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SHOULD COURSE OF STUDY BE WHOLLY PROFESSIONAL ? 429 
shose designing to teach. It is properly in the line of professional preparation, and 
sherefore legitimate work for the normal schools. 
After a careful discussion of this subject by the Regents’ department and the nor- 
nal school principals of New York State some years ago, it was concluded by the 
Regents’ representative that it would be impossible to require for ordinary graduation 
sufficiently thorough work even in arithmetic and grammar to justify excusing the 
Regents’ graduates who designed to teach from further work in those subjects. The 
wgument was that pupils would be driven from their classes and leave school without 
graduating, if such thoroughness was required in these subjects of those who did not 
lesign to teach, and that only those preparing to teach would take a course. It was 
proposed to organize classes especially for this advanced work, and this suggestion is 
so some extent adopted. It is only a question of the most profitable way of securing the 
end sought. Among the advantages of having such work done in normal schools are 
she following : 
(1) It is move certain to be thorough than if left to schools that have a different pur- 
pose. I doubt if there is a normal school that does not feel it would be surer of the 
scholarship of its pupils if it gave instruction to its pupils in all the branches to be 
aught than under any other feasible plan. 
(2) The results would be better adapted to the work that is to follow, and there would 
ve an economy of time and a better adjustment of the different parts of the work. My 
own observation has led me to believe that a student who has done the regular work 
of the public schools requires nearly or quite twice as long to do the supplementary 
vork at home as in a normal school, if it is done thoroughly. 
(3) There js growth of the professional spirit as the time of associating with others 
naving similar purposes is lengthened. 
(4) Everything is studied with special reference to teaching it again, and the subject 
matter is more thoroughly mastered and the knowledge gained is fitted into its place 
1s a part of the teacher’s outfit. 
The only lesson I remember to have learned in college from any visitor was given in 
1 chapel talk. The speaker wanted to impress on our minds the importance of so learn- 
ng things as to be able to impart our information to others as the surest way of making 
t available for ourselves. As an illustration, he said he was with a friend in Philadel. 
phia who wanted him te dircet him to a place he had recently visited. The speaker 
said he undertook the office of guide confidently, but when they had gone but a little 
way he was uncertain which of two streets to take. This settled, they soon met with 
another perplexity of a similar kind. As they went on, perplexities accumulated until 
‘he would-be guide gave up the task, and explained that when he went the way before 
ae was with a friend perfectly familiar with it, and everything seemed easy and plain, 
wd he did not consider that he might want to take the same trip alone. or show the way 
to another. 
We all know how easy it is to stop with the sense of an ability to understand what 
sthers say, and that this is very different from being able to give precise and accurate 
nformation to others. As one of our students on examination put it, education does 
a0t consist of being able to be told something. If this is so in respect to people in gen- 
ral, it is especially so of one who intends to be a teacher. 
In the normal school pupils are constantly tested as to their ability to teach what they 
earn, and they form the habit of learning with this end constantly before them. 
When it is asked if subject matter should be taught in normal schools, I answer: Why 
not ? The study is a necessity. It can be better done there than elsewhere, and it is 
n the line of professional preparation. 
lJ 
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