarly known as the common branches." We can, however, as I have intimated before, raise the standard of examination in the studies and require more efficient work in the school-room, so that in a few years those who hold professional certificates and permanent certificates will be among the strongest teachers in the county.

Supt. Buehrle: Is the point well taken that for the professional certificate we should require no more studies than the provisional requires? For instance, to complete arithmetic do we not need a knowledge of algebra ?

Supt. Weiss: Is there any authority in the law for one man to endorse another man's professional certificate?

Supt. Slotter: We grant professional certificates without added branches. Our teachers themselves have raised the standard for permanent certificates to the standard required by Normal schools for the Junior examination. By taking a firm stand on this matter, we have had no trouble about it for twenty-five years. The teachers themselves desire it.

Prof. Spayd: Dr. Buehrle's point is not well taken. If his idea were carried out, in order to know physical geography all the sciences must be studied, and to teach arithmetic would involve no end of supplementary branches.

The time for the general programme having arrived, this department adjourned.

ROUND TABLE-PAVILION.

HERE attention was given to Normal school matters, the Chairman being Principal M. G. Benedict, of Edinboro. The first paper was read by Supt. JOHN MORROW, of Allegheny, on

SCHOLARSHIP OF NORMAL GRADUATES.

This subject is not one of my own choosing, and it was with great hesitation that I agreed to say anything on it at all. Under the circumstances, therefore, I feel free to thrash around a good deal on both sides of the fence. The programme limits me to twenty minutes, but if I should consult my

own feelings in the matter I would say all I want to say, and perhaps more than I ought to say, in much less time.

The subject, "Scholarship of Normal School Graduates" is somewhat limited in its meaning and application, though I presume the committee assigning it intended the term Scholarship" to be understood and used in a general sense to mean the qualifications and fitness of the average Normal School graduate for the responsibilities of his lifework. In this general way, then, it will be considered.

The Normal Schools of Pennsylvania have had a large and continuous contract of responsibility before them all along through their history. From the very start they have been a fruitful theme of adverse criticism. I recall with great distinctness the first meeting of this Association I ever attended, nearly thirty years ago, in Greensburg. On that occasion, Dr. Wyers, of West Chester, Dr. Cattell, of Lafayette College, Prof. Burtt, of Pittsburgh, and others, all spoke in a negative way of the scholarship of Normal School graduates. That was not the first meeting at which the Normal Schools were disparaged, and very few meetings since that time have been allowed to pass without some one assailing them in vigorous terms. Indeed, the situation is fully illustrated by the story of the Irishman whose neighbors were always fighting him. On one occasion they were kicking him with great energy, when he protested that the nature of the offence did not call for so vigorous a use of their feet. This seeming irregularity, however, was quickly made right by another Irishman who yelled out, Stand it, Moike. We're your frinds, and we're doin' it for yer own gud." The most sarcastic things I have ever heard said about the scholarship of the Normal Schools and their graduates have been said by those who first proclaimed their unalloyed friendship for these schools, and, like the Irishmen, seem to feel warranted in their scathing criticisms of these institutions, as they claimed, for the good of the institutions themselves.

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It is freely admitted that the average Normal School graduate has some grave faults; in this regard he is not very different from the graduates of other institutions of learning; but while we are generous in our admissions, let us also be just in our conclusions. The Normal Schools have always invited honest and thoughtful criticism, void of the acrimony and bitterness which frequently characterize public discussions. This kind of criticism has always been welcomed, not only by the Normal School people, but by the friends of the public school idea throughout the State.

Such criticism, however, has not always been the rule. Too often the cloven foot of personal interest has been painfully visible when the improvement of the Normal Schools was up for consideration; and gen

erally in our discussions of this subject, the lines have been clearly and sharply drawn between the friends of the Normal Schools on the one side, and those interested in little private schools, academies and colleges on the other. The Normal Schools are designed to be, and are essentially, professional institutions. They should be conducted on the same general principles as other professional schools, and should be held up to the same standards of thoroughness and efficiency; but to expect them to send out teachers all of whom are first class in their profession is the acme of folly. No other professional school has ever been able to attain any such dizzy heights of success, and why should such an unreasonable demand be made of the Normal Schools?

The law schools of the country send out scores of failures every year. The medical department is said to furnish very nearly as many quack doctors, annually, as it does skilled physicians, and the theological seminaries of the country bring up the rear with their full quota of "tired" preachers. All these professions are loaded down with representatives who would have made excellent farmers, carpenters and blacksmiths, provided they were not too lazy to work. But who has ever been heard to lampoon the professional schools that graduated these people and turned them loose on an unsuspecting public? We have in our city schools at home seventy-six Normal School graduates, representing very nearly all the Normal Schools in the State. I regard about five or six of these teachers as failures, but it has always seemed to me to be more nearly in harmony with fair play and honest dealing to speak of the seventy that are doing excellent work, rather than indiscriminately to abuse all of them on account of the few who are worthless.

The Normal Schools profess to make at least fairly good teachers and no more, but even this much is a work of grave responsibility. To be a successful teacher implies a great deal. You must be in possession of a sound, healthy body. You must have good, hard common sense. You must have a thorough knowledge of the subjects you profess to teach, and with all you must be willing to work. The absence of any one of these four qualifications is fatal to success, and yet there is only one of these essentials that the Normal Schools can ever hope to be able to supply. It thus appears then that at most they are responsible for only one-fourth of the failure of their graduates. A Normal School can furnish a thorough knowledge of the subjects to be taught, and the best methods of presenting them, and that is the most it can do. A wide-spread belief prevails, however, that they are not now and have not been doing this work as well as it ought to be done, and I fear that this opinion is not altogether without foundation. It is conceded that the Normal Schools have a difficult task to perform.

The young people of the country, with all grades of crude and limited attainments, flock to the Normal Schools, and many of them enter with the demand that they must be put through and graduated in one or two years in spite of their unfitness. The rank and file of students nevertheless go with the most praiseworthy motives. Yet some are induced to attend because they have been unable to secure a second or third-grade provisional certificate from the Superintendent of their district; they seek to get round this official in a year or two by pushing through a Normal School. Others again drift into the Normal Schools without any definite motive except perhaps that their parents and relatives wish thein to do so.

The problem of the Normal Schools then is to transform these crude, inexperienced, and untrained young persons into scholarly and cultured teachers, and this too in the remarkably short space of about two years' time.

These people are classified and usually do faithful work. They are passed from grade to grade by the faculty, sometimes on rather low records, it is true, but with the hope that they will be able to do better work and more of it the next quarter. At the end of two years, generally, they are recommended to the State Board of Examiners for a final sifting and graduation. It is the duty of this Board in a hurried examination of two days, usually roasting weather, at the heels of the session when every person is tired and worn out, to determine the scholastic attainments of these young folks, and to put under a cloud of failure and disappointment those who may be adjudged by any two members of that body as unworthy to pass.

In my judgment this is all wrong. No doubt there are in every large class of sixty or seventy candidates, eight or ten who ought to be rejected; but the average Board of Examiners cannot under the circumstances do so intelligently. They would not if they could, and it is not right that they should.

Let us see why. A young woman attends a Normal School for two or three years, and is advanced by the faculty from grade to grade and led to believe that she is going to graduate. Her father and mother, brothers and sisters, more than a hundred miles away, are all glad that Susan is expected to graduate at the coming commencement. It is spoken of and understood in the neighborhood by her friends and neighbors at home, that Susan Jones will finish the course at the Normal School in a few weeks. relatives select presents for the commencement occasion. Her mother gets her graduating dresses ready, and the whole family look forward with great expectations to commencement day. At the last moment the word goes home to her parents that poor Susan has been rejected by the committee, and she is sent home as a failure in disgrace, broken-hearted, to meet her relatives and

Her

friends, and to be the subject of gossip for the news-mongers and busy-bodies of the neighborhood. Such a course of treatment of any young person who has been making the best possible use of the time is both heartless and criminal.

I want the Normal Schools to brace up, and make better scholars; no one is more anxious for this than I am; but the last day of school is not the time to chop off heads. The lopping-off process should begin at the other end of the line.

Let a high standard of admission be set up. Make the entrance examinations as comprehensive as they ought to be, and class all comers where they belong. This would compel the public schools, high schools, academies and private schools of the country to do better work. As it now is, the Normal Schools can do but little with the material furnished them. After this has been done, hold the classes down to the successive grades until they are thoroughly finished, if it takes five years to get through. And finally, when classes are recommended to the State Board of Examiners for graduation, let them be treated as are the candidates of all other professional schools. If they show proficiency in only one branch, give them credit for that, and let it go on record that one subject, at least, has been thoroughly and satisfactorily finished.

But how is it now? Under existing regulations, if a candidate receives two negative votes on any one study, he is knocked clear out, and gets no credit at all for knowing anything. I confess that I am unable to see either sense or justice in any such procedure, and after careful investigation have been totally unsuccessful in finding a parallel to this kind of management in any other class of professional schools in the United States.

The Normal Schools could be much improved by establishing a uniform standard of admission to the classes of the last two years of the course. Uniformity also in the tests for graduation would be a long step in advance of the present system. The questions for all these examinations should be prepared at the School Department and sent to the different Normal Schools on the same day, in charge of enough assistants to conduct the examinations properly. The manuscripts should then be taken to the Department and carefully reported upon according to their merits.

I am advised, through correspondence with thirty-five of the leading colleges and universities in this country, that the tendency iu all professional schools now is to hold students back on the branches in which they are deficient until the work has been thoroughly and entirely finished. Every student gets full credit, however, for all the subjects he masters, and just as fast as he masters them.

Two other causes are potent in reducing

the standard of scholarship in the Normal Schools. The sharp competition between the Normal Schools themselves for students compels these schools to tolerate a grade of scholarship that is far too low. Another source of degeneracy in scholarship, in my judgment, is the high premium placed upon methods of instruction, while a knowledge of the philosophical principles underlying the subjects to be taught, is at a discount.

Every Institute lecturer in the country holds up to view and elaborates the importance of psychology, pedagogy, methods of instruction, history of education, etc., etc. These subjects appear to have a complete monopoly of educational journals everywhere, and the Normal Schools readily fall in with the procession and all shout for methods.

I would not discourage a proper amount of attention to these subjects, but I have always been of the opinion that it is quite as important for a teacher to have something in his mind, clearly understood, to present to his classes, as to have some patent method of presentation. No amount of knowledge in the line of methods can ever help you to present to others that which you yourself do not know.

On motion, discussion was deferred until the second paper had been read, which was by Prof. D. C. MURPHY, of Slippery Rock Normal School, on

PROFESSIONAL TRAINING IN NORMAL SCHOOLS.

When Napoleon, more than a century ago, was thundering at the gates of Berlin, it went around among the German people, "We must educate the peasantry." Out of the enthusiasm of that saying came the University of Berlin; and nearly a hundred years afterward the most magnificent army that ever crossed Europe marched to the gates of Paris, thundered against them successfully, and entered the city.

America before that understood the secret and power of Christian education and the education of the common school, and for two hundred years she has been training her young people. Never, however, has the work been so vigorously carried on as at the present time. A professional interest in any business elevates it at once: invests it with life and vigor, and takes it out of the realm of drudgery. Such an interest is the teacher's inspiration, manifested to-day all over our great Commonwealth. Our Normal Schools with the advanced methods and the training of teachers, with their instructors full of enthusiasm and inspiration, are sending forth every year persons better equipped for the work. For years these schools were vigorously opposed by those who denied the necessity or usefulness of professional training; but they have outlived all detraction and censure and have become strongly intrenched in the public confidence; having

now an unimpeded way in which to develop themselves along all lines which lead toward broader, fuller, and richer work. They have fought successfully against the false sentiment and delusive idea that "all teachers, like poets, are born and not made." So fully did this sentiment control the world's thought that for centuries people believed that a knowledge of the subjects taught without any investigation of underlying principles was quite sufficient for a teacher. The establishment of the Normal Schools in our State, therefore, marks an epoch in our educational history, as plainly as the inauguration of Washington to be President of the United States marks the beginning of an epoch in our political history. Our State has for several years been pursuing a liberal policy of educating teachers through the agency of these schools.

Horace Mann said fifty years ago, "I believe the Normal Schools to be a new instrument in the advancement of the race." The Normal School is essentially a product of modern times, and we need not turn back the pages of history to discover the idea in some Medieval University. That would be like looking for the Declaration of Independence in the writings of the Greeks or Chinese." The Normal School is not only a modern idea, but an expression of the voice of the people in their demand for better trained teachers. The influence of these schools directly or indirectly inspires those who are engaged in teaching and exalts the work into an honored profession. Normal Schools must therefore lead in the advancement of professional training, or their usefulness will end. Superintendent Calkins said recently, "Observing the work of many teachers from their first attempts through several years of teaching, leads us to inquire, 'Can anything more be done than is now accomplished in the training of teachers which shall enable a much larger number of them to do right work from the outset.'"' He assumes that there have been and are failures in the work of those sent out from Colleges and Normal Schools. Some of these failures may be traced to the peculiar and inherent tendencies of the individual; some are the result of imperfect training for the work; and some arise from the environment of the school, leaving a very small per cent. of those who enter the profession to rise into prominence. If educators will undertake to seek better ways to success in teaching, with that degree of watchful observation and patient study which is practiced by those who, through difficulties, learn to know the psychological development of the animals they train, there will be unprecedented advancement in our work in the future. Every year brings the teachers' profession farther to the front; hence there is an increased obligation resting on every true teacher to lift the educational work to higher planes of perfection. The educational

interests of our great State are so important that it becomes the duty of the State to see that those who undertake the instruction of her children shall have laid a foundation, broad and deep, in professional training. This holds within its bounds two specific things the "Science of Teaching" and the "Art of Teaching." Under the first we must take psychology as the basis of our work, and seek in its teachings the principles of development and from them evolve our methods as a guide to instruction.

President De Garmo says, "The first requisite in the development of training teachers is the study of Psychology." In the report of the Committee of Fifteen, we find they recommend that early in the course of study, teachers in training assume as true the well-known facts of psychology and the essential principles of education, and guide their later study and practice by the light of these principles; that the most fundamental and important of the professional studies which ought to be pursued by one intending to teach is psychology.

Modern educational thought emphasizes the opinion that the child, not the subject taught, is the guide to the teacher's efforts. To know the child is of paramount importance. We study the child's spontaneous acts in body and mind; "these are the buds of promise.' No common sense law of discerning the physical, mental and moral conditions is sufficient. 66 'We must know, by studying the child, when his spontaneities develop, their seasons, their strength and their number." If we wish to know how to treat a plant, we must know the conditions of its healthy growth; what culture it needs at first and during all its growth.

The teacher who thus studies the laws of development in the child's mind, as the florist studies the growth of the plant, soon discovers the proper method for training the mind. We must study the child as a personality, and not as something to be weighed or analyzed. Many young teachers who have not had proper training in teaching, instead of seeking by study the conditions of the minds about him, becomes an imitator of methods rather than a master of his work. Instead of studying the children themselves, in order to reach a psychological basis, we are too apt to educate according to some course of study. We cannot afford to wait a decade or a half-century for some gifted teacher to appear who knows how to read and reveal the child-soul to the world. We cannot wait for a Pestalozzi or a Froebel. It cannot be done by one or two heaven-sent men for all time or for all teachers. It must be done daily, hourly, by every teacher who would use the key to real success. One of the best psychologists in America sat a whole afternoon in a summer house watching some children playing on the lawn. "Why do you do that?" asked a primary teacher, who was a member of the professor's class. "I am learning what to

say to you to-morrow morning," answered the wise teacher. In Pennsylvania there is a beautiful river; its waters come from the North; it winds its way among the valleys. If we were wishing to find its source, we would not go wandering all over the State to find it, but just trace the river to its beginning. One of the objects of professional training is to lead teachers to find the source of true work without wandering in a blind, aimless way all over the field of experience. The teacher who learns to teach by teaching, without any thought of the proper development of those under his charge, or without any instruction from those competent to point out defects and suggest their remedies, is apt to think all teaching alike. One who thus gropes in the dark can never expect to rise in the profession, while those who are trained in the Normal Schools under the direction of a skilled leader will find the training worth more to them than many years of experience, when left to discover their own faults and find their own way to correct them. The training school, with all that it includes, is a great step in the evolution of the ideal teacher. Such schools are full of possibilities both for pupil and teacher, and all true training increases the teacher's knowledge, and his power to gain knowledge; gives greater power to think clearly and independently, and stimulates the natural love for knowledge and the work of teaching. Those who receive the highest training are those who come conscious of the greatness beyond in the profession, and who will radiate a helpful, invigorating spirit, and open to the teachers under their charge the possible dignity of the profession.

Again: The Normal Schools must make ample provision for the academic training of their students. The teacher must have cultured powers and a well-informed mind. Whatever half-truths may lie in the principle advanced by Jacotot, it is certain that a person cannot teach what he does not understand. One of the great faults in all teaching arises from ignorance of the subject taught. No person can succeed in teaching a subject unless he not only knows it thoroughly, but also has a clear idea of the end he should seek to attain by teaching that branch of knowledge. No good results can be expected when the ignorant teach the ignorant. An error lies in the popular fallacy that almost any one can teach small children, when in fact the best talent, the widest knowledge, the utmost skill, the best trained teachers, are needed in the primary grades, for there is where the mind is awakened. The child when asked why he went to school, replied, "To learn something new." This may be partially true, but it is more frequently true that children attend school to have the mind quickened and prepared to receive knowledge, or rather to have the mind developed so that the child can understand that which he could not

comprehend before. This power must be attained in the primary schools, and the teacher, to do good work, must have a sound practical education and broad culture as the foundation. The teacher must understand the training and appreciate the value of all the activities of the child. If by magic power we were able to bring all great teachers of the ages to life for the purpose of formulating as perfect a system of educational doctrine as is possible for the human mind to create, they would first "call a little child and set it in their midst," for it is only from the study of the children, in their growth from infancy to maturity, that a system of educational psychology can be formed.

Text-books and teachers at one time required pupils to commit to memory long rules and many exceptions under each; everything was memorized, the pupils simply repeating words. Later some educators discovered that such unintelligent memorizing was a questionable educational method; that while the child was memorizing the text-book, the observing and reflecting powers lay idle and inactive. When educators were awakened to these facts, they found that a boy with a wretched memory for dates, participles, and abstract rules, under the concentrated powers of a welltrained teacher could easily learn to name the rulers of the country, could analyze a flower, could tell of the winds and waves, or work with the saw or plane; that the girl who had but little talent for mathematics. when given an opportunity, became a ready pupil in literature and science.

We conclude therefore, while it is a mistake in a Normal School to make scholarship a subordinate aim, it is an equally grave mistake to make the training the subordinate aim. "We are apt to educate too much and instruct and train too little." We are taught in physiology that the food is still outside the body until it is digested by the work of our own organism; then it is ready to be absorbed and assimilated. We are frequently reminded that what a man learns does not educate him. "Education is the result of activity, not receptivity." A man's spiritual nature does not grow because he attends church regularly and hears good preaching; it is the activities of his own spirit that cause his soul to grow. The preaching may be the power which awakened the growth, but the true growth must come from within. David could not fight in the armor of Saul; he had that which served his purpose better, that which he himself had developed through his own activities. The personality, the individuality, is a distinctive characteristic in every teacher and should be well-trained and since the aim of the school in general is to develop and rightly train each child, then the Normal School must strive the harder to send out teachers whose individuality has been recognized and stimulated. Profes