DEPARTMENT OF NORMAL SCHOOLS SECRETARY'S MINUTES OFFICERS President-D. B. JOHNSON, president, Winthrop Normal College.. .Rock Hill, S.C. Warrensburg, Mo. Winona, Minn. FIRST SESSION-WEDNESDAY FORENOON, July 12, 1911 The opening session of the Department of Normal Schools was held in Golden Gate Hall, San Francisco, on Wednesday, July 12. The meeting was called to order at 9.45 A.M. by the vice-president, William J. Hawkins, president of the State Normal School, Warrensburg, Mo. In the absence of the secretary, Miss May A. Ward was appointed secretary pro tempore. The chairman then appointed the following committees: COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS E. Oram Lyte, president, First Pennsylvania State Normal School, Millersville, Pa. John R. Kirk, president, State Normal School, Kirksville, Mo. A. J. Matthews, president, Territorial Normal School, Tempe, Ariz. COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS David Felmley, president, State Normal University, Normal, Ill. The first address, "The Preparation of Teachers for Moral Training in the Public Schools," was delivered by John R. Kirk, president, State Normal School, Kirksville, Mo. This was followed by a paper on "The Relation of the Academic and Professional Work in a Normal School,” by Homer H. Seerley, president, Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, Iowa. "The Normal School and the Training School" was the subject treated by David Felmley, president, State Normal University, Normal, Ill. The papers were discussed by the following: Agnes E. Howe, instructor in history, State Normal School, San José, Cal.; John R. Kirk, president, State Normal School, Kirksville, Mo.; Alva W. Stamper, head of Department of Mathematics, State Normal School, Chico, Cal.; Helen F. Burke, superintendent of Holy Name Normal School, Spokane, Wash.; Martha Buck, Southern Illinois State Normal School, Carbondale, Ill.; George H. Brumhall, president of Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; Cree T. Work, Fort Morgan, Colo.; and others. The reports of the Committee on Simplified Spelling and the Committee on Agricultural Education were read by Homer H. Seerley, president, Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, Iowa. It was moved and carried that the reports be accepted as read and printed in the records of the session. It was moved by John R. Kirk, president, State Normal School, Kirksville, Mo., that two meetings of the Department of Normal Schools be held each year: one session⚫ in February with the Department of Superintendence, and the other during the regular convention of the National Education Association. The motion was adopted. A motion was made and carried that the president of the Department of Normal Schools appoint a committee of eleven, representing the whole country, to report at the next meeting of the department just what statistics normal schools should keep. The following named were subsequently appointed by the president, W. J. Hawkins: Homer H. Seerley, president, Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Chairman. James E. Klock, principal of State Normal School, Plymouth, N.H. David B. Johnson, president, Winthrop Normal and Indust. College, Rock Hill, S.C. W. S. Dearmont, president, State Normal School, Cape Girardeau, Mo. W. A. Shoemaker, president, State Normal School, St. Cloud, Minn. H. F. Estill, principal, Sam Houston Normal Institute, Huntsville, Tex. J. F. Millspaugh, president, State Normal School, Los Angeles, Cal. The report of the Committee on Resolutions was then given, as follows: The Department of Normal Schools of the National Education Association hereby expresses its gratification in the assurance that is received from every quarter of the nation of an increased interest in the adequate preparation of teachers thru special instruction and training for the great work of teaching the children and youth committed to their care. With a fitting sense of the obligation which rests upon them, and mindful of the serious duties which it involves, the normal schools of the United States believe that under proper conditions and equipment they have no right to refuse to undertake the responsibility of preparing teachers for every department of the public school service. We rejoice in the rapidly increasing interest on the part of the educational workers everywhere and of the general public in the great movement which aims to secure for our children the benefits and blessings, moral, social, and physical, of play, of life and growth in the great out-of-doors, and of an uprearing in an atmosphere of kindliness and sympathy. We wish to register our unqualified approval of measures which have for their purpose the inculcation in the minds of candidates for the profession, not merely of ethical principles, academically determined, but of ethical practices, determined by habits of right conduct in all human relations. We believe that the time is fully ripe for the enlargement of the curricula of normalschool subjects by the addition to them of carefully organized courses of study in biology having reference to the essential facts of sex physiology and hygiene, to the end that our teachers may enter upon their work properly equipped to fight the great battle for purity and decency in our social life. We urge on the part of the administration of normal schools a more perfect correlation of the two departments of instruction, the theoretical and the practical, in order that there may result greater unification of effort, a better adaptation of means to ends, and a lessening of cross-purpose effort in all the work of our schools. Committee JESSE F. MILLSPAUGH, of California N. D. SHOWALTER, of Washington The report of the Committee on Nominations was as follows: For President-W. J. Hawkins, president, State Normal School, Warrensburg, Mo. For Vice-President-A. J. Matthews, president, Tempe Normal School, Tempe, Ariz. For Secretary-Miss Martha Buck, Southern Illinois State Normal School, Carbondale, Ill. It was moved and carried that the reports be accepted as read and printed in the records of the department. The department then adjourned. MAY A. WARD, Secretary pro tempore PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS THE RELATION OF ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL WORK HOMER H. SEERLEY, PRESIDENT, IOWA STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE, Scholarship of the highest and best type is fundamental to the real efficiency and the certain success of all teachers of every grade in all kinds of public schools. This required scholarship must include all branches of study that give perfect insight into the work designated as appropriate for elementary and secondary schools. This indicates that the amount of work to be done is neither meager nor minor, since the person thus prepared must be superior to the standards exacted of students who complete high-school and college courses. The degree of perfection that is essential of attainment has exceeded any of the standards expected of cultural and liberal education and has developed the special-teacher school in which training, development, and scholarship have all received extraordinary attention and commendation. The results that have been reached have been of such a notable character that the state normal schools have been honored, supported, and improved with a zeal and an appreciation that no other kind of popular education has experienced, while their graduates occupy a place in public esteem for their efficiency and for their practical service that is sufficient to prove the reality and the perpetuity of their province. This development and recognition has come more from the absolute value and serviceableness of the scholarship these teachers' schools require than from any other reason, since experience has proven that the differences between the decidedly well-prepared and the moderately well-prepared are very great indeed. For these reasons the normal schools have a province that is not invaded by other classes of schools and colleges, however great or distinguished these may be, because they need not fear the results of time or of change as long as their preparation for a career maintains this high grade of superiority and excellence. The limits of the subjects that will be taught and that will properly belong to the normal-school program of studies depend entirely upon the breadth of the function accented, the largeness of the field of service that is undertaken to be supplied, and the greatness of conception that educational work as a profession assumes to those who hold the destiny of the institution in their control. There can be no such thing as "full educated" and "part educated" as truly applied to the right training of teachers for an effective career. Defining "full" and "part" as implying any certain length of course or any certain varieties of knowledge is a false assumption and should be repudiated. All grades of schools need thoroly trained and thoroly educated teachers, specially adapted and decidedly skilled in the particular field of activity where they have their greatest power and their largest personal fitness. The academic preparation of the kindergartner, the primary teacher, the elementary teacher, the music teacher, the commercial teacher, the drawing teacher, the domestic-science teacher, and the department highschool teacher are notably different in many particulars if they are each to be skillfully trained and fully equipped for a distinguished success, but each needs as full development of mind, as large a capacity for usable knowledge, as much greatness of character and as profound an efficiency as an instructor as any of the others. The true province of academic training in a normal school is breadth of knowledge, comprehensiveness of intelligence, magnificence of power of presentation of truth to others and marvelous depths of capability in the understanding of human nature so as to guide it to the supreme good. There is special need for a scholarly environment, for sterling yet moderate surroundings, for heroic personal bearing and for a spirit of loving sacrifice in the atmosphere of a teachers' school. If it is to reach the student body and cause the members to want to possess scholarship in this supreme fullness, then the atmosphere of intellectuality, of morality, and of the higher life must be marked in great abundance and in definite permanence, while the glorious spirit of the school must possess such convincing and living characteristics that they inspire everyone whom it touches to attain to the supreme and the complete for the sake of the greatness of the work to be done. In this regard the genuine teachers' school cannot be surpassed, as it wields an influence, compels an attitude, and reaches a standard that cannot be fully realized by those who have never known its marvelousness of province or its capability as a trainer of men and women. It is such things as these that make unusual scholarship a possibility, remarkable application an actuality, and positive efficiency a constant reality. It is here that scholarship of every kind reaches its highest natural resourcefulness; that the teaching conception of service to others attains its greatest rank of productiveness; and that the magnificence of the importance of usableness has its broadest application. Teaching that is worth the while is a great profession, not a technical trade. Its province is determined more by sincerity and by personality than by philosophy and by method. It reaches its highest rank when it shows the evangelical note, seeks the salvation of the human family, and supremely loves righteousness and truth as ends, not means to ends. Mental science, school management, historical progress in educational ideas and practice, philosophy of administration, and application of knowledge and experience in actual instruction of others are but terms to define |