The Little River news., 1916-10-18
PUBLIC EDUCATION IN ARK
 ANSAS
NO. 5. The Trainina of IsacEers.

O' As' oI " Sii, Dtdu or SCHOOL C1 Education, University of Arkansas.
 We live in a republic removed but one step from a pure democracy. Ihomas Jefferson wrote to Washing. ton In 17S6, Our liberty can never bs safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of people with a certain degree of education. !" One of his last public utterances was, So long as l breathe shall claim q right to further public education. '' Madison wrote, "A popular govern. ment without popular education is but the prologue to a farce or a trage. dy, or perhaps both''
 There are now enrolled in the pub. lie schools of this country more than eighteen million children. They are taught by five hundred thousand teachers. The average school room life of teacher is less than six years the country over, and in this part of the great Middle West it Is much less than that. More than eighty thou sand new teachers find their way into the school room every year. Sixty thousand of them are untrained and have no other way to perfect them selves in methods of teaching. admin, istration and discipline than by heir experiments on defenseless children; sixty thousand more have been ex. perimenting on the little folks for 8 year, and another sixty thousand are just beginning to feel at home after two years of learning through exper. fence, that is, if they have intelligent supervision
 But only about half the population between the ages of five and eighttan is enrolled in any public school dur. ing any particular year. Consider this in the light of the importance Of an intelligent citizenship as seen by Our forefathers who framed our conatitu. tion, and the importance of as perfect ar education as possible for all the half who are in school will readily be seen. Moreover, the average child of school age is receiving only ninety days of schooling each year. Clearly then it is imperative that since the only place this problem may be i'm. mediately attacked is on the side 9f instruction, we must provide the most skilled teachers for our children, es- pecially through the first six grades, for the average American never gets beyond them, and it is only through the common scholarship acquired dur, ing these early grades that We are to assure ourselves Of the common herr. tage of the American institution. of Which we are so proud.
 It is not true that teachers are "born and not made, any more than ehe same statement would be true for lawyers or engineers. At any rate they are not born ready made. So ciety dignifes teaching by calling lt a profession, which means that our teachers must consequently have a clear idea of the scientific principles which determine it's procedure. All of us have seen the natural teacher with her wonderful "knack," doing wretchedly bad things in a wonderful ly skilful way. She learned as an ap- -e9rentice would who had no master.
 
 such a workman on a piece Of labor demanding skill.
 This is not merely a school man 8 point of view. Now that we are hear ing so much about efficiency business men the country over are demanding that the teachers of the public schools should have professional training. In. C11 nh ff1Ii work in either an accredited normal school or in Teachers College In addition to high school graduation be fore young man or young woman may offer to teach even the poorest country school in the state. Missouri demands half a year of college peda- gogy and psychology with full time given to it daily, before teaching in it's best acersdited high schools. Prac- tically all Of the white teachers of Louisiana have a professional train ing. Kansas is demanding normal training of all its teachers. Minneso- ta has set aside sufficient school funds to enable her to procure the best teachers from any of the neigh. boring states.
 And Arkansas must either insist or Z all her teachers being professionally prepared or see her sons and daugh. { ters, on whose intelligence and train. Ing alone will depend the future pros perity of our great state. so poorly prepared for life and they will not be able to compete with the youth of ether states.