Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1913-05-19
(By c. ]. C. Bennett, Los Gatos, Cal.
in Oregon Teachers Monthly0

| (By C. J. c. Bennett, Los Gatos, Cal,
in Oregon Teachers MonthlyO
Though circumstances have led me
to desert Oregon as an abiding place
for few months, am not far away
from it in my educational interests.
From letters l get from that section
l have learned of several educational
movements, but have overlooked any
action to re-establish some of the
abandoned normal schools. l hope
it has been an oversight and that
there is already a decided movement
And when one more is obtained we
should keep up the fight until at least
another is established. Down here
in California for some reason the
teachers and those interested in edu
cation do not have to fight for better
school conditions, but that is not
true many places in the United
States. We in Oregon should not
feel that when a good measure is
voted down it is the part of good
Americanism to say it is the will of
the people and so rest. / recall that
this argument was used last year to
oppose the resubmission and agita-
ton of the woman's suffrage bill.
How many times the will of the peo-
pie had said mo" on that PROPOSE
tion And yet it was victorious.
The will of the people is like the will
of the individual: 1t is subject to
education, to enthusiasm, to admira-
tion for persistence, to increase in
public spirit, etc. My opinion is that
we teachers in Oregon, looking at the
interests of the state alone, are not
as active as we should be in agitat-
ing the matter of more normal
school.
And we do need more in Oregon,
badly. Whatever the argument may
be for the union of all the units of
higher education, it does not apply to
normal schools. There is not a state
in the Union which has one normal
school only and also a successful
common school system Iowa comes
nearest to it. The inducements for
ambitious young people to go into
teaching are too few to prepare for
the work. A young man will pack
his trunk and go to San Francisco
or Ann Arbor or Columbia for law
course or one in medicine, but he
would do nothing of the sort to pre-
pare himself to teach in a common
school. The records have shown for
years that on the whole the teaching
force of this country stays by the
work on an average a little over
three years. So to get the sort of
young people into the school room
who are desirable the normal school
must be handy. If it is not so the
schools of that community will 90
without trained teachers.
Now this is the situation in Ore
gon. know of a good town in that
state that has a large number of
very poor teachers. Many, if not
most, of the methods are as poor as
those of my backwoods teachers in
the south many years ago. A man
who was thinking of the superinten-
dency of this town was talking to me
about the conditions of the teaching.
He thought he could improve the sit
uation. | asked him where he would
get the trained teachers to put in
, his school rooms, and with sufficient
knowledge of psychology and the
principles of education to carry out
his plans. He said that would be a
difficult matter. The teachers in
this town are not to blame, nor is
the superintendent, nor the board of
education; nor the people, for they
pay pretty fair wages. 1t lies in the
fact that those who wish training
hardly feel like going so far as the
nearest normal school for training,
especially when they can hold their
position without doing so. The
board hardly feels justified in telling
teacher she will be retained If she
does not go off for the training, as
the pay will hardly justify it. But
If normal were near enough then
a board could say to every young. or