T By C. J. ANDERSON Head of Department of Education, University of Wisconsin O a great degree methods of teacher training have become standardized. In our colleges and universities prospective teachers devote two or three years to a study of the subject matter in their special field and then select fifteen semester hours of education consisting usually of courses in principles of education, educational psychology, methods of teaching their special subjects, and some form of directed teaching. In teachers' colleges the curriculum divides itself into academic majors and minors, professional subjects, and practice teaching. Variables in emphasis occur. one school the emphasis is on subject matter, in another, on professional courses, and so on. The majority of schools are attempting to train teachers who can conform to the requirements of public school systems. In Administrators of public school systems That employ these teachers face serious problems. Each year they must make educational provision for a vast army of children. Public schools are increasing in enrolment by leaps and bounds. During the past decade, the enrolment of our elementary schools has increased fifteen percent and our high school enrolment has doubled. The cost of operating public schools has increased tremendously. Additional seating space must be provided annually. The school executive faces the task of organizing the public schools to house, equip, and educate these children without undue cost. Another factor which must be considered is teacher tenure. In our rural schools almost 70% of the teachers are new each year. The professional life of a teacher is usually exceedingly short. Annually, Wisconsin needs 1700 rural teachers, 800 village and urban elementary teachers, and 500 high school teachers as recruits to fill the depleted ranks. One year of professional training for rural elementary teachers and two years of such training for urban elementary teachers is our standard at the present time. Administrators, realizing that so brief a training and so short a tenure are inadequate to produce self directing teachers, have provided in the school system for controls and for in-service teacher training. The controls consist of prescription courses of study, time schedules for school activities, standards of pupil accomplishment, in terms of skills, facts, and units of organized subject matter. The in-service training is directed by superintendents, principals, and other supervisors through the media of class visitation and conferences, teachers' meetings, demonstration centers, supervisory bulletins, exchange visits, extension courses, correspondence study, and summer school, with the purpose of inculcating systems, methods, procedures, and devices. The administrator reasons as follows: "My responsibility to the public is to provide an efficient public school system for its children. Since certain social and economic factors make teaching a temporary profession, the losses that come from a short period of professional training and a high percent of professional mortality must be compensated for by close supervision and direction in the schoolroom." Often this close supervision and direction results in the development of a few professional master minds, with teachers as the passive agencies used in carrying out their directions. This, interpreted in terms of teacher training, would be the production of teachers who can use approved methods in directing the educational activities of children along paths determined by prescribed courses of study. Such training does not produce teachers who will grow in human understanding and professional independence. Teachers should ultimately be self directing. Compliance with present school organization and practice prevents the teacher from pioneering. Nor has she either the philosophy or the training of the pioneer. Teaching methods as used in the classroom are expressions of the best present day practices. Most of these methods have never been tested experimentally. Teachers who are recognized as good teachers use them; therefore they are the best practices. We are need a thorough training in the use of these scientific instruments. They need to learn the techniques involved in placing our teaching methods and materials into pedagogical test tubes and determining the reactions resulting from their contact with various re-agents. Such training will produce teachers who can, under controlled conditions, devise new techniques, who can find new and vital content, and who can push back the barriers of our present professional knowledge. Teacher training institutions should become laboratories instead of drill grounds. Teachers should be trained to apply scientific procedures to the perplexing professional problems instead of learning to march and countermarch in proper formation. All of this implies an educational philosophy. As teachers we should know the direction in which we ought to be heading and the goals which we should gain. These goals enable teachers to re-direct their teaching from time to time. They give both purpose and direction to the scientific study mentioned above. Given teachers trained in scientific method and having a social philosophy of education, administrators can remove the system of controls set up to direct teachers inadequately trained. Restraints consisting of departmentalized subject matter, prescriptive courses of study expressed in terms of organized information to be mastered, timed class schedules, and units of work, may be removed. The teacher can be given freedom to use her scientific training in directing the learning activities of children, freedom to seek curricular material from sources other than textbooks, freedom to train children to reason, to be judicially minded, to be good citizens, to use their leisure time productively, to be both participants in and contributors to our social, religious, economic, governmental, and cultural life. a Attention is directed to the fact that no one unit of this cycle can operate independently without conflict. Assume that through lengthened period of training, through pedagogical laboratories which develop scientific method in education and which train prospective teachers in the use of scientific methods, through the use of experimental elementary schools and high schools, through the development in prospective teachers of a critical attitude toward aims and procedures in education, our colleges, universities, and teachers' colleges, do produce teachers capable of freedom and self direction in their profession. If present administrative practices are such that teachers so trained cannot be used, "do not fit into our school system," then no gain is made. If, on the other hand, the administrative controls are released and full freedom and power of initiative are given to teachers who have not been trained to make the best use of them, the education of our school children has suffered an irreparable loss. Teachers, principals, superintendents, and those responsible for the training of teachers should unite on a comprehensive teacher training program. This program should include a longer period of professional training for both elementary and secondary teachers, an exhaustive study of ways of re-directing and enriching this pre-service training period, an evaluation of our present professional courses based on scientific procedures, pedagogical laboratory facilities for all teacher training institutions, investigations in the field of school administration to devise ways of freeing the teacher from routine tasks to provide opportunity for real teaching, and the recognition that the general habits of conduct expressed in the ways individuals react to life situations are at least as worthy of development in school as are the skills and specific habits which we now emphasize. Any Teacher To Any Parent Thank you for lending me your little child today. All the years of love and care and training which you have given him have stood him in good stead in his work and in his play. I send him home to you tonight, I hope a little stronger, a little taller, a little freer, a little nearer his goal. Lend him to me again tomorrow, I pray you. In my care of him I shall show my gratitude. TH By O. H. PLENZKE State Department of Public Instruction HE condensed tabulations given below indicate the institutional training of Wisconsin's kindergarten and primary teachers for 1927-28. There were employed in the public kindergartens of the state in 1927-28, 289 teachers, exclusive of helpers and assistants. Teachers' colleges of other states furnished thirteen, and forty-four are from other recognized schools. The rest are from Wisconsin teachers' colleges, and ninety percent of them are graduates of the two-year course. One per City Grades... Of 1527 primary teachers, 1317 attended or graduated from Wisconsin teachers' colleges. It is interesting to note that, as in the case of the kindergartners, ninety percent of this number were graduates of the two-year course. Whether this is a mere coincidence or a result of organization of courses, placement, or what-not, is out of the sphere of this presentation of facts. Apparently prospective primary teachers are in the main reluctant to choose a course longer than two years, for out of 1238 state teachers' college graduates, only St. Graded (1st Class)--| St. Graded (2nd Class) Consolidated.. TOTAL... City Grades.... the figures above may be, it is evident that there is a wide spread in the training of kindergarten and primary teachers. The training of secondary school faculties is more "compact." If training and results correlate (and that presumption has justified the extension of the training period) then there must be a cor responding variation in teaching efficiency in the schools represented. The figures speak for themselves. The solution is not simple. Buying power, supply and demand, local standards, and a multitude of ramifying causes and effects enter into the situation. T Development On The Job Development Apart From The Job VS. By Superintendent H. W. Kircher, Sheboygan O RAISE the title question does not mean one is opposed to professional schools of education, summer schools for teachers, extension courses, or institutes. The writer does not see how anyone acquainted with the professional development in education can fail to recognize the stimulating influence of those agencies. But the obvious value of these training institutions does not affect the poignancy of the question; in fact it makes the question more necessary, since partial success often has the effect of retarding development at the most vital point. All the teacher training institutions that are now well developed, such as those mentioned, are, so to speak, absent treatment institutions. They are greatly handicapped by the fact that the problems for consideration are largely general rather than specific. Even where specific problems are considered, their very setting robs them of any vital significance, for they are at best only make-believe problems upon whose solution nothing vital depends, the objective being credits rather than educational achievement. To theorize, for the purpose of obtaining aviation credits, about the problems connected with flying across the Atlantic Ocean is a vitally different matter from actually meeting these problems face to face on an actual flight; and the resulting development in each case is likewise vitally different. It might be argued that a summer school or an institute can be made vital by supplying situations parallel to those actually met in the field of professional service. This is possible to a very limited degree both as to activity and objective. The most vital knowledge and training can only be gained in connection with the solution of problems met in the actual performance of the task. Then it follows that that system of education will be most effective which gives a proportionally large share of attention to the development of the teacher in connection with actual teaching problems. As our professional machinery now stands, eighty percent of our professional effort is expended upon the teacher while absent from her problem, and she is expected to carry over a theoretical and highly artificial training and adapt it to a practical situation. Even under the most favorable conditions the adaptation is much more complex and difficult than the theoretical consideration. The professional institution assists the teacher to do the easy thing and leaves her to perform the most difficult task unaided. Our lack of adequate machinery to assist our teachers at the most vital point is without doubt the greatest single weakness in our teacher training machinery. The training institutions tend to "pass the buck" by saying that this is the job of the superintendent and his supervisors. But it is the job of the teacher training institutions to train these superintendents and supervisors. If the teacher cannot develop unaided, the certainly the supervisor, a much more complex product, cannot be expected to spring up automatically to fill the most vital gap in our training system. Up to the present our training institutions have failed to furnish our school systems with a proper supervisory force. Without adequate professional leadership in connection with the actual service our profession can hope for little worth while further progress. T On Field House and Dormitory Loans HE friendly suit brought by the Wisconsin Teachers Association to determine the legality of the statutory enactment under which loans totaling $726,000 for equipment for the Memorial Union and the field house at the University were authorized by the Annuity Board was dismissed, following a decision announced on May 29 by the Supreme Court. The opinion of the majority of the court was prepared by Justice Owen. Subsequently a dissenting opinion was filed by Justice Eschweiler. Following a discussion of the conditions of Section 36.06 (6), the validity of which was questioned, and the various steps that had been taken to secure the loans from the Annuity Board by the Building Corporation, Justice Owen's opinion summarizes the plan as follows: "The university owns certain lands comprising what is popularly termed the university campus. These lands have been acquired by the university with a view of constructing thereon necessary university buildings and otherwise devoting them to university purposes. The growth of that institution continuously reveals increasing necessities calling for construction of additional buildings and the expenditure of moneys which the legislature is reluctant to appropriate because of the attendant increasing tax burdens. In this situation the legislature has applied to public necessities some of the financial genius which we find continually displayed in private business, with the thought of financing necessary undertakings by the pledging of future earnings arising from the operation of such enterprises. Accordingly the legislature has authorized the board of regents of the university to lease certain portions of its campus to a private corporation upon condition that such private corporation will erect upon such leased land desired buildings and lease such buildings when so erected to the regents, who will operate and manage the buildings, and eventually, pay for the same out of the profits derived from such operation." Some of the numerous constitutional objections raised to the plan are serious and some are trivial, the opinion declares, and it treats those which seem to be more serious. We quote in part: "At the outset, it is claimed that the leasing of campus lands to the building corporation is invalid because it gives state property to a private corporation for private purposes without compensation. This contention is based upon a very narrow conception of the transaction and overlooks the general situation and the compensating benefits accruing to the university by virtue of the transaction. The University owns the lands and needs the buildings. The money with which to construct the buildings is not available, but by leasing the land to a third party such third party will finance the erection of the building, make it available for the university upon terms which will enable the university in time to pay for the building out of the earnings accruing from its operation and management. This certainly furnishes a consideration which supports the lease and renders the transaction immune from the charge that public property is being given to private persons for private use without compensation. "These considerations also demonstrate that by this transaction the credit of the state is not being loaned in aid of any individual, association, or corporation, as is also contended on the part of the plaintiff. "It is further contended that the transaction results in an indebtedness on the part of the state. This is perhaps the most serious contention made. * * * "It is of no legal consequence to say that the plan is a subterfuge and devised for the mere purpose of circumventing the constitution. That may be admitted without answering the question thus presented one way or the other. In order to condemn the transaction it must be found that it creates a state debt within the meaning of the constitution. Even though any plan which places needed buildings at the disposal of the state may be said to circumvent the constitution it does not offend against the constitution unless the plan does give rise to a state debt within the meaning of the constitution. Under this plan the only obligation entered into by any one representing the state, or with power to bind the state, is the obligation to pay the designated rent stipulated by the terms of the lease running from the building corporation to the board of regents. But for this purpose only the proceeds arising from the operation of the leased property are to be applied upon the payment of the rent. It is not contended that the state can be coerced into applying to the payment of its rent, either its general revenues, or property owned by it at the time of the lease by the building corporation. The regents are free at their election to abandon the plan of acquiring or holding that which prior to the contract they did not own." The opinion holds that it is so obvious that the section objected to does not delegate legislative power to the board of regents that it is difficult to discuss. The claim that the act was not properly passed by the legislature was also denied and the opinion holds that the further claim that the exemption of these lands from taxation is unconstitutional "is scarcely worthy of discussion." We quote the closing paragraph of the opinion, which definitely points out that consideration was given only to the question of law and not to the sufficiency of the security offered for the loan: |