The weekly times-record. (Valley City, N.D.) 1912-1922, 1921-01-13
r, The standard cur

: geography, HlSLOIy, UOIdIIy, LoOAVSy
/ anthropology, mineralogy, physics
chemistry, arithmetic Covering alge
bra also) geometry, psychology, phil
osophic progaedeutics, pedagogy, mu
sic, singing, writing, drawing, stenog.
laphy, monual training, physical
education. These schools average
twenty instructors apiece, two-thirds
of their number must have "akade.
mische Bildung," from three to -four
years of postgraduate work require
meIt which no normal school in the
United States meets.
The graduate Of one of these nor.
NAL schools in Saxony Volkschul.
lehrer as he is called, when employed
ira ming in German than the German
gymnasium (college) graduate; he is
also sunerior to the latter in general
knowledge of history, but he is not
prepared as is the gymnasium gradu-
ate to do research work. He takes
a pride in his profession, makes it a
permanent vocation. He is as educat-
ed as the B. A. from the American
teachers college. Of late it has been
repeatedly held forth in Germany that
the normals like the gymnasium (col-
lege), should be preparatory institu-
tions for scholarly thinking" This
would guard the normal school gradu-
ate against overrating the value of
dogmatic knowledge and Of sine qua
non judgment. The restraint of a real
scholar can only be attained by edu-
eating students to see that knowledge
is seeking rather than possessing.
These data indicate that even Ger
many, which is generally regarded as
educationally aristocratic pays more
attention to the training of school
teachers in the elementary school than
does our own United States. OF
course, it must not be forgotten that
Germany reckons with the fact that
ninety percent of her population is
trained in her public schools.
Professional Consciousness
The German normal school gradu-
ates are very conscious of their worth
and worthines s as an estate. They
have not been successful in getting
large increases in salary, but they
have persistently and successfully pre-
sented their demands for intellectual
recognition to the government. They
have become rather dictatorial, and
the movement they incorporate is help
ing along mainly by an unwarrant-
able conception of their position as a
separate estate. Their shibboleth is:
The school is the business of peda-
goyues alone. They seem to ignore
the substance and aim of school,
which, as later social form, is an
auxiliary to the more original forms
of family. and state. They build too
exclusively on material knowledge and
technical ability and are inclined to
demand complete independence in
their relation to parent and state. This
i, exempli6ed in the acute combat
that is going on in Saxony between
the public school teachers on the one
side, who refuse to retain the teaching
of religion in the curriculum, and, on
the other side, the friends of the
church numbering theologians, jurists,
philosophers and physicians, whose
deeper training have taught them the
dignity and worth of religion as the
"root of all life" as the eminent pro-
fessor of philosophy, Rudolph Euc-
cken, so admirably puts it.
The Value of Positive Sciences in
Education.
To America, where the cry is being
raised that only normal school gradu-
ates should teach in the public school:
including the high school, the cock
sure assertiveness of the German
Volksshullehrer ought to be warn
ing. Fortunately, pedagaglc dog
matism, illustrated in these teachers,
is, as stated, combated by the whole
some sense of eminent representatives
of the positive branches of law, medl-
cine, theology, who have received a
solid professional training on top OF
an excellent college training, SO un-
like many of our short cut paths to
theology, medicine or law, taken by
majority of our students. This dog
matism is further combated by repre-
sentatives of these professions who
have been appointed instructors in the
normals and made colleagues OF the
teachers of the purely normal school
brand.
The majority Of our high school
teachers are college bred.' Normal
school people think that they should
be "teachers college Bred" on the
basis that the teacher in high school
needs normal school tanning fully as
much as the teacher in the. grades:
However. there is reason to fear that
neither college bred" (euphemistic-
ally university bred") or teachers
college bred" will ultimately do JUS.
tice to the high school. The taunt OF
the college bred against the average
normal school graduates that they are
half-baked, may be turned against
himself. For, the college graduate,
compared with the university gradu-
ate, is only half educated, though he
may surpass the latter as drillmas-
ter. The truth is: Even the university
graduate is but partly educated, meas
ured by an ideal Of one hundred per-
cent standard. A
The college graduate, trained or not
trained in the methodologies of nor
NAL school, may be handy logarithm
in mathematical maze. But school
life is surprisingly non-mathem atical,
in spite of recent omnipotent claims
set forth by Mental Measurements,
one of the hyperboles in our educaA
tional system today No doubt, Men
tai Measurements has better claim
to a place in our curricula than a
sModn,yissonschaft" as Calls phren-