theory of ethics is still in debate among philosophers, but the praxis, the actual life according to practical reason, is something which may be taught by Christian, Jew, or agnostic, and may be taught in the same way by all of them. There can be no valid objection to the use of brief treatises on moral conduct which shall formulate principles and enforce them by the actual consequences of conduct as seen in society and history. That righteousness tendeth to life, and that the wages of sin is death, is not, and never can be, sectarian instruction. It is simply a statement of moral gravitation, as universal, as pitiless, and quite as important for us to appreciate as the law of physical gravitation. A text-book on this subject must describe the virtues which are essential to human beings dwelling together, must show them in the great characters. of history, and reinforce them by their results in the social organism.

In two respects, especially, do we need such instruction today. First, we need training for citizenship. The average student knows little about the government under which he lives, and feels small responsibility for its character. He does not look forward, as did the pagan youth, to the service of the state as the noblest possible career, but he thinks of laws and courts and legislatures as instruments thru which, by proper manipulation, a skillful citizen may attain his private ends. Such an attitude is anti-social and anarchistic. The worst anarchists are not those who wave a red flag. They are those who use the American flag as a cloak for the concealment of private schemes and the attainment of selfish ambitions. The essence of anarchy is the exaltation of self above the state. This spirit must be conquered, not in Haymarket square, but in the school and the college; not by the policeman's club, but by the teacher's personality. "To replace is to conquer;" and this anti-social attitude must be replaced by a large-minded patriotism which counts the highest honor for a citizen the service of the state.

In another direction is this training still more important-in preparation for the duties of home life. Back of state and church and school stands the home, the fundamental institution of civilization. When the home is strong and pure, all other institutions will flourish; when the home decays, all is corrupt. Yet probably all of us who have been thru the public schools have heard not one word of direct instruction on the duties of parenthood or even of simple home life. The great facts of the transmission of life, the sacred mystery of the relation of parent and child-these are things which Puritan prudes have banished from the teaching in either school or home; and in the one domain where the student most needs reverent instruction from noble minds, he is left to seek it from the least reverent, if not the most degraded, of his companions. An education which is silent here is wretchedly incomplete. Like the ostrich, it hides its head in the sand and hopes all will be well. I rejoice in an increasing literature treating of these themes; and in every true.

school a reverent teacher may find a way to lead from the bird's nest to the human home, and show how all creation culminates in the love which makes the fireside and the cradle. In our secondary schools and colleges, the obligations and opportunities of home life may be clearly set forth. When they are thus seriously studied, our young people will not blunder into marriage so often as now, and the divorce courts, that have been already driven west of the Mississippi, will be driven by a rising public sentiment into the Pacific ocean. Our teachers will then think more of students than of studies, more of making men than of school programs or apparatus.

DEPARTMENT OF NORMAL SCHOOLS

SECRETARY'S MINUTES

FIRST SESSION.- WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1901

The Normal Department met in the chapel of the First Congregational Church at 3 P. M., President Charles D. McIver in the chair.

James E. Russell, dean of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, read a paper on "The Training of Teachers for Secondary Schools."

The discussion was introduced by Professor George H. Locke, of the University of Chicago, and was continued by Principal F. B. Palmer, State Normal School, Fredonia, N. Y.; President Z. X. Snyder, State Normal School, Greeley, Colo.; Dr. C. C. Rounds, New York city; Principal H. B. Frissell, Hampton Institute, Virginia; Professor Walter Ballou Jacobs, Brown University, Providence, R. I.; Principal F. J. Cheney, State Normal School, Cortland, N. Y.; President Charles McKenny, State Normal School, Milwaukee, Wis.; President John R. Kirk, State Normal School, Kirksville, Mo.; and Principal A. S. Downing, Training School for Teachers, New York city.

The following Committee on Nominations was appointed :

John W. Cook, De Kalb, Ill.

A. S. Downing, New York city.

SECOND SESSION. FRIDAY, JULY 12

The department was called to order at 3 P. M. by President McIver.

The Committee on Nominations reported as follows:

For President -J. F. Millspaugh, State Normal School, Winona, Minn.

For Vice-President - Myron T. Scudder, State Normal School, New Paltz, N. Y.

For Secretary - John R. Kirk, State Normal School, Kirksville, Mo.

The above-named officers were duly elected.

A resolution was adopted that the meetings of this section next year should be held on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, and not on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.

The speakers on the program being absent, the meeting was resolved into a roundtable discussion on the practice school, led by President John W. Cook, and participated in by Messrs. Millspaugh, Lyte, McFarland, McIver, Scudder, and others.

After the discussion, Miss Laura E. Aldrich, Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, O., spoke briefly, saying that she was one of a committee of four representing the National Academy of Elocution, whose aim it is to gain recognition in the normal schools of this country of the necessity of teaching enunciation, articulation, and pure tone.

Miss Aldrich's remarks were favorably received, tho, owing to the lateness of the hour, no resolution or recommendation touching the matter was introduced.

Adjourned.

MYRON T. SCUDDER, Secretary.

PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS

THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS

JAMES E. RUSSELL, DEAN OF TEACHERS COllege, coLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK

Two years ago, at the meeting of the Department of Superintendence held in Columbus, O., I read a paper on this topic. In that paper I attempted to sketch the situation as I saw it, and to emphasize what seems to me still the essential qualifications in the professional training of teachers for secondary schools. These qualifications were summarized under four heads, viz.:

1. General knowledge.

2. Professional knowledge. 3. Special knowledge.

4. Skill in teaching.

First, general knowledge. The liberal culture implied in four years of training in advance of the grades to be taught is surely not too much to require from every applicant for secondary teaching. The fact that the secondary teacher is to some degree a specialist, that he knows his subject and exercises considerable ingenuity in satisfying the requirements of college entrance or some examining board, is no indication that he has a world-view of sufficient breadth to justify him in attempting the training of youth or an understanding of related studies sufficient to enable him to teach his own subject in a scientific manner. The inspiring influence that comes from well-developed manhood or womanhood taught to view the subject-matter of secondary education in a comparative manner, trained to see the relationships everywhere existing in the various spheres of knowledge-yes, the unity pervading all knowledge — is an influence that the secondary school can ill afford to neglect.

Second, professional knowledge. It is equally important that the secondary teacher be able to view his own subject and the entire course of instruction in its relations to the child and to society, of which the child is a part. A teacher may be able to teach his subject never so well, may even have the reputation of being a distinguished educator, yet his life long be a teacher of Latin, or physics, or history, rather than a teacher of children. The true educator must know the nature of mind; he must understand the process of learning, the formation of ideals, the development of will, and the growth of character. The secondary teacher needs particularly to know the psychology of the adolescent period that stormy period in which the individual first becomes self-conscious and struggles to express his own personality. But more than man as an individual the teacher needs to know the nature of man as a social being. No knowledge, I believe, is of more worth to the secondary teacher than the knowledge of what standards of culture have prevailed in the past, or now exist, among various peoples, their ideals of life, and their methods of training the young to assume the duties of life. Such study of the history of education is more than a study of scholastic institutions, of didactic precepts, or the theories of educationists; it is Kulturgeschichte with special reference to educational needs and educational problems. It gives that unifying view of our professional work without which it is idle to talk of a science or a system of education; it prepares the way

for the only philosophy of education which is worth teaching. Under professional knowledge I should also include such information as can be gained from a study of school economy, school hygiene, and the organization, supervision, and management of schools and school systems at home and abroad. Some of this technical knowledge is indispensable for all teachers; all that can be gained is not too much for those who will become leaders in the field. But the least professional knowledge that should be deemed acceptable is an appreciation of the physical conditions essential to success in school work and a thoro understanding of psychology and its applications in teaching, of the history of education from the cultural standpoint, and of the philosophic principles that determine all education.

Third, special knowledge. The strongest argument that can be urged against the average college graduate is that he has nothing to teach. The argument applies with even greater force to the normal-school graduate, however well he may be equipped on the professional side. Neither liberal culture nor technical skill can at all replace that solid substratum of genuine scholarship on which all true secondary education rests. A teacher with nothing to teach is an anomaly that needs no explanation. And I count that knowledge next to nothing which must be bolstered up by midnight study to hide its defects from a high-school class. No one who knows the scope, purpose, and methods of collegiate instruction, no one familiar with the work of the normal school, will posit for a moment that such training necessarily gives any remarkable degree of special knowledge. I say this without any disrespect either to the college or the normal school'; it is not the first and foremost duty of either of these institutions to turn out critical scholars or specialists in some small field. But special scholarship, I maintain, is an absolute necessity in the qualifications for secondary teaching. Without it the teacher becomes a slave to manuals and text-books; his work degenerates into formal routine with no life, no spirit, no educative power, because he knows no better way; the victims of his ignorance rise up to call him anything but blessed, and take their revenge as citizens in ignoring altogether professional knowledge in the conduct of public-school affairs because they, too, know no better way. Now as never before, I believe, do we need to emphasize the possession of special scholarship as an essential prerequisite to secondary teaching.

Fourth, technical skill. It is safe to say that no quality is more earnestly desired in the teacher, or more persistently sought for, than the technical ability to teach. The first question asked of an applicant is not, “Has he had a liberal education ?”

or, "What is his professional knowledge?" or, "Has he anything to teach ?" but this: “Can he teach ?" The popular mind fails to recognize the interdependence of these qualities, and failing in this it bases judgment of a teacher's ability on the relatively nonessential. Ability to maintain order in the class-room, to get work out of his pupils, to satisfy casual supervisors and examiners, to keep fine records, and to mystify parents- this too frequently passes for ability to teach. How seldom, indeed, is a teacher tested by his ability to get something into his pupils, by his ability to impart his knowledge in a way that shall broaden their horizons, extend their interests, strengthen their characters, and rouse within them the desire to lead a pure, noble, unselfish life! School-keeping is not necessarily school-teaching. The technical ability to teach includes both. The art of teaching is mimicry-a dangerous gift, unless it is founded on the science of teaching which takes account of the end and means of education and the nature of the material to be taught. School-keeping may be practically the same for all classes of pupils, but true teaching must always vary with surrounding conditions and the ends to be attained. Graduates of colleges and normal schools alike must fail in technical skill if they teach as they have been taught. The work of the secondary school is unique. It requires an arrangement and presentation of the subject-matter of instruction in a way unknown in elementary education and unheeded in most college teaching; it requires tact, judgment, and disciplinary powers peculiar to the management of youth. Herein is the need of