388 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
self-sufficient and somewhat egotistical, we trust that this meeting will 
prove to you that we are quite as ready to learn as to teach. 
Many points of great interest are to be brought before us at this meeting 
for our consideration, and you can teach us many things that will be of 
great service to our American schools. Some of these questions have 
already been printed and circulated, and I need not now allude to them. 
We will thank all foreign visitors, and any others who are willing to take 
part in these discussions, to send their address to the president’s desk. This 
will remove much embarrassment that might otherwise occur in overlook- 
ing persons whom we desire to recognize, and in the proper record and 
announcement of names. 
Teaching under criticism is the most important work in the training of 
teachers, and it is not practicable to give a proper amount of work to more 
“han fifty teachers at the same time. In our experience, at Oswego, we 
nave found that not less than five months of unbroken practice are neces- 
sary, and that after an equal length of time given to the most careful and 
thorough preparation, by way of grounding the pupils in training in edu- 
cational principles, and their application in teaching the various branches 
of study. An ordinary school of three hundred pupils will give at the 
end of each term of twenty weeks a class of about fifty for the school of 
practice, and this is as many as can profitably be employed where there are 
aot more than four hundred children to be tanght. 
If this estimate is correct, and we have found it so in our own experi- 
ance, then the number limit ought not to exceed three hundred, or at the 
most four hundred, pupils. Something, of course, will depend on the 
requirements for admission and the demands of the curriculum, as well 
as the arrangement for advanced standings on certificates. The English 
course of study in the New York schools is three years, and the classical 
four years. The first two years are given exclusively to the required 
branches of study, and the last year to purely professional work—the first 
half to theory, and the last half to practice under criticism. Liberal credit 
is given to work done in preparatory schools, and pupils are admitted to 
advanced standings on certificates. 
With this arrangement, a school of from three hundred to four hundred 
oupils will graduate from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five each 
gear, and if these are divided equally between the two terms, this will give 
a class of fifty each term, and this is as many as can be profitably employed 
in any ordinary school of practice. 
An evil in our American schools is the overcrowding of our courses 
of study. We, as a rule, require more than can be done with the degree 
of thoroughness requisite in one who is to teach these branches. It is not 
unusual to require from five to seven daily recitations. Only those who 
are the strongest both physically and mentally can endure the strain. 
Many collapse under the pressure. and it is very questionable whether