p. 21 | Trained Teachers by F. G.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 2, 1905

Trained Teachers

By F. G.

The people of the United States have been slow to recognize the value of special training for those who were to teach. All assistant teachers in the common schools of Austria-Hungary must obtain from a teachers’ seminary a certificate of their qualification as teachers. In nearly all European countries similar laws prevail; but in the United States, where more money is yearly expended for education than in several of these European monarchies put together, thousands of teachers are permitted to teach without any higher certificate than that of a town or county commissioner. Such officials are often unqualified to decide in regard to a person’s qualifications for teaching. I have heard that the first normal school in the State of Wisconsin was founded by a well-educated lady from New England, who was denied by the town examiner a certificate to teach in the district schools of Wisconsin because she was unable to answer correctly his first question in geography. His question demanded the color of her native State, Massachusetts, as shown on the map which he held in his hand. I personally know of a school commissioner of a town in Michigan, who, after giving a fifteen-minute oral examination to a lady having only a very ordinary education, and trying for a third-grade certificate, gave her one of a first grade because he did not happen to have a third-grade blank with him when he examined the applicant. Such facts seem almost incredible when we consider that “it is the nicest work ever assumed by men and women to deal with youthful minds.” If careful, accurate preparation is needed for any work, it is for that of teaching. If this be true in a general sense, it is doubly so in the special sense in which our teaching work is to be considered.

The illustrations which I have given of carelessness concerning the educational qualifications of teachers were those of years ago. Since that time all our States have taken advanced steps in the requirements made of their teachers. But they furnish an illustration of what in recent times has been more or less true in a few of our schools, where teachers have been employed who were unqualified for their work. Of course, it must be recognized that persons who are not fitted either by nature or by education for school work will sometimes undertake to teach, and will be engaged, by those in charge of schools, for that work. And on the other hand, not every one who appreciates the principles of Christian education and is well educated is fitted to teach. But it is also true that if one who desires to teach never begins, it will not be known whether he can teach. Experienced teachers are, of course, preferred to those who lack experience. But experienced teachers become so only by teaching. Much of their early teaching is, however, little more than experimenting, which is very likely to be costly work, when we consider the good of the pupils.

Much harm has been done to the cause of the church-schools by inexperienced and incompetent teachers. Much of this might have been avoided if a thorough training had been required of those who engaged in teaching. It is not simply that we are to have church-schools, but these schools should be manned by competent and well-qualified teachers. There will be more of this class when a standard of attainments is required of all our church-school teachers—and I may reasonably add of all our teachers. But if such a standard is to be erected and maintained, a thorough course of normal training, which shall be in no sense inferior to that given by the best normal schools of the country, though, of course, of an essentially different character, will have to be given by all our union conference training-schools or by certain ones in the different portions of the country, which may especially plan for this line of work. We should not do a grade of work which is inferior to that of the world in any sense whatever. It should, indeed, be superior, though it be radically different. F. G.