Competent Teachers Wanted.
By Editor
IN a late number of the San Francisco Chronicle we find the following good point, and very pertinent inquiry:— “We are in receipt of a letter signed ‘Several Students of the State Normal School,’ complaining of the alleged incompetency of the instructor in drawing. The writer says with this single exception all the tutors are thoroughly efficient. We are afraid that ‘Several Students’ is not a competent judge, and that a teacher of spelling would fill a long-felt want, in her case at least. Any one who adopts such unique modes of spelling as ‘compitent,’ ‘dischargeing,’ and ‘three-forths’ needs a spelling-book and not a drawing teacher. Can it be possible that any of our high schools send such bad spellers to the State Normal School as this letter would seem to indicate?” It certainly is “possible,” for “Several Students” is certainly there; we have indubitable evidence that she is a “bad speller;” and how could she get into the normal school without being sent, perhaps graduated (?) from the high school? Unless California high schools are an exception among the high schools of this country, it is highly probable that just such bad spellers are sent to the State Normal School. We have not the least idea that it would be at all difficult to find bad spelling in any normal school in the United States. Nor is it confined to the normal schools; even the colleges are not free from it. Indeed, bad spelling appears to be considered an accomplishment, for it is not infrequently found in those who have been graduated from somewhere, and who consequently have a smattering of Latin, French, drawing, etc., and a thorough knowledge of bad spelling, and so are “compitent” to write complaints of the incompetency of their teachers.