The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-10-22

The Marked Development of Profess
 sionaI Training.
 It is a great pleasure to assist in welcoming the members of your asso- citation to the city of New Hayeni alike on account of the men who come here and on account of the significance of the organization itself. ...-.s
 Among the many educational move ments of the nineteenth century, none has been more marked than the devel- opment of professional training. At the beginning of that century such training was confined almost entirely to the schools of theology, law and medi- cine; and even in these schools the course of study was for less adequate than it is to-day. But in the last hun dred years we have witnessed the rise of schools of engineering in it's vari- ous forms-military civil, mechanical, and electrical. We have seen profes- sional training established in the man. fold applications of chemistry to the industrial arts. We have observed the establishment of colleges of mining and of forestry and of scientific agri- eulture We have accepted colleges of fine arts-architecture, painting and music-as an integral part of the edu- cational system of the country We have founded trade schools which en- able the mechanic or operative in al- most every line to become instructed in the theory as well as the practice of his calling. And not less noticeable than the increase in the number and variety of these schools has been the Improvement in their course of study. They have become at once more theo- retfca1 and more practical theo- reticaI in giving the pupil profounder understanding of the subject with which he deals; more practical in en- abling him to use that understanding better for his own service and that of his fellow men.
 The work of commercial training has witnessed similar widening and similar improvement At the begin- ming of the nineteenth century we had practically no courses of business pre- paration at all. At the middle of the century such courses were few in num- Der, and for the most part superficial in their aims. To-day they claim a place in the educational system of every state, and make good their claim by a progressive widening of scope and Improvement of method. I do not mean that we have as yet learned exactly how we ought to prepare boys for bus iness. If We had there would be no need for an association of this kind. The chief reason for the existence of such a body as this is the essentially progressive character of the develop snent of education which 1t represents. We are all of us making experiments some good, some not so good. We meet here to compare notes with one another and see which lines show sufficient promise to give us the hope that our work in the next year or the next de- cade will be better than it was during the corresponding period of the past.
 The special difficulties and dangers which beset the career of the commer- cial teacher you yourselves know so much better than I do that I shall not attempt to point them out. But I may be pardoned if indicate for moment two general dangers which beset the progress of professional training as a whole and against which it is i'm portant for professional teachers in every line to guard themselves.
 The first of these dangers is that in widening the sphere of professional ed ucation and carrying it down to an earlier period of school life, We may interfere with that substratum of gem eral education which it is necessary for every man and every woman to have.
 I do not by any means believe that this is an inevitable consequence of the movement. On the contrary be- lieve that the years of school life af- ford time enough for a grounding in the essential principles of knowledge requisite for the business man. But to secure this good result and to avoid the danger which lies so close beside it we must walk Warily and understand clearly just what we are doing. We must make it plain to ourselves and to others that our school training in bus mess, like our college training in en- gineering or in law, is a serious prepa ration for a specific work rather than an attempt to introduce a wholesale smattering of knowledge about that work into a general curriculum. The Fundamental difficulty that we have to fight everywhere in modern education al development is this tendency to spread smatterings UT knowledge so very thin that they become mere whitewash of superficial information to cover an underlying blackness of ignor- ance. According as our school man agement is good or bad, the existence of a commercial course can be made either a starting point for insisting that all pupils shall be taught to do elementary sums right before they take up that course, or a reason for ex- cusing elementary teachers from mak- ing their pupils do sums right because arithmetic is somehow supposed to be the special province of the commercial course. In the former case the effect Is salutary from beginning to end. Tn the latter case it is as bad as it can be.
 Another danger inherent in the pro- fessional education of to-day, whether for business or for technology, for law or for medicine, is the undue emphasis which 1t may give to the motive of money making as compared with some other motives which it is more import