qualification for the high school teacher, the
doctor's degree. I do not want the boys and girls of our high schools
taught, or rather directed in their upward development, by mere
specialists--doctors of philosophy, who know everything about nothing,
and nothing about everything. Nor do I want them directed by men and
women who are obliged to "cipher on page twenty while the class is
working on page nineteen." But I do want them directed by men and women
who are thoroly acquainted with the subjects which they teach, and who
know how to handle the same; but especially by men and women of broad,
liberal culture, men and women whose lives have been enriched by the
best there is in literature, history, art, science, and philosophy, and
who know life, and are in warm sympathy with young life. Teachers thus
equipt are able, from their high vantage point, to reach out here and
there and take as educative material that which will contribute to the
beautiful and strong development of each case at hand. And such an
equipment, on its academic side, comes not short of the master's degree,
or its equivalent.

My authority for the statement made above as to the growing uniformity
of practise in requiring as minimum qualification for high school
teachers a full collegiate course, and as to the tendency in several
states toward requiring, in addition, a full year of graduate study, is
found in an extended correspondence with normal school principals and
city and state superintendents representing the entire country.

These facts as to present-day requirements seem to me to fix somewhat
definitely the matters under discussion. Our normal schools, with
possibly two or three exceptions, are not equipt to give the extended
qualification now demanded for the high school teacher. Barring the two
or three, the best of them do not pretend to carry the student more than
two years beyond high school graduation. And whether it be one or two
years, the work is, as it ought to be, mainly professional--not
academic. Indeed, the presidents of many of our strongest normal schools
insist that they do not do any strictly academic work. And if the lack
is so great touching high school teachers, how much greater touching
positions still higher.

To be sure, the work of the normal schools might be sufficiently
extended to enable them to do this additional and advanced work. New
buildings might be erected, laboratory facilities increased, libraries
enl