GRADATION OF NORMAL AND TRAINING SCHOOLS. 411 
fore, to be lightly set aside. In its support it is urged that it is impossible 
bo get students with the required academic education on which to base 
professional training. In reply to this, it is justly pointed out that 
colleges, academies, and high-schools have so increased in number and 
officiency that training-schools may now confine themselves to strictly 
orofessional work. But what constitutes professional work ? 
Some of our best educational authorities hold that academic instruction 
5s a necessary branch of normal school work, and not something which, 
ander changed circumstances, might be dispensed with. They consider 
shat in teaching a subject in a training-school, due attention should be given 
to its rise and development as a factor in education ; that an historical 
view of the subject should be given in regard to methods, as the best 
safeguard against a slavish copying of educational devices ; that the edu- 
cational value of the subject should receive attention, and that the subject 
should be considered in its codrdinate relation to other subjects. Now 
when academic work is done according to the foregoing, it becomes really 
and truly professional work. And if schools of this type were sufficiently 
numerous to train all the teachers required by the state, no better system 
need be sought for. But in no country are they sufficiently numerous, nor 
are they ever likely to be so. The expense would be too great. There- 
tore, ou this ground alone we must adopt institutions of another type. 
The division of labor, which has accomplished such marvellous results 
n other departments of work, must be applied to training-schools. Col- 
.eges and high-schools must be left to do the academic part of the work 
required by the teacher, while the training-schools shall confer that 
knowledge which constitutes the science and art of education, and give 
shat knowledge and training which especially belongs to the teacher, just 
as the science of medicine belongs to the physician, or the science of 
sheology to the clergyman. And just as the doctor and clergyman first 
obtain the necessary learning and culture upon which they afterward 
ouild their professional training, so should the professional training of 
she teacher be taken affer, and not in conjunction with, the acquisition 
of knowledge at a college or high-school. 
From a theoretical point of view this system seems to have much to 
commend it. But when first introduced it will be found to possess serious 
disadvantages. Unless the teachers in the colleges and high-schools at 
which the future professional students receive their academic knowledge 
have been trained for their work, their methods, to say the least, will not 
be the best. These methods will be acquired by their students during the 
three or four years of attendance at the high-school, and cannot readily be 
got rid of during their short attendance at the normal school. This 
system of professional training-schools will only be successful when those 
who do the academic work have themselves been trained in the best 
methods of communicating knowledge.