The Washington bee., 1910-09-17

turn the age has mOdlhed the pro-
gram.
1t is the clear presentation of these
mutual actions and interactions which
prepares teachers to meet the chang
ing conceptions of education which
each generation must witness. Thus
the Normal School aims to give grow
ing teachers to the community; its
graduates are not finished, but pre-
pared.
The Golden Thread of Sympathy
Past and Present.
Always, in the varied programs of
education which the students are
! taught to examine, failure to subordi-
nate individual needs to social needs
meant failure for the program as we'll
as for the state. In all men, at all
times, in varying degrees can be seen
traces of that sympathy with fellows
and desire to serve them and to better
the future, which has become of the
keynote of our own age. First, the
maternal sacrifice, common to every
state and condition, through the gift
of nourishment to the helpless infant,
| then the paternal sacrifice in its simple
| form, through the hunt and the war
| for gain or for protection, show US
in the dawn of human history the be-
ginnings of that sympathy and willing
ness to be spent in service, which
ends after eliminated in Calvary and
gave rise to the social order of to-
day.
Today this sympathy finds its
growth generated by stories to the
young of the virtue and heroism OF
the race, be it Aryan, Semitic, Negro,
NegrOld, or what not In the efforts
of all men to make heroes, they put
the lives and achievements of heroes
before their youth, so to make noble
men and women, the Normal School
presents its students with the lives and
work of noble men and women of all
times. 1t is a fact OF no slight sig
niicance in the training of teachers,
that the great text book of our mod
ern program of education is little
more than a compendium of the lives
of men and women who have been
Ieither approved or disapproved. Moses
and Lots wife, David and Esther,
John the Baptist and Mary, Saint
Paul and Jesus have educated more
men and women for individual and So
cial efficiency than the combined &C
tivities of educational programs for
centuries.
Today our program of education
shows its basis OF sympathy in train
ing the children in the races imple-
ments of industry, and in preparation
for and impulses to greater usefulness
in the family, in the group, in the
nation. Today sympathy finds its out
let in alteration of the Infinite through
service to men, and through apprecia-
ton and use of Nature. Man has
had the world opened to him by the
gateway of his syl.lpathies and by that
portal must be LED on his way into
life"
Our modern program of education
TO which the students of the Normal
School subscribe spells SYMPATHY
with ones fellows; not hostility or
suspicion, but service. It spells ado
ration of the Infinite; not by fear or
by sacrifice, but by obedience. 1t
spells acquaintance with Nature and
appreciation of mans dependence
thereon; not superstition, but science.
The last aim of the Normal School
in the presentation of the history of
education IS to have the teachers real
ize that problems, aims and ideals OF
race or nation are first formulated
by the philosophers, later they are
tried by the educational reformer, and
finally accepted, modified and adopted
by the people, to be applied by the
teachers. 1t is such work by the Nor
NAL School with its students that pro-
duces the calm, steady, patient, hope
ful person so necessary to the lives
of reckless, ambitious, venturesome,
careless, ignorant and sometimes un-
moral children. Teachers thus train
ed are not carried away by enthusiasm
for fads and frills. but they look for
the social need and await the COM
munity's approval of a fair trial.
More than two centuries were re-
quired for nature study to find a place
in the curriculum of the common
schools. Roger Bacon urged such a
study based upon observation and ex-
Derience. He and scores of others
had seen clearly the necessity for it