of the subjects that the prospective teacher expects to teach. The special methods of teaching Latin, or chemistry, or domestic science, etc., form the most intimate and final approach of theoretic work to actual teaching. Every secondary teacher should have three or four such causes, representing his particular lines of specialization.

The last professional training demanded would be practice teaching. Theory must emerge in practice. It is theory's testing-ground. It is the place where the teacher faces the whole teaching situation for the first time, bringing his knowledge to bear in all sorts of relations and as necessity requires. The principle of practice teaching is well established in the training of elementary teachers. It needs to assert itself in the secondary field. If anything, raw teachers are more costly in the secondary schools than in the elementary school. Young children can disregard a teacher with less selfconsciousness and affront than older ones. Such work as is being done at Columbia University, the University of Missouri, and the University of California should be incorporated elsewhere.

The above factors in professional training prior to certification seem to express our needs. Just how they are to be pruned to our true limitations or arranged for most effective training is another problem. The state of California now asks a year of graduate work in the university beyond the bachelor's degree to allow of proper training. It is probable that with a year of graduate work this minimum standard at which we are finally to arrive may be attained. I commend it to the superintendents as their obligation to raise the standard of professional work. The people are always complaining of poor work and asking for better teachers. Give them what they want, or try to do so. Do not bother about economic matters. The raising of a standard will mean shortage of teachers, of course, but it will be temporary. Yours is a professional obligation. The economic obligation belongs to the people. Sooner or later, if you do not get frightened in the meanwhile and relent, they will meet it with an economic recompense that will be nearer your heightened standard.

GROWTH: HOW CONTINUED

WILBUR F. GORDY, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

When the president of this body requested me to prepare a paper on the subject under discussion, I told him he could find others better qualified, by reason of longer experience and wider observation in the field of superintendence, to say something worth while on a question of such vital importance. I do not feel that I can bring to you from my own experience suggestions of much value; but it has been my purpose to gather from all parts of the country the views of superintendents, in cities large and small, as to the best means to be employed in stimulating the growth of teachers.

The American people have been exceedingly generous in the support of their public schools. They have spent lavishly upon material equipment, and in the rapid growth of their cities this equipment has entailed heavy burdens upon the tax-payers. The policy in general has been to construct excellent buildings with the best facilities for advancing the work. Moreover, much time and thought and expert knowledge have been devoted, in the past thirty or forty years, to the organization of school systems and to their wise administration.

But, in the meantime, the body of human knowledge typified in the course of instruction has been growing greater year by year. Every generation makes new discoveries and brings to light new truth which is the rightful inheritance of the next generation—a fact that society recognizes in a proper way by requiring the school to incorporate such truth in its curriculum. As is well known, this must be done in one of two ways—in the form of a new study, or by the addition of new facts and principles to an old study. In either case there must be a new adjustment, an adjustment that will inevitably result in adopting a different principle of selecting the topics and facts to be taught.

Moreover, far-reaching developments in modern pedagogy have shown that in any branch of knowledge a careful distinction should be made between scientific completeness and pedagogical fitness. If a teacher knows all the leading facts and principles of a given subject he may be said to know it in its logical completeness. But he may make a serious failure in teaching that subject by considering logical completeness at the expense of pedagogical fitness, and this mistake he will certainly make if he fails to select the facts with reference to the learner's ability to understand and assimilate them.

These things are clearly understood by school experts and need scarcely be said here, except as an introductory word to lay stress upon the fact that never before has there been so great a need of able, broad-minded, and cultured men and women to take charge of the educational interests of the people. Accurate scholarship, pedagogical insight, and rare skill in handling classes are requisite to successful teaching; but beyond this, a sympathetic imagination, an inspiring personality, a large capacity for friendship, and a keen appreciation of what is truest and best, are a few of the qualities that should characterize teachers in the public schools.

Elaborate material equipment, effective organization, superior administration, and a course of study based upon scientific principles, are all of great value, but the quality of the teaching is the pivotal fact in any school system. For equipment, organization, administration, and the course of study simply minister to the one great central purpose-the bringing of the individual teacher into intimate personal touch with the individual pupil-and, in common with all other instrumentalities, must be alike barren and futile unless the teacher has the vitalizing power to reveal and interpret to the pupil what the course of study represents.

Whether or not too much attention has been paid to material equipment, it is emphatically true that too little consideration has been given to vital equipment. The American people are eminently practical, and will one day realize that the thoroughly business-like policy for them to pursue is to make it worth while for the ablest men and women to join the teaching profession. The quality of our citizenship and of our institutions is involved in the quality of our education. Never before has there been so much expected, and never before has there been so much required, of the public schools. These things being true, the question of all questions is, How shall we secure teachers who rank well in scholarship, professional training, teaching power, and personal gifts? The merit system, enforced with fearless and impartial justice in making appointments constitutes a good beginning; but the problem is only half solved when the right sort of teachers are secured. It is one thing to get teachers of vital power who are capable of growth; it is quite another to provide effective means and influences to prevent them from being narrowed by the specialized work of the schoolroom.

For the best teacher is the growing teacher, one who keeps himself young by a continuous process of rejuvenation. Many teachers reach a pitiable state of mental stagnation long before they are thirty-five. Such persons go through a certain daily routine in the schoolroom in a thoroughly respectable fashion; they are faithful in meeting the requirements of the course of study along mechanical lines; their pupils are well drilled in the facts of the textbook, and pass without conditions the entrance examinations to the high school or to the college. But pupils with such training have not been vitalized, their lives have not been enriched, their hearts have not been touched, their personalities have not been strengthened, because the teacher did not have the power to breathe the breath of life into his teaching.

As I have already said, much depends upon the kind of teachers that begin the work, but quite as much depends upon stimulating their proper growth when they have come under the influence of school routine. For at the best any school system is an immense machine, and unless some special method is employed to vitalize the teacher he is likely, as the years pass by, to lose rapidly in teaching efficiency.

My first step in the preparation of this paper was to send out a questionnaire to one hundred cities. These included not only New York, Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and other large cities, but smaller cities, some of them having a population of 20,000 or even less. My purpose was to get a variety of experience and suggestion, so that I could know how superintendents, working under various conditions, were regarding this problem and how they were trying to solve it. Ninety of the hundred to whom the questionnaire was sent responded, and in most cases in definite and concrete statements. They showed their keen interest by the fulness with which they wrote, and a considerable percentage of them urged me to give them the result, in a tabulated form, of my investigations.

This was the questionnaire:

1. What method is adopted in your city for stimulating the growth of teachers, either along professional lines or along lines of general culture?

2. What suggestions are you willing to offer as to the best means of stimulating such growth?

As was to be expected, a large number of the answers referred to teachers' meetings, general and grade, and to principals' meetings, as effective means of reaching the teachers, especially in the discussion of schoolroom problems. It goes without saying that the value of such meetings depends, in a large measure, upon the stimulating and suggestive power and the professional and cultural breadth of the superintendent and his co-workers in supervision. For he is the director of a complicated normal-school system, in which the work of a highly professional character is daily carried on, every teacher being a student and every schoolroom a laboratory where educational principles are tested and applied. The director should regard as sacred the teacher's individuality, and while he should be definite in his suggestions as to the fundamental principles and central truths embodied in the course of study, he should encourage initiative and allow a large measure of personal freedom to every one of his co-workers in and out of the schoolroom. If he will consistently and wisely pursue such a policy he will foster that fine professional spirit and cooperative temper which are essential to the most effective teaching.

In answering my questionnaire, several superintendents of smaller cities spoke with enthusiasm of conventions, or grade-visiting days. A group of teachers-in some cities consisting of all the teachers in a single grade-and their principals, will witness the actual work of a fellow teacher, usually of their own grade, who has received two or three days' notice of the special subject or subjects to be taught. After observing the work all the morning, they will discuss it freely, sometimes spending an hour and sometimes an entire afternoon in such discussion.

In Springfield, we sometimes call together the teachers of one grade, to spend an afternoon in observing recitations conducted by several skilful teachers, all of whom will take up the same subject, and we have found such illustrative lessons very helpful and stimulating. In this way a few especially able teachers will materially strengthen the work of their grade throughout the entire city.

As is well known, much of the value of the average teachers' meeting is often wasted by holding it at the close of the school day when many of those present are so tired that they cannot give the best attention to what is said. In Rochester the school authorities avoid this mistake. They dismiss all the schools of a certain grade for a whole day, in order that the teachers may meet at a central place for specific instruction. As may readily be seen without discussion, this plan has much to commend it because it is so rich in possibilities. It furnishes an opportunity to concentrate attention upon given problems in such a way as to lead to large and telling results.

Some of the superintendents, in responding to the questions sent out, referred with approval to the work of teachers' clubs. One superintendent spoke of teachers' clubs by grades, in which some committees investigate matters of special interest to their grade, and others review certain books and make digests of magazine articles for the benefit of the club. One superintendent of a city of considerable size wrote to me in substance as follows: Classes are organized for professional study, and each of them meets once a week or once in two weeks. Such classes are very probably more stimulating than lectures. It has been my observation that teachers will go and listen to a course of lectures without doing much studying, but if a class is organized the teacher must work. Another well known superintendent said that for a number of years teachers have pursued in connection with their work a course of study along both professional and general culture lines, and that the culture work is emphasized. In connection with this culture work courses of lectures are given which are largely attended by citizens.

Several of the superintendents referred with much approval to the readingcircles organized in their cities, and pointed out various ways in which books are studied. In some cases principals study the books with the teachers of their schools, the work being supplemented by the superintendent. One or two superintendents said they review the books with the principals alone before the latter meet their teachers, and others review the work of the principals by going over it with the teachers after the principals have held their meetings.

I can bear witness to the value of a particular form of club work which, many years ago, came within the range of my own observation. Our club, consisting of some fifty teachers, spent three winters, under inspiring leadership, in the study of English literature. The first winter we spent upon Wordsworth, and the second and third upon Carlyle. It was an enriching experience, which broadened the life of every member of the class.

Clubs organized for reading and study make a strong appeal to that considerable body of teachers who wish to engage in some systematic work in professional or scholastic studies. Some cities meet such wishes by organizing classes for teachers in their evening schools; but Baltimore-and Baltimore is not alone in this movement—authorizes its superintendent, "when funds for the purpose are available, to furnish an instructor for any club of twenty teachers who desire instruction which will tend to increase their knowledge of the subject they are expected to teach, or to give them greater skill in teaching."

The most systematic and, as I believe, the most effective method of stimulating the growth of teachers, as reported from the various cities, is the promotional or professional examinations, with the distinct aim of increasing the teacher's salary as a reward of merit for increased teaching efficiency and for the enlarged breadth of view of the relation existing between the school and the life and work of the world. In reporting what is done by various cities, large and small, I shall name only those which have published their plan of work, inasmuch as I have not asked permission from the superintendents to