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GIFT OF 
 
 
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 =ER. 1902. 
 
 
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 A PLAN 
 
 OF 
 
 PREPARING TEACHERS 
 
 BY 
 
 U^i 
 
 
 FREDERICK BURK 
 
 / 
 
 State Normal School, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
Lfi n 
 
 6n 
 
 A Plan of Preparing Teachers 
 
 THE State Normal School at San Francisco was estab- 
 lished by Act of Legislature, March 22, 1899. Upon 
 organization, its Board of Trustees recognized that the L/ 
 
 state is not in need, at present, of a larger number of 
 persons holding certificates to teach. It was determined, 
 therefore, to make no eflEort to build up a large school, but 
 to bend all energies toward establishing a school which 
 should graduate only teachers of superior efficiency. In 
 determining upon this policy the Board took measures to 
 guard against two causes of failure which in the history of 
 normal school administration, have been more or less 
 destructive: (i) a low standard of admission, which has made 
 it impossible to give, in the limited period of normal school 
 instruction, necessary academic instruction, the pedagogics 
 of education, and adequate practical training; (2) personal 
 and political interference in the administration of the school. 
 At the meeting of the Joint Board of California Normal 
 Schools held July, 1899, immediately after the organization 
 of the San Francisco Board, a resolution was adopted 
 providing that graduation of accredited (high) schools with 
 credentials for admission to the State University should be 
 accepted as equivalent to the first two years of the regular 
 normal school course of four years. The San Francisco 
 school organized upon the authority of this provision. 
 
 In the matter of administration of the affairs of the 
 school, the appointment of its faculty, and its internal 
 management, the Board in June, 1901, after two years' 
 experience, upon motion of Trustee F. A. Hyde, reduced to 
 written form its policy of management in resolutions which 
 were unanimously adopted, as follows : 
 
 RESOLUTIONS DEFINING POLICY 
 Whereas, State Normal Schools are supported and should be 
 conducted for the sole purpose of supplying public schools with teachers 
 of the highest efficiency ; 
 
 3G202i 
 
And Whereas, The Trustees of the San Francisco State Normal 
 School desire that the school shall be so conducted that a certificate of 
 graduation therefrom shall be esteemed an honorable distinction by the 
 holder thereof, as being a certain guarantee of thorough training and 
 proficiency as a teacher, and so recognized by school officials; 
 
 Now Therefore, be it Resolved, 
 
 First — That it is the determined policy of this Board that the 
 faculty shall be selected, as heretofore, upon a basis of merit alone, 
 wholly uninfluenced by personal or political interference or consideration, 
 and the Trustees therefore require that all applications for positions in 
 the faculty be first submitted to the President of the School, who will 
 nominate to the Board those whom he may deem most competent and 
 meritorious. 
 
 Second— 'T:hsX the President shall continue to maintain the present 
 high standard of admission to the school, and his judgment and decision 
 in individual cases shall be final; and where, after a fair trial, it shall 
 appear to him that a student shows an incapacity to become a thoroughly 
 efficient teacher, it shall be his duty to discourage the student from fur- 
 ther attendance at the school. 
 
 Third— 'YltidX the President shall certify to the Trustees for gradu- 
 ation only those students who can be confidently and honestly recom- 
 mended to School Trustees, Superintendents, and Boards of Education, 
 as teachers of undoubted capability. 
 
 Under these conditions, the internal management of the 
 school was intrusted to the faculty by the Trustees. A new 
 school, free from hampering traditions and conditions, whose 
 Trustees are resolved to maintain it strictly upon an educa- 
 tional basis possesses by birthright certain advantages. 
 
 General or Academic Scholarship vs. Technical Instruc- 
 tion: — The faculty determined in the first place, that the 
 school should give no courses in general scholarship to do 
 which is already the function of the public school system ; 
 but should direct its energy exclusively into the channels of 
 technical preparation for teaching. A normal school is a 
 technical school, ranking in character with the schools of 
 medicine, engineering, law and trade learning. The public 
 school system is expected to provide pupils with that kind 
 of general knowledge, culture and training which concerns 
 life common to all people whatever their occupation may be. 
 The technical school obtains students after this general edu- 
 cation and training are accomplished, and its only concern 
 should be to determine the stage of academic instruction at 
 
which students may be recruited into its special service ; or, 
 in short, to set a standard of academic knowledge requisite 
 for admission. It is manifestly a serious breach of economy 
 to maintain a public school system to furnish this general 
 education and then permit the technical schools to duplicate 
 parts of it. 
 
 The judgment of experience in America has set, as a 
 reasonable ideal of scholarship prerequisite to normal train- 
 ing, that scholarship represented by graduation from a high 
 school.^ This, however, is an ideal which has not actually 
 been realized, to any great extent, by normal schools. In 
 the early stages of the development of the public school 
 system there were few high schools. Normal schools, in 
 the dilema, were forced into the task of giving a certain 
 amount of academic work above the grade of grammar 
 school graduation. This was merely a temporary make- 
 shift, and clearly, in a four years' normal course, both the 
 academic work of a high school and the technical work of a 
 normal school proper cannot be included without slighting 
 either one or the other, or both, and befogging the real pur- 
 pose of normal training. 
 
 The San Francisco Normal School is located in the 
 midst of a very large number of the best high schools in the 
 United States, and therefore the requirements for admission 
 were made identical with those for admission to the Slate 
 University. These requirements demand graduation from 
 an accredited school with a special recommendation from 
 the high school principal. 
 
 Thus the San Francisco Normal School stands for a 
 sharp distinction between general or academic scholarship 
 and the technical or professional training special to teachers. 
 No courses whatever are given in purely academic studies 
 and the school centers its energies exclusively upon profes- 
 sional training. It must be recognized that general scholar- 
 ship in a teacher cannot be overdone. As soon as higher 
 requirements in general scholarship can expediently be 
 insisted upon, they should be made but they should be made 
 a provision in the standard of admission, not as a part of 
 
normal instruction. The normal school must preserve 
 distinct its identity as a technical school. 
 
 Preparation for Class Teaching Exclusively: — The fac- 
 ulty, as a further limitation, decided to confine the school's 
 energy strictly to the effort of preparing students to teach 
 well those subjects which usually constitute the course of 
 study in the primary and grammar schools; and to disavow 
 distinctly all ambitious notions of preparing special teachers, 
 supervisors, superintendents, etc. The normal school 
 course at best is none too long and this scattering of energy 
 over a number of occasional purposes has too often weak- 
 ened efficiency in essentials. The San Francisco school has 
 undertaken the single problem of giving its students, by 
 technical pedagogic study and actual teaching of classes, 
 familiarity in presenting all standard subjects, and experi- 
 ence in practically all the grades of the school. Those 
 applicants for admission who express a desire for courses 
 which should prepare them for the larger executive fields of 
 education, such as supervision and superintendency, are 
 advised first to take a thorough course in the university as a 
 preliminary basis for such a field. The San Francisco school 
 limits itself to the more modest field of thorough preparation 
 in the details of class teaching. 
 
 The Three Functions of Normal Schools: — The 
 history of education, common experience and the judgment 
 of expert school men are in tolerable agreement that the 
 three chief essentials of efficiency in teaching are : 
 
 A Teaching Personality. 
 
 General Scholarship and Culture. 
 
 Ability in the Arts of Teaching. 
 
 These essentials are not stated in any order of relative 
 importance. It is impossible to do this for each has a 
 distinct function, and to fulfill this function each is indis- 
 pensable. The* error preeminent in the preparation of 
 teachers has been ihat loose kind of thinking which has 
 assumed that one of these essentials, in high degree, can 
 serve as a substitute for either or both the others. Once a 
 disputant becomes a special pleader for one of these 
 
 6 
 
essentials, it seems necessary, in order to assert the im- 
 portance of this quality, to maintain that the others are 
 insignificant and may be disregarded. Popular observers, 
 as a class, have been prone to deify personality to the denial 
 of the art of teaching and scholarship; pedants and profes- 
 sional scholars deify scholarship to the denial of personality 
 and the acquired arts; and it has been the weakness of 
 normal schools, in their turn, to put forth the arts of 
 instruction in the light of such importance that in practice 
 they have minimized scholarship and disregarded the 
 function of personality. Yet it is manifest without argu- 
 ment that each of these qualifications in itself is, to a 
 certain degree, an indispensable requisite. In the prepara- 
 tion of teachers, provision must be made to secure each of 
 these qualifications. The plan of the San Francisco 
 Normal School includes distinct provisions for each of these 
 essentials. The provision for general scholarship is made 
 by the requirements for admission and the school, as a 
 strictly technical institution, does not attempt to add to the 
 general scholarship represented by the standard of admis- 
 sion. That knowledge which is technical to teaching, 
 receives treatment. The internal working of the school 
 will therefore now be discussed under the following head- 
 ings arranged for convenience of treatment in the follow- 
 ing order : 
 
 1. Selection of Personality. 
 
 2. Teaching the Arts of Instruction: (a) the arts of 
 practice, (b) technical scholarship. 
 
 The Selection of Personality: — Personality is much 
 more readily recognized than defined in words. Perhaps, 
 in a general way, we may say that the suitable teaching 
 personality usually includes a warmth of sympathy for 
 children, a certain simplicity of character and manner of 
 thought, a kind of earnestness, gentleness with a reserve 
 of firmness, patience, cheeriness and often qualities of tone 
 of voice, gesture, movements, carriage, facial expression 
 and mannerisms of address. That these qualities, or 
 deficiencies in them, play a most vital role in the make-up 
 
 7 
 
of the efficiency of a teacher goes without saying. In the 
 casual judgment of most lay observers, these elements of 
 superior personality are accepted as completing the quali- 
 fications of any teacher; and school trustees, in a large 
 percentage of their selections, go no further than to 
 consider the personality, ■'which, to their minds, is a 
 substitute for the art of teaching, or, to a certain limit, 
 for scholarship. Further, in most thoughtful observers' 
 convictions, scholarship without personality is hopelessly 
 inefficient, while the arts of instruction cannot even be 
 acquired without it. It is a conditio sine qua non. The 
 striking feature of personality is the fact that it is inborn 
 and cannot be acquired. No system of instruction, no 
 training can furnish it to those who lack it. All that we 
 may acquire of personality we may class under arts of 
 teaching. 
 
 In the mere statement of what personality is, therefore, 
 the normal school, which undertakes to fit persons for the 
 occupation of teaching, is confronted by a perpendicular 
 difficulty. Here is something which is one indispensable 
 essential of efficiency in teaching, and yet it is something 
 which no system of instruction can supply. Scholarship 
 and the arts of teaching are essentials which can be taught, 
 but personality, also an absolute essential, is not a product 
 of acquirement. 
 
 It is a most singular fact that in the entire history of 
 the development of the normal school idea, we do not find 
 provision which in any systematic way deals with this vital 
 fact, yet it conditions success at the outset. Manifestly, 
 by the very nature of personality there is only one possible 
 system of dealing with it — persons who are essentially 
 lacking in those inborn native qualities which make 
 personality must be eliminated from the normal schools, if 
 the normal school is to graduate efficient teachers. But 
 not only has there been no practical system of elimination 
 in operation, but even the theoretical admission of the 
 importance of personality has never been prominent in 
 normal school pedagogy. Students have been admitted to 
 
 8 
 
the normal school upon examinations testing scholarship ; 
 they have made their successive steps of progress by virtue 
 of the same test and finally have been graduated upon a 
 basis of examinations showing merely ability to acquire 
 knowledge. As will be later discussed, the ability to state 
 theories of education, or even verbally to describe arts or 
 methods of teaching, has very little bearing upon the 
 actual ability to teach efficiently. It is just in this gap 
 between verbal knowledge and really doing the thing, that 
 personality enters as the determining factor. If the system 
 of preparing teachers neglects the consideration of per- 
 sonality, as an essential factor, it is not surprising that 
 so large a percentage of normal graduates and also univer- 
 sity graduates, who have stood the highest tests of 
 examinations upon paper, fail as teachers. They fail 
 because they have not the inborn birthright to teach. 
 Scholarship and verbal knowledge of the arts of instruction, 
 without this ordination by nature, is as useful as a well 
 filled lamp without a match by which to light it. It is 
 difficult to comprehend who is benefited by this neglect to 
 eliminate those who have not the personality suitable for 
 teaching — certainly not those unfortunates who are 
 trundled through the normal schools and colleges, and are 
 finally certificated only to discover, perhaps after years of 
 repeated failures when it is too late to start life over again, 
 that they have been deluded into a calling which could 
 never yield them the fruits of their legitimate ambition ; 
 certainly not the unfortunate children whose lives must be 
 seriously affected ; and, finally, for the normal schools this 
 neglect to eliminate the unsuitable in personality, has 
 certainly been a most shortsighted policy. It assists in 
 accounting for the singular fact that the whole theory of 
 professional training is still a question in the public mind. 
 Defects in personality are quickly recognized by the public 
 mind, and these failures have been charged to normal 
 school training. One chief function of a normal school, 
 therefore, must be to select suitable personalities, and rig- 
 jdly to eliminate those who are essentially lacking. 
 
In view of these facts, the San Francisco Normal 
 School has felt itself called upon to meet this problem of 
 selecting the personality of those whom it undertakes to 
 graduate as teachers, as a duty which permits no com- 
 promise. It is a duty which the school owes, not only to 
 the State and the public school system, but also to its 
 students as individuals. If a student is handicapped by 
 inborn qualities unfitting her to realize reasonable ambi- 
 tions in the field of teaching, then it is clearly a service to 
 such a student to discover this fact as early as possible that 
 she may seek some other and more suitable calling. The 
 members of the faculty recognize that in undertaking to 
 select teaching personalities, they are assuming an exceed- 
 ingly grave and difficult responsibility. Judgment at best 
 is liable to err, either favorably or unfavorably. However, 
 in practice, a just and simple process of elimination has 
 made the task much easier than it seems. The system in 
 vogue in most normal schools of giving instruction in the 
 theory of education first and concentrating all actual 
 practice in teaching into a few months at the end of the 
 course, has served as a serious detriment to any system of 
 eliminating unsuitable personalities. The proper teaching 
 personality is tested only by actual teaching and this 
 system therefore throws the decision of personality into 
 the last months of the normal course. It is then rather 
 late to make decision, even if the limited time given to 
 training were adequate justly to make such a vital 
 determination. The system of the San Francisco Normal 
 School requires that the new students should immediately 
 enter the training school for one third of each day, as assist- 
 ant teachers, and their duties gradually increase until they 
 have complete charge. Their actual teaching extends 
 over the whole period of their normal school course of two 
 years or more. They are thus early brought into contact 
 with children and with the working atmosphere of the 
 classroom. They are under constant but sympathetic 
 observation of the members of the normal school faculty. 
 After a time, sometimes in ten weeks, and generally in six 
 
 lO 
 
months, the faculty having compared impressions, render 
 a joint judgment of the personality of each student, as well 
 as of the scholarship and ability to acquire the arts of 
 instruction. This judgment is frankly stated to the 
 student. It is a distinct understanding that the judgment 
 upon personality is merely advisory in force ; the faculty 
 does not undertake the grave responsibility of dismissal 
 except in extreme cases. The student is permitted to 
 continue in attendance, if she chooses, but on the other 
 hand, it is of course understood that no certificate of 
 graduation will be issued until the faculty feels prepared 
 to assume the responsibility for the success of the person 
 concerned as a teacher. 
 
 The practical working out of this system justifies it. 
 The records show that about twenty per cent, of the 
 students who enter the normal school later drop out by 
 reason of these judgments of unsuitable personality. All 
 unfavorable judgments of the faculty stated to students 
 have been practically unanimous. On the other hand, the 
 students concerned are themselves almost as quick and 
 ready to realize that they have mistaken their calling as 
 the members of the faculty, and they have certainly, 
 almost without exception, shown an admirable spirit in the 
 matter. No student has thus far been formally dismissed, 
 because this step has not yet proven necessary. 
 
 The Arts of Teaching: — First, what are these arts 
 which the normal school may legitimately profess to 
 furnish provided the essentials of inborn personality exist 
 in the student? Examples of a few may easily be men- 
 tioned : methods of teaching the first steps of reading to 
 beginners; the use of correct language forms in speech 
 and composition, the ability to manipulate figures in the 
 common operations with accuracy and rapidity and with 
 the least expenditure of time; methods of presenting 
 geographical and historical facts and science so that, with 
 the least expenditure of the pupil's time, the essential 
 elements of knowledge contained in them may serve 
 the later practical purposes of intelligent citizenship; 
 
 II 
 
devices of management of groups of pupils in classes, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 The schools are suffering at present no more keenly 
 from any defect than from the lack, or careless administra- 
 tion, of many of these teaching arts. There are many 
 methods of this character in use of widely varying efficiency 
 even in teachers of the same favorable conditions of per- 
 sonality. In many schools beginners in reading, for ex- 
 ample, make more progress in two years, under certain arts 
 of instruction than under others in four years, yet both have 
 teachers of equal personality. It should readily be admitted 
 that these superior arts may be acquired by unaided personal 
 experience without normal training. But personal experi- 
 ence by the process of trial and error may be very slow and 
 the errors of inexperience may become fixed and irradicable 
 defects of habit which even the most favored personality 
 cannot offset. It is an injustice to pupils to permit a 
 teacher, who in time may possibly acquire the arts of 
 teaching by years of experience to gain her power of teach- 
 ing at the expense of the children who unfortunately come 
 under her instruction during this formative period. Herein 
 lies the chief justification for the establishment of the 
 normal school. If it will eliminate the unsuitable personali- 
 ties, it can teach the arts of instruction so that the teachers 
 whom it sends forth can enter the public schoolroom as 
 fully competent. 
 
 Teaching the Arts of Instruction: — Two systems 
 have been offered in history for the preparation of teachers 
 for their duties — instruction in the theory of education 
 (under which term we may include psychology, pedagogy, 
 the history of education and all other knowledge technical 
 to teaching), and actual practice in a training school. 
 
 It is a singular fact that so large a number of intelli- 
 gent persons, and intelligent institutions for training teach- 
 ers, have regarded these two methods as alternatives for 
 each other, and assume that each can, more or less per- 
 fectly, serve as a substitute for the other. Each has its 
 special pleaders and in these disputes the question to b§ 
 
 12 
 
settled seems ever to be which is the better of the two. 
 It does not seem to occur to either side of the controversy 
 that theory and practice have separate and distinct func- 
 tions. Practice forms habits of teaching- and no amount of 
 theoretic pedagogy can establish these habits, just as it is 
 impossible for any amount of theoretical physics concern- 
 ing the principles of equilibrium to teach a person to ride 
 a bicycle. On the other hand, the most skilful bicycle 
 riders have rarely developed the principles of equilibrium. 
 The theory of equilibrium and the habit of bicycle riding 
 are separate and distinct. The same relation, or rather 
 lack of relation, unquestionably exists between practice 
 and theoretic pedagogy. There are excellent teachers 
 in practice who know no theory, and there are excellent 
 theorists who cannot teach. We meet both classes every 
 day and each is entitled to our respect. Practice enables 
 one to go into a schoolroom and conduct a class. Peda- 
 gogy furnishes a perspective of intelligence which enables 
 the teacher to know the ultimate purposes of her teaching, 
 to explain the goals of her practice. But practice and 
 pedagogical knowledge are in no sense interchangeable, 
 but are complementary to each other, and every teacher 
 should receive training in both. For class teachers, how- 
 ever, if either one must be slighted it would better be 
 theory rather than practice, for the class teacher must have 
 skill in actual teaching ; she also ought to have perspec- 
 tive. If she works under the direction of those who pos- 
 sess both good theory and good practice, theory for her is 
 not so essential. It is certainly a singular fact that a large 
 number of normal schools at present and many colleges are 
 pretending to send forth well-equipped teachers without 
 any training, or very inadequate training, in actual teach- 
 ing. Their students are given theoretical instruction under 
 the false notion that it is a substitute for practice and 
 serves the same end. One equally faulty notion exists in 
 a current system which devotes a long preliminary period 
 to theoretical education followed by a short period at the 
 end of the course when the student devotes all of her time 
 
 13 
 
to practice. Apparently it is supposed that theories can be 
 readily applied. A student filled with theory is not much 
 better oflE in the classroom for the first time than one without 
 it. One who learns precepts for riding a bicycle is not 
 much better prepared for the task than one who has no 
 precepts. Skill in teaching as in every other kind of habit 
 acquirement is almost exclusively the product of practice. 
 To acquire any habit requires a certain period of time, and 
 it cannot be formed suddenly by merely increasing the 
 hours of practice per day. Moreover, habits which a 
 teacher acquires in teaching arithmetic are not the same in 
 kind as those she must acquire for conducting a recitation 
 in history. The system of crowding the habit acquire- 
 ments of actual teaching into a few months at the end of a 
 normal course is one which cannot systematically produce 
 well-equipped teachers. Those of good personality obtain 
 certain powers of discipline which enable them, as later 
 teachers, to conceal their deficiencies in other arts until ex- 
 perience perhaps teaches these. Training in practice 
 should extend over the entire normal school course and a 
 limited set of habits should be taken up for acquirement at 
 one time ; that is, the teacher should be drilled in the tech- 
 nique of teaching one or two studies at a time, and when 
 these are mastered other techniques may be added. 
 
 Training School Teaching: — Actual teaching is sup- 
 plied in the San Francisco Normal School by a Training 
 School of about 275 pupils, distributed into eighteen or 
 twenty separate classes representing the eight grades of 
 the primary and grammar schools. The number in each 
 class varies from ten to twenty or even twenty-five pupils. 
 The Training School is entirely under the direction of the 
 Normal School. At first tuition in the Training School was 
 free, but numbers increased and a tuition fee is now 
 charged to all new pupils in the grammar grades. Inas- 
 much as there are practically no academic courses in the 
 normal department all of the members of the faculty are 
 essentially what is generally known as "critic" teachers in 
 the Training School, but this term is not used, "Super- 
 
 X4 
 
visor" is preferred as being free from the unpleasant sug- 
 gestions of the word "critic". Each supervisor has a cer- 
 tain number of classes and the teachers thereof under his 
 or her direct supervision. The Principal of the Training 
 School is responsible for the discipline of the classes and 
 also trains the student teachers in such arts of discipline as 
 may be acquired. The Training School has three changes 
 of student teachers each day. One section of student 
 teachers, known as the A Section, teaches the classes under 
 direction of supervisors from 9 to 10.30: the B Section has 
 charge from 10.30 to 12 M. ; and the C Section in the after- 
 noon period. Each student of the Normal School, from 
 the day of her admission to the day of her graduation, 
 teaches or assists in teaching a class during one of the 
 periods stated. The remainder of her time is devoted to 
 preparing lessons for her class, in grade conferences which 
 will be later explained, in attendance upon classes in theory 
 of education, in training in special adaptation of material 
 for teaching, such as elementary science for the schools, 
 drawing, music, manual training, sewing, etc. 
 
 Each supervisor has a certain number of classes and their 
 student teachers under his or her direct supervision. The 
 duties of supervisor require a tactful management to the 
 end that both pupils and the student teachers themselves 
 shall keenly feel that the student teachers are in completely 
 responsible charge of the rooms. The supervisors give 
 model lessons in the classrooms, observe the work of the 
 student teachers, and also the progress of individual pupils, 
 but all direction of the student teachers is done behind the 
 scenes by personal advice, and by the system of teachers* 
 conferences. The advantage of this arrangement is that 
 every student obtains practice in teaching under skilled 
 direction covering the period of her entire normal school 
 course, the minimum length of which is two years; the 
 class work for which she has daily to prepare is limited in 
 amount to that which she can thoroughly do well and in- 
 creases with her power as she obtains this by growth of 
 experience ; the pupils have three times a day a new per- 
 
 15 
 
sonality in their teachers, who come freshly and thoroughly 
 prepared to make the most of each lesson for the limited 
 period she is with them ; the student teachers and pupils 
 are under the constant supervision of the supervisors who, 
 without exception, are persons of university training, 
 broad pedagogical knowledge and experience of years 
 standing in the public schools. 
 
 To each class of pupils two student teachers at a time 
 are assigned, but the amount of teaching each may do va- 
 ries. Upon entrance to the school, the new student is as- 
 signed as an assistant to a student teacher of experience. 
 The assistant at first does not have responsible charge of 
 the class, but assists in various ways until she catches the 
 spirit of the schoolroom. Then gradually she is given ad- 
 ditional duties and is intrusted with responsibility. No 
 period is fixed when an assistant is given responsible 
 charge of a class. A very few, of singular capability, have 
 reached this stage in ten weeks, but more often in twenty 
 weeks, while a few have remained in the school nearly two 
 years and have finally left without rising above the stage 
 of assistant. Whenever it is clear to the supervisors that 
 a certain assistant has not the essential elements of the 
 necessary personality, or is fatally defective, she is kindly 
 but firmly informed of the judgment. If she herself is 
 convinced of the truth of the judgment she generally 
 leaves the school, but she is not compelled to leave. If no 
 improvement sufficient to change the faculty's judgment 
 occurs she of course is never given the responsibility of a 
 class and can therefore never be graduated. 
 
 Every ten weeks each student who has done acceptable 
 work in her class is changed to another section and grade. 
 For example, a student who successfully conducts a class 
 in reading in the first grade, will be changed to some other 
 grade and subject for a period of a second ten weeks. As 
 there are forty weeks in a year and the minimum exper- 
 ience for graduation is two years, there is opportunity for 
 eight changes of grade and subject during the course. 
 This enables every graduate to have experience of ten 
 
 l6 
 
weeks in practically every one of the eight grades, and nec- 
 essarily all of the following fifteen subjects: — primary 
 grades: reading, language, phonic reading, nature study, 
 composition, primary arithmetic, primary map geography ; 
 grammar grades : arithmetic, commercial geography, phy- 
 sical geography, history, grammar, composition, literature, 
 drawing, and music. Every graduate must have ranked 
 as teacher with responsibility of the classroom work and 
 discipline for at least six of these changes or a period of 
 sixty weeks, 
 
 77!^ Conference System: — Corresponding in number of 
 lessons which each student teacher teaches in the Training 
 School, the supervisor of each subject conducts what are 
 termed "conferences" of these student teachers. Thus, 
 for example, as the student teachers of primary arithmetic 
 teach five periods per week, there are also five conferences 
 of these teachers per week under direction of the super- 
 visor of this subject. So also in all subjects there are as 
 many conference gatherings under direction of the respec- 
 tive supervisors as there are class recitations in the training 
 school. The conferences of a given group of students 
 upon a given subject continues as long as they teach this 
 subject, i. e, ten weeks. The character of the conference 
 work is of the same general type as that of well conducted 
 grade meetings of teachers in the public schools. The 
 supervisor assigns for study and reports, references to 
 pedagogical theory and methodology and courses of study 
 in the public school bearing upon the subject under treat- 
 ment. Free discussions of these ensue. The supervisor 
 exacts, in advance, plans of the recitations the students 
 propose to conduct and these are offered as material for 
 discussion in the conferences. The supervisor also takes 
 opportunity in these conferences to regulate the course of 
 study in the training school, to submit various good 
 methods, the pedagogical basis of which is discussed, to 
 correct daily errors, etc. , etc. The aim of the supervisor 
 in these conferences is to equip the student teacher with 
 the perspective and background of pedagogical and psy- 
 
 17 
 
chological theory, but he especially avoids forming hard 
 and fast connections of theory. In the actual teaching, 
 however, the supervisor sees to it that at least one good 
 method for dealing with each problem is thoroughly trained 
 into the student as a habit. These general conferences 
 are supplemented by opportunity for personal conferences 
 with the supervisors. After the hours of school until five 
 o'clock, and at such other occasional hours as they may be 
 free, the supervisors are at their desks devoting themselves 
 to taking up individual difficulties with which each student 
 teacher may be laboring. 
 
 Technical Knowledge: — Under this term we would in- 
 clude psychology, pedagogy, the history of education and 
 all other technical knowledge which is given by means of 
 lectures, recitations or personal study of books, etc. The 
 sharp distinction between the function of this kind of in- 
 struction and the function of actual teaching has already 
 been drawn. The function of the latter is the formation 
 of habits of technique in teaching the subjects of school 
 study, and the management of the classroom. The func- 
 tion of technical or professional knowlege is to furnish 
 perspective and a background of intelligent comprehension 
 of the goals and purposes of school training, the psychology 
 of the methods which practice has developed, etc. But 
 there is no notion in the San Francisco Normal School that 
 the courses in technical or professional knowledge contribute, 
 except indirectly, to the active practice of teaching. This 
 view does not minimize the importance of theoretical study 
 for the intelligent workman is ever more efficient than the 
 rule-of-thumb laborer. Technical knowledge is a necessary 
 complement to practice; it makes practice intelligent teach- 
 ing. The point we would emphasize is that theory is not 
 practice, and cannot take the place of practice. 
 
 Two parallel lines of theoretical study are used. One 
 line consists of a general course, five to three periods a 
 week, in psychology, the history of education and pedagogy, 
 which is given throughout the entire two years. Another 
 line, presenting the special pedagogy of each school subject, 
 
 i8 
 
is carried along in the supervisors' conferences. The general 
 course aims to furnish a general culture and perspective for 
 pedagogical questions and to offer a sort of forum for the 
 thorough discussion of past and prevailing theories of edu- 
 cation. The method is that of topical readings followed by 
 class digests and discussions of these. In this way there 
 are presented the general conceptions of physiological psy- 
 chology ; the theories of heredity ; the psychology of atten- 
 tion, memory, imagination, reasoning, perception and 
 abstraction; the distinction between the pedagogy of the 
 intellect and the pedagogy of the feelings ; such pedagogical 
 problems as those of formal discipline, correlation, the Soc- 
 ratic method of the recitation; the history of various sys- 
 tems of educations in the light of previous readings; special 
 applications to purposes and values of teaching history, 
 mathematics, literature, the formal mechanisms, music, draw- 
 ing, etc. There is no effort in the general course to teach 
 these ^subjects for themselves, but at every point possible 
 the students are .led to the application of these general views 
 to the practical problems of the classroom. The reading 
 materials which serve as a basis for this course includes cur- 
 rent books and articles by the following authors: James, 
 Donaldson, Baldwin, Groos, Chamberlain, Romanes, Lloyd 
 Morgan, Butler, Stanley Hall, Dewey, Spencer, Parker; the 
 standard histories of education, and educational articles 
 taken from magazines. 
 
 The conference treatment of technical knowledge is 
 much more specific. Each supervisor has collected all ser- 
 viceable and available books and articles from pedagogical 
 journals and other sources bearing upon the school subject, 
 the teaching of which he or she supervises. Members of the 
 conference in this subject are required to read and take 
 notes upon the books and articles to which topical reference 
 is made. Then, in the conference meetings, reports of these 
 readings are subjected to a discussion in the light of the 
 student's own experience as a teacher of the subject under 
 discussion. In this way the special pedagogy of arithmetic, 
 reading, writing, spelling, history, grammar, literature, etc., 
 
 19 
 
':v^^^r'''\ 
 
 is'thoroughly harrowed — and planted by daily experience. 
 In addition to these there are special courses, academic in 
 method but technical in that they prepare the student 
 teacher in those phases of the subject specially for teaching. 
 There are courses in map drawing "chalk talks," music, 
 civil government, history, sewing, nature study, manual 
 training, and plant physiology. 
 
 As a summary of the distinctive elements in the plan of 
 the San Francisco State Normal School the following 
 features niay be stated: the school is a strictly professional 
 school requiring for admission the same degree of general 
 scholarship as that set by the universities, but it does not 
 include general scholarship in its courses of instruction. 
 Systematic provision is made for the selection of persons 
 possessing the inborn teaching personality and for the 
 elimination of those who are lacking in essentials of 
 personality. The purpose of the school is limited to the 
 preparation of students of selected personality to be class 
 teachers in the primary and grammar grades. This prepa- 
 ration consists of training in the arts of instruction as habits, 
 and in the technical pedagogy and theory of teaching the 
 school subjects as perspective to the arts acquired in the 
 Training School. The actual teaching of the Training 
 School provides for the practice of ten weeks in each grade 
 and in all standard subjects of the primary and grammar 
 school, under careful supervision, covering a practical ex- 
 perience of at least two years. The daily teaching is 
 accompanied by the study of the theoretic pedagogy of the 
 subjects taught in the Training School. 
 
 Frederick Burk 
 
 State Normal School, 
 San Francisco, California 
 
U,C BERKELEY LlBKARlLb 
 
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