On the Heights. Poem. Elizabeth Porter Gould Plea for Accuracy in the Use of Words. Dr. George M. Steele Preparatory Departments in Connection with Colleges. Pres. Charles Reading at Sight. Chas. Tudor Williams Reminiscences of Lowell Mason. Supt. William A. Mowry, Ph. D. 568 88 335 339 Rhetoric and Public Speaking in the American College. Prof. Henry 129 "Round Table " Views . 570 391 School Supervision. A. W. Edson, A. M. Scottish School of Rhetoric. A. M. Williams, M. A., 142, 220, 281, 344, 427, 488 Sloyd, Distinguishing Characteristics of. Lizzie Josephine Woodward, 359 46 587 564 The Newspaper and the New Education. Francis E. Oliver The Old Red School House. Poem. Julia H. May The Province of the Normal School. Hon. John W. Dickinson The Relation of Manual or Industrial Training to Public Schools. EDUCATION DEVOTED TO THE SCIENCE, ART, PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE OF EDUCATION. VOL. XIII. SEPTEMBER, 1892. No. I. THE PROVINCE OF THE NORMAL SCHOOL. THE HON. JOHN W. DICKINSON, Secretary State Board of Education. HE normal schools, as organized in this country, are professional institutions for training teachers to teach. They owe their origin to the idea that teaching is a science and an art, and that both may be taught and learned as are any other science and art. It is therefore their distinctive work to develop the science and art of teaching. The ends to be attained should determine the means to be employed in normal instruction and the method of their application. The means will consist of a normal course of studies to be pursued, and the method will be a philosophical way of pursuing them. If we suppose the normal schools of the country were established for the purpose of training teachers for the public schools, then the first subject to be taken up in the normal course should relate to the ends which these schools are expected to promote. A knowledge of these ends will direct the normal schools in selecting their subjects of instruction and in the special application of method in teaching. The public schools are doing their legitimate work when they are directing their pupils to the acquisition of useful knowledge, to a way of obtaining information of those things which cannot be made direct objects of knowledge, and to that method of using the mind which will result in its best develop ment. Knowledge, information, method and mental development being the ends to which the public schools should direct their attention, these must determine the sort of professional training which public school teachers should receive. The normal course will include first, a study of the principles or laws of the mind that direct and limit it in learning, in acquiring skill in its various forms of activity, and in developing its character. Second, from a knowledge of these principles should be derived a method of teaching, a method which will establish the natural relations which the objects and subjects of knowledge should hold to the learner's mind, and which will provide right occasion for the kind of mental activity that is necessary to produce a right mental development. Third, referring to the same principles an ideal course of public school studies should be prepared, a course best adapted to bring before the learner's mind right occasions for useful knowledge in the order of its various grades of development, and right occasions for the progressive forms of mental activity and mental growth, corresponding to the forms of knowledge to be acquired. This course of studies should be prepared with an intelligent reference to the relations that elementary holds to scientific knowledge, and that different forms of mental activity hold to disciplinary results. The different subjects of the course should be thoroughly examined for the purpose of preparing an orderly set of topics under each of them, and of inventing the best forms of illustrating their meaning and of directing the student in his studies. This opportunity should be improved by the normal pupil for perfecting his own knowledge of the different subjects he will be called to teach; not in an academical way merely, but with constant reference to the communication of knowledge to others. At this point in the course the normal school should provide ample opportunity for applying theoretical knowledge in teaching real children pursuing the different grades of instruction conducted in our system of public schools. The practice of teaching by pupil teachers should be conducted under the supervision of normal teachers who are familiar with the science and art of teaching, and who by experience have acquired skill in such teaching as the public school requires. This style and order of professional work will accomplish two ends. First, as the pupil teacher has already acquired some knowledge of the principles of teaching, and of the method which the principles require to be employed, a conscious application of the method in his practice teaching will lead to a deeper insight into the principles themselves. Second, practice in teaching directed by theoretical knowledge and competent supervision is the only true source of pedagogical skill. Cicero said that neither physicians, nor commanders, nor orators, although they may know the principles upon which an art is founded, are able to accomplish anything worthy of great praise without use and exercise. Those who have had experience in these things know that this exercise must continue until practical habits are formed. This is emphatically true of the art of teaching. Training in the practice-school cannot be intelligently conducted until a knowl edge of the principles and method of teaching has been obtained. For without this knowledge the student of the art of teaching will have no standard by which he can measure the character or the value of the teaching which he is required to observe or of that which he is himself required to conduct. It must be remembered that the ability to enlarge our knowledge depends on the ideas we already possess, and that the capacity to receive information is limited by the kind and extent of our knowledge. Knowledge and information are the only sources and guides of activity. With these truths in mind it will be seen that practice in teaching for the skill that may be produced by it, must be directed by a consciousness of the principles upon which a scientific method of teaching depends. The practice-school must provide an opportunity for training in the application, not only of those principles that are the foundation of method, but also of the principles that determine the relations which elementary holds to scientific knowledge, and the relations which the exertion of active power bears to mental development. As a knowledge of facts relating to individual things is the condition of a knowledge of general truths relating to causes and classes, so are the activity and development of the powers of observation and representation, the conditions for the activity and development of the powers which generalize and reason. The matter and order of elementary instruction are both to be determined by the requirements of scientific instruction based upon them. them. A knowledge of facts is incomplete until it is made to hold a relation to that which is universally true. The cultivation of the observing powers is defective unless it directs their activity into a direct relation to the activity of the powers that classify and reason. A fundamental principle in the science of teaching is found, therefore, in that law of the mind which has established the relation that different grades of knowledge, of mental activity, and of mental growth bear to one another. The observance of this law requires the teacher in the practice-school to teach the elementary classes, so as to prepare them for scientific study, and to teach the secondary classes so that they will make an intelligent and orderly use of the facts they have observed. This law that establishes the relation of condition and conditioned requires the |