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all the elementary schools and high-schools with trained teachers. Stowe did not live 
:0 see the ideal in Scotland, neither did Forrester live to realize his ideal ; but in the 
smallest of the provinces in the neighborhood of Nova Scotia there has been realized the 
full development of the training system, where no teacher can enter upon practical 
school-work without his normal school diploma. Every teacher in Prince Edward 
[sland and in the sister province of New Brunswick is a trained teacher, and I need 
aardly say that the experiment has been so far successful that we may hope to see such 
1 state of affairs in every district on this side of the Atlantic. 
The multiplying of the stages of training the various grades of teachers has no doubt 
oeen successful in large communities, but the expense of having various training depart- 
ments can never be realized in small communities. And as the consolidation of a school 
district must in the future be made round the district normal school as a civic educa- 
tional nucleus, the organizing of the training-school that shall have the principles of the 
science of education which are common to elementary school-work as to the higher 
work, directed toward the realization of an improved practice, is the most important 
consideration in a discussion of this kind. Every district must eventually have its 
normal school, and, as in the provinces of which I have made mention, then we may 
axpect to see every teacher in the land a trained teacher. 
JAMES M. GreEN, Pu.D., Principal State Normal School, Trenton, N. J.: The fun- 
damental principle of pedagogy is the study of the child mind. Instead of separate 
normal schools for the preparation of kindergarten, primary, and secondary teachers, we 
should have normal schools where the study of mind in its various stages of development 
and the application of subject matter to these stages of development form a part of the 
training. The normal school must adapt itself to its conditions. If the average appli- 
cant does not possess sufficient academic preparation for the pedagogical work, he must, 
ot necessity, be given some academic training, but only as a necessity 
Epwarp T. P1ercE, Principal State Normal School, Los Angeles, Cal. : This question 
of academic training in normal schools is one for the future, We must look to the con- 
litions of the present. One fact has been lost sight of. In all of the States of this 
country there is a system of examination for the certificating of teachers. Most of the 
:xamination questions are on scholastic subjects, very few on professional subjects. 
Now, until we have different grades of ncrmal schools having different requirements for 
admission, we must have academic work. If we do not we shall not get students, for 
the graduates of the high-school and the university wili pass an examination and go to 
teaching with no professional training. Then. too, the professional spirit acquired 
through a four years’ course in a normal school is greater than that acquired by two 
years of work in the same school. I prefer a teacher who has acquired his academic 
training in a normal school, to one who has acquired it in a high-school and only the 
purely professional work in the former. 
A professional spirit runs through the whole work, and this spirit must be a growth ; 
it cannot reach just proportions in a short time. It seems to me that we must have 
academic training in our normal schools in this country, and while we have an ideal for 
the future normal school, let us do the best we can for the present training of teachers 
for the masses. 
PrESIDENT JoEN HuLL, of River Falls, Wis., cautioned normal school teachers and 
others against a misinterpretation of normal school statistics. The measure of the 
influence of a normal school is not determined by the number of its graduates. Its 
undergraduates are a potent factor in its final products. And the good produced in.its 
students is multiplied many times in schools taught by pupils of those who have 
attended normal schools. For the present, academic work must be done in normal 
schools, and some good results are growing out of present practice in that respect. 
Dr. G. STANLEY HALL, President of Clark University, believed that teachers should 
aave a thorough knowledge of children, of their physical and mental natures. What 
would father or mother take in exchange for the good health of son or daughter ? The 
order of development of the bodily powers and of the means to use, to make them strong, 
are not less important than is a like knowledge of the mental powers. The demand is 
strong, and it is growing stronger, that instructors of youth shall, like Jesus of old, 
jake the child, set him in the midst, and after full study of him and of the conditions 
anderlying his soundest development, shape all his environment in such fashion as will 
surely bring about the desired development.