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 MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 The Teachers College 
 Its Place in 
 
 the Educational System 
 
 By J. O. Evjeu, Ph. D. 
 
 President State Normal School 
 Mayville, North Dakota 
 
 THE WINTER TERM BEGINS MONDAY, JANUARY 3, 1921 
 THE SPRING TERM BEGINS TUESDAY, MARCH 29 
 
 Published in March, June, September and December by the 
 State Normal School at Mayville, N. D., and entered at -the 
 Mayville Postoffice November 15, 1912, as second-class matter 
 under act of August 24, 1912. 
 
The Teachers College 
 Its Place in the Educational System 
 
 By J. 0. EVJEN, Ph. D. 
 
 President State Normal School, Mayville, N. Dak. 
 
 A teachers college is a normal school that has attained its 
 majority, receiving high school graduates, training them for 
 four years in cultural and professional subjects, qualifying 
 them to teach in the public schools, kindergarten, “grades,” 
 or “high,” and granting them in evidence of scholarship and 
 didactic proficiency a college degree. 
 
 The designation “normal school” is verging on the obso¬ 
 lete. As we no longer write books on “Schoolkeeping,” but 
 on i 1 Education ” or “ Administration , 99 we may in the near 
 future cease to discuss the “normal school” in order to hear 
 so much the more about the “teachers college.” 
 
 The name of normal school (model or pattern school) was 
 sponsored by Austria as early as 1774. It reecived a new lease 
 of life at the hands of France in 1795, which succeeded in 
 getting a passport for it to other Romance languages and to 
 the English tongue. Germany prefers now the term “Lehrer- 
 seminar” (teachers ? seminary); Norway “laererskole” (teach¬ 
 ers ? school); Denmark, Finland, Sweden likewise prefer the 
 teutonized to the Romance designation. Our country, too, is 
 gradually getting away from the French usage. France speaks 
 consistently of its Ecoles normales primaires and superieures. 
 America, however, differentiates between the average normal 
 school and the “school of education” in a university. What 
 France calls Ecole normale superieure, a department of the 
 university at Paris, Germans and Scandinavians call a seminar 
 in pedagogy, while we in current usage would term it a uni¬ 
 versity school of education. Since the name of teachers col¬ 
 lege is also increasingly asserting itself, “normal school” may 
 soon become a technical term of the past. 
 
 A change in name often implies more than what is nominal. 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 3 
 
 When the normal school assumes the name of teachers college 
 it means that this type of school will be a professional training 
 school for teachers in our entire public school system, giving 
 a four years ’ college training with the emphasis on the vocation 
 of teaching. 
 
 At present there is a strong movement to convert all of our 
 normal schools into teachers colleges. It is claimed that the 
 specialized training in methodology and education imparted 
 in the old-fashioned normal means to live on restricted diet 
 rather than on the wholesome fare of a college mater, even 
 as given to a freshman or a sophomore. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE NORMAL SCHOOLS IN NORTHERN 
 AND CENTRAL EUROPE 
 
 The countries in Europe have gradually been bettering 
 their normal schools in order to meet the demands of the rest 
 of the public school system. Sweden, which has the best public 
 school system in the world in so far as the grades are con¬ 
 cerned, has built fine normal schools and equipped them most 
 magnificently. It has fifteen state normal schools, of which 
 nine are for men, and six for women. These schools offer 
 four-year courses. What they have done for gymnastics and 
 manual training constitutes a most worthy and valuable con¬ 
 tribution to the cause of Education, not to mention their well- 
 balanced curricula and efficient teaching technique. Denmark, 
 which has the best uniformly evolved school system from the 
 kindergarten to the university, has only four state normal 
 schools (for men), but sixteen private (four for women, two 
 for men, ten coeducational). It has raised its normal school 
 standards very much since 1894, now requiring three years’ 
 normal school training after one year’s practical experience 
 in teaching. Germany, which before the war had the highest 
 developed system of university education, was steadily improv¬ 
 ing its normal schools and smoothing the path of their alumni 
 to the university, which in that country, unlike ours, is a purely 
 postgraduate institution. 
 
4 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 NORMAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 
 
 Before discussing the place of the teachers college in our 
 own educational system, it may be well to dwell a little longer 
 on the normal school situation in the country we looked to 
 when we put the normal school on our own soil—Germany. 
 
 Of the German states dealing with the normal school 
 problem, Prussia, which is one-half of Germany in area and in 
 population, had, in 1914, 186 state normal schools; that is, 
 considering the proportion of population, and making also due 
 allowance for our ‘‘schools of education,” more than twice as 
 many normal schools as in the United States. These schools 
 give three years of preparatory work followed by three years 
 of normal school work proper, the equivalent of what a junior 
 in our average college has received. In 1806, Prussia had only 
 eleven normal schools; in 1826, twenty-eight; in 1837, forty- 
 five; in 1906, 138; and in 1914, as stated, 186—a remarkable 
 increase. The teachers graduating from these institutions teach 
 in the “grades.” They are required to study a foreign lan¬ 
 guage; this requirement alone, independent of the general re¬ 
 quirements, indicates that it takes more to satisfy Prussia, in 
 selecting teachers for her “grades,” than it does to satisfy our 
 own country. 
 
 Bavaria has forty normal schools, requiring a six-year course 
 of study. Its graduates can take up postgraduate university 
 work. 
 
 Saxony has the best system of normal schools, twenty-five 
 in number. They offer a seven-year course, the seventh year 
 having been added in 1915. Their graduates can enter the 
 university proper. The standard curriculum, of seven years, 
 embraces, as compulsory subjects, religious nurture, German, 
 Latin, French (or English), geography, history, botany, zoology, 
 anthropology, mineralogy,, physics, chemistry, arithmetic (cov¬ 
 ering algebra also), geometry,, psychology, philosophic pro- 
 paedeutics, pedagogy, music, singing, writing, drawing, stenog¬ 
 raphy, manual training, physical education. These schools 
 average twenty instructors a piece, two-thirds of their number 
 must have “akademische Bildung, ” from three to four years 
 of postgraduate work, a requirement which no normal school 
 in the United States meets. 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 5 
 
 The graduate of one of these normal schools in Saxony, 
 Volksschullehrer as he is called when employed as teacher, 
 has, for instance, a better training in German than the German 
 gymnasium (college) graduate; he is also superior to the latter 
 in general knowledge of history, but he is not prepared as is 
 the gymnasium graduate to do research work. He takes a pride 
 in his profession, makes it a permanent vocation. He is as 
 educated 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 (college), should be “preparatory 
 institutions for scholarly thinking.” This would guard the 
 normal school graduate against overrating the value of dog¬ 
 matic knowledge and of sine qua non judgment. The restraint 
 of a real scholar can only be attained by educating students 
 to see that knowledge is seeking rather than possessing. 
 
 These data indicate that even Germany, 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 for¬ 
 gotten that Germany reckons with the fact that ninety per 
 cent of her population is trained in her public schools. 
 
 PROFESSIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 The German normal school graduates are very conscious of 
 their worth and worthiness as an estate. They have not been 
 successful in getting large increases in salary, but they have 
 persistently and successfully presented their demands for intel¬ 
 lectual recognition to the government. They have become 
 rather dictatorial, and the movement they incorporate is helped 
 along mainly by an unwarrantable conception of their position 
 as a separate estate. Their shibboleth is: The school is the 
 business of pedagogues alone. They seem to ignore the sub¬ 
 stance and aim of school, which, as a later social form, is 
 an auxiliary to the more original forms of family and state. 
 They build too exclusively on material knowledge and tech¬ 
 nical ability, and are inclined to demand complete independence 
 in their relation to parent and state. This is exemplified in 
 the acute combat that is going on in Saxony between some public 
 
6 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 school teachers on the one side who refuse to retain the teach¬ 
 ing of religion in the curriculum, and, on the other side, the 
 friends of the church, numbering theologians, jurists, philos¬ 
 ophers and physicians, whose deeper training have taught them 
 the dignity and worth of religion as the “root of all life,” 
 as the eminent professor of philosophy, Rudolph Eucken, so 
 admirably puts it. 
 
 THE VALUE OF POSITIVE SCIENCES IN EDUCATION 
 
 To America, where the cry is being raised that only normal 
 school graduates should teach in the public school, including 
 the high school, the cocksure assertiveness of the German Volks- 
 sehullehrer ought to be a warning. Fortunately, pedagogic 
 dogmatism, illustrated in these teachers, is, as stated, com¬ 
 bated by the wholesome sense of eminent representatives of 
 the positive branches of law, medicine, theology, who have 
 received a solid professional training on top of an excellent 
 college training, so unlike many of our short cut paths to 
 theology, medicine or law, taken by a majority of our students. 
 This dogmatism is further combated by representatives 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 col¬ 
 lege bred,” on the basis that the teacher in a high school 
 needs normal school training fully as much as the teacher in 
 the grades. However, there is reason to fear that neither 
 “college bred*' (euphemistically “university bred*’) nor 
 “teachers college bred” will ultimately do justice 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 graduate, is only half educated, though 
 he may surpass the latter as a drillmaster. The truth is: 
 Even the university graduate is but partly educated, measured 
 by an ideal of a one hundred per cent standard. 
 
 The college graduate, trained or not trained in the method- 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 7 
 
 ologies of a normal school, may be a handy logarithm in a 
 mathematical maze. But school life is surprisingly non- 
 mathematical, in spite of recent omnipotent claims set forth 
 by Mental Measurements, one of the hyperboles in our edu¬ 
 cational system today. No doubt, Mental Measurements has 
 a better claim to a place in our curricula than such a “Mode- 
 wissenschaft ’ 9 as Gall’s phrenology. But, judging by the 
 criticism of Professor Barth in his stately standard work 
 “Erziehung und Unterrichtslehre ” (6th edition, 1918, trans¬ 
 lated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian—but, alas, not 
 into English), this new study offers but little that is reliable, 
 and is an unsafe instrument in the hands of even the average 
 college graduate. To add a little force to this parenthetical 
 statement it might be well to refer the reader to Roloff’s 
 “Lexikon der Padagogik, ” the standard reference work on 
 Education in the Catholic school world, in which the article 
 “Test,” written in 1917, presents the same conclusion. 
 
 EMINENT REPRESENTATIVES OF POSITIVE SCIENCE 
 
 One of the more unfortunate phases of the educational 
 world to-day is an acute worship of theory and abstraction. 
 
 I firmly believe that theoretical studies should be illumined 
 by the positive branches of law, medicine, or theology, and 
 that many an eminent scholar in the field of history, philosophy, 
 psychology, education would not have attained his eminence 
 if he had plunged into the sea of theories immediately after 
 college graduation, without having sailed it and sounded it 
 with the aid of the vessels that positive science had placed 
 at his disposal. 
 
 One of the foremost scholars of Exegesis last century, 
 J. Chr. von Hofmann, had in his situdent days a desire to 
 specialize in history. His ultimate aim was a professorship 
 in the historical section of the “faculty of philosophy.” The 
 professor whom he consulted, advised him to study one of the 
 positive branches of knowledge, law, medicine or theology, 
 which mankind, in the face of crime, disease, and religious 
 superstition, had found to be positively necessary for its social, 
 physical and religious welfare. Mr. Hofmann selected Theology, 
 
8 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 and later schooled himself thoroughly in the apparatus of a 
 historian. The result was the most brilliant scholar of biblical 
 knowledge in the nineteenth century. 
 
 Professor William Wundt, the greatest philosopher of mod¬ 
 ern times and the founder of experimental psychology, was 
 a graduate of Medicine, before he delved into philosophy. So 
 was our own William James. Professor Harald Hpffding, the 
 Danish philosopher, was a graduate of Theology. And so was 
 Denmark's most original philosopher S0ren Kirkegaard. Pro¬ 
 fessor Meumann, the founder of experimental pedagogy, was a 
 graduate of Theology. So was Professor Heinze, another Ger¬ 
 man philosopher. Leopold Ranke, the ablest historian of 
 last century, studied Theology. Theodor Mommsen, the great¬ 
 est authority on Roman history, was a graduate of Law. Uni¬ 
 versity presidents like Harper of Chicago and Burton of Ann 
 Arbor and Scott of Northwestern graduated from Theology. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest tributes paid to the science of 
 Theology in recent times were those given to the church his¬ 
 torians Albert Hauck and Adolf Harnack. At the beginning 
 of the present century, the university of Berlin offered Profes¬ 
 sor Hauck, of Leipzig, the chair of Ranke, which would have 
 meant for Hauck a transfer from the faculty of theology to 
 that of philosophy. 
 
 Professor Hauck, w T ell aw^are that no other jjrofessor of 
 history had done as much for the secular history of medieval 
 Germany as he had in his standard church history of five 
 volumes, declined the offer. This offer from a university like 
 that of Berlin to a representative of theological scholarship 
 is a thing quite incomprehensible to our average American state 
 university faculty, which will investigate all kinds of phenom¬ 
 ena save religious. 
 
 But this distinction was not without a precedent. When 
 the Prussian Academy of Science wanted its history written 
 for the celebration of its two hundredth anniversary, in 1900, 
 its members chose the eminent church historian Professor 
 Harnack to write it. He got a year’s leave of absence and 
 wrote a brilliant history of it in three volumes. Both Hauck 
 and Harnack were recipients of the Verdun prize. 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 9 
 
 PART TIME TEACHING BY JURISTS, PHYSICIANS, 
 THEOLOGIANS 
 
 It is surprising how large a number of men schooled in law, 
 medicine, and especially in theology, are teachers in the public 
 schools of Germany and Scandinavia, and even in Finland. In 
 Finland a theologian is at the head of every normal school— 
 and Finland ? s normal schools are celebrated. What a good 
 thing to have a little balance in the faculty, a little variety 
 in its make-up. And, incidentally, under certain conditions, 
 what a saving. Our present shortage of teachers could partly 
 be overcome by employing graduates of a positive science as 
 part time teachers. Surely, there are college trained lawyers, 
 physicians and ministers who could do a little teaching in our 
 schools without inconvenience to their practice and profession. 
 However, one of the troubles with this is that a college trained 
 physician or jurist does not feel the need of “pin money ,” and 
 the ministerial rank has too few representatives that combine 
 a good college education with a good, scholarly theological 
 training. But the greatest trouble is the limitation of the school 
 administrator, who, generally, quite ignorant of the specifically 
 educational value of the professions of law, medicine and theol¬ 
 ogy, would feel his own profession slighted, if he were to 
 break the bread of school life with the lawyer or minister or 
 physician in any other capacity than that of sitting with him 
 as a member of a school board. I congratulate the State Nor¬ 
 mal School at ValL?y City on having on its faculty a member 
 of the clergy who teaches French at the normal school, yet 
 takes care of his parish in the city. 
 
 The salvation of the graded and especially the high school 
 in our country depends on getting a greater variety of training 
 represented on its faculty, and not on retaining a traditional 
 uniformity, certainly not a uniformity of mediocrity. Rules, 
 regulations, 'good traditions are necessary in school work. That 
 is a truism. But two factors, the over-exacting time-element, 
 applied to the pupils, and the mechanical canons for selecting 
 teachers, have sometimes wrought havoc in public school edu¬ 
 cation. We are at present concerned with the training and 
 selection of teachers, which, however, also may affect the time 
 
10 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 element. The poor teacher is the very teacher who makes the 
 pupil “do time.” 
 
 LARGER OPPORTUNITIES FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 
 
 Notwithstanding, our normal schools cannot cease to func¬ 
 tion except at a great loss to public instruction. However, 
 they must be given larger opportunities in order to live, and 
 not merely to exist. The high school is gradually supplanting 
 the high school courses of the older normal school; and if the 
 high schools will go on developing junior colleges, a great many 
 normals will have to perish unless they become teachers col¬ 
 leges, giving a four years 7 course leading to a degree. This 
 naturally need not, and for years to come, should not, affect 
 the two-year course beyond high school graduation. The reten¬ 
 tion of one or two-year courses is a matter of expediency; and 
 though one normal school president writes that the one or 
 two-year course does not lead definitely anywhere unless it is 
 to a “blind alley, 77 we are not ready in North Dakota to drop 
 the two-year course, perhaps not even any of the other courses, 
 though many of us feel we should add two years of work to 
 what we have. 
 
 The contention of the normal schools to-day is that if normal 
 school training is needful for teachers in the grades, why not 
 for teachers in the high schools; or, to state it very modestly, 
 why should not the normal school be put at least on a par 
 with the independent college, so that it can give a four years 7 
 college course, with emphasis on teacher training. This would 
 not signify normal school monopoly, but plain parity. There 
 are many independent colleges which are granting acceptable 
 B. A. degrees, and yet do not measure up to older normal 
 schools in Minnesota or North Dakota, either in personnel or 
 equipment. 
 
 DATA ON FOUR-YEAR COURSES AND GRANTING 
 OF DEGREES 
 
 In order to find out what the presidents of our state normal 
 schools are thinking about the future of our normal school 
 system, I wrote a letter to 155 normal school presidents, asking 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 11 
 
 for a personal statement of theirs in regard to giving a four- 
 year college course, with emphasis, as heretofore, on teacher 
 training. Since writing, four weeks ago, I have been receiving 
 replies to these letters every day. I have thus far received 
 letters from eighty presidents, more than one hundred new 
 catalogues, many pamphlets, also mimeographed papers recently 
 presented by normal school committees advocating the four- 
 year college course in the normal, or the teachers training 
 college. 
 
 On basis of this material, I find that 62 of our normals are 
 already giving four-year collegiate courses and B. A. or B. S. 
 degrees. More than 55 are working hard to get the consent 
 of their legislature to become teachers training colleges. To 
 this group belong 8 normals in California, 9 in Massachusetts, 
 5 in Minnesota, 11 in New York, 13 in Pennsylvania, 9 in Wis¬ 
 consin. Eight others are hoping for the four-year course. This 
 means that about 75 per cent of the state normal schools in 
 our country likely will be teachers training colleges before 
 our next national election. 
 
 The replies that I have received from the various normal 
 school heads are uniformly affirmative. Three presidents as¬ 
 sume a neutral attitude, and only seven are averse to making 
 the normal a teachers college. Six of the seven are in the 
 
 South. 
 
 Most of the affirmative replies are emphatic in asserting 
 the need of a four-year course above high school graduation. 
 The writers plainly show that the stand they take is based on 
 experience and conviction, and not on any presidential vanity 
 of heading a college. The letters answer a question that has 
 been burning for a long time in the souls of the writers. 
 
 I am supplementing this paper by publishing extracts from 
 them (pp. 24 seq.). Suffice it, at this juncture, to call attention 
 to only a few. 
 
 THE FORWARD NORMAL SCHOOL MOVEMENT 
 IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 President Hardy, of the State Normal School at San Diego, 
 sent me a letter and a copy of a report prepared to cover the 
 
12 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 normal' school situation in California. In this letter he says 
 that the California State Board of Education and all of the 
 educational organizations of the state have endorsed a program 
 of legislation which will be presented to the state legislature 
 in January, 1921. The program asks that all the normals in 
 California be designated teachers colleges; that the legislature 
 be empowered to hear the application of any normal school 
 in the 'state for a degree-granting status, and to authorize that 
 status, should the standards of equipment and personnel of the 
 normal school in question warrant it. 
 
 The report emphasizes the fact that the normal school offers 
 too little opportunity for development, and too much occupa¬ 
 tional drill and grind; that its curricula, are overcrowded; that 
 it stands up for continued pupilage in school and leaves too 
 little margin for students’ activities; that culture is being 
 crowded out in favor of highly specialized dress-sections of 
 public school technique “ until we have the absurd spectacle 
 of a solemn-faced program of making out (3f an inexperienced 
 young woman, fresh from the factory-like processes of the 
 modern large high school, a specialist in drawing, in music, in 
 manual training, in physical education, in agriculture, in rural 
 school teaching, in city school teaching, in tests and measure¬ 
 ments, etc., etc.—all in the period of seventy-two to seventy- 
 eight weeks.” The report properly avers that the normal 
 school would be making a sad mistake, if it should attempt 
 to become a college in the ordinary sense of the term. It must 
 remain professional, a “trade school,” but should be one with 
 a cultural or collegiate basis. It should give a four-year 
 course. The State should prescribe the minimum essentials of 
 a sound teacher-training course in the subject of pedagogy and 
 sociology, while the school should formulate the rest of the 
 program. The School of Education in the University of Cali¬ 
 fornia is assigned the task of taking up the advanced work in 
 education and leaving the collegiate phase of teacher-training 
 to the normal schools. 
 
 THE MASSACHUSETTS PLAN 
 
 The state of Massachusetts, likewise, which has been a 
 pioneer in so much that pertains to education, is working for 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 13 
 
 the teachers college. Principal Wm. B. Aspinwall, of Worcester, 
 who the past winter was appointed chairman of a committee 
 of the principals of the normal schools of his state to investi¬ 
 gate the normal school situation, wrote me that he is heartily 
 in favor of the four-year course. He sent me a copy of a 
 report, which had been indorsed by the School Superintendents 
 of Massachusetts and by the Schoolmasters Club. 
 
 This report advances twelve very good reasons for the 
 four-year course. I shall give two of them: 
 
 ‘ ‘ The present two-year normal school course is entirely 
 inadequate to prepare students properly in both scholarship 
 and technique for the comprehensive demands upon the grade 
 teachers of to-day. Forty years ago a two-year course of train¬ 
 ing was sufficient; for, then (a) we had a better quality of 
 students; (b) they were required to know fewer subjects; the 
 standard of scholarship was not as high as now. But it is not 
 sufficient for this training to-day, because the opposite condi¬ 
 tions confront the normal schools, viz., (a) the quality of stu¬ 
 dents has greatly deteriorated; (b) a much larger number of 
 subjects is required; (c) far more scholarship is demanded. 
 This is true of medicine, law, engineering and other occupations. 
 It is not strange, therefore, that it should be true also of 
 
 teaching.As an indication of some of the work that has 
 
 been added in the last fifteen or twenty years to the program 
 of the grade teacher, one might mention agriculture, nature- 
 study, citizenship, Americanization, English to foreigners, 
 manual training, art, music, hygiene, thrift, work with sub¬ 
 normal pupils, etc. 
 
 “The normal school does not have the same dignity and 
 standing that the college enjoys. Consequently the high schools 
 urge their students to choose college rather than normal 
 school. If the normal school compared favorably with the 
 college in length of course, and in conferring a degree, it is 
 clear that the attitude of the high school teachers would change 
 more in favor of the normal school, and many students would 
 seek the four years of education that would be offered by the 
 normal school who are either prepared to go to college or in 
 many instances are deprived of either opportunity . 11 
 
 The report recommends that the two-year course be abolished 
 from normal schools in Massachusetts after the year 1920-1921; 
 
14 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 that all students entering the 1 normal schools September, 1921, 
 be required to take a three-year course; that (to test the 
 efficacy of the proposition) in 1924 one or more normal schools 
 be selected to give a four-year course and the degree B. S. in 
 Education; that students who have graduated from a three-year 
 course in any of the Massachusetts normal schools be privileged 
 to take the fourth year in a school giving a four-year course, 
 receiving full credit for their three-year work already com¬ 
 pleted and being entitled to earn the college degree by com¬ 
 pleting the work of the fourth year in that institution. 
 
 As a comment upon this it may be said that the New Eng¬ 
 land states* are so well supplied with colleges that the change 
 of all the normal schools of Massachusetts into teachers col¬ 
 leges at once would seem too abrupt. Hence the gradual change 
 by making one or two schools teachers colleges, and by asking 
 for three-year courses in the others. Conditions are different 
 in the West. Here the need of the four-year course in normals 
 is felt much more. Here, too, the three-year course, as a 
 president of a Wisconsin normal writes, would not be much 
 more than a course on paper as: long as the two-year course 
 should be retained. The situation in our territory, it would 
 seem, requires a four-year course, but also the retention of 
 the two-year course, and, in some normals, even the retention 
 of some of the so-called high school work. 
 
 * Since the recent meeting of the N. D. E. A. at Grand Forks, where 
 this paper was read, an editorial has appeared in the “Journal of Edu¬ 
 cation” entitled “Brave Little Rhody.” It congratulates the state 
 normal school of Rhode Island on having the courage to expand to a 
 college of education and give the degree of Bachelor of Education. It 
 says, ‘ ‘This is the most heroic act we have ever known educationally. 
 It would signify nothing in the West, but in New England it is nothing 
 
 short of revolutionary.There are twenty-five other state normal 
 
 schools in New England that are wondering, more or less timidly, whether 
 the strangle hold will be loosened in their case. Be that as it may. 
 Rhode Island has done as heroic an act as we have known in these 
 six states, and for this she deserves a medal of high honor.” 
 
 The Journal explains: “The graduates of the College of Education 
 receive the degree of Bachelor of Education. Those who stay in the 
 College of Education but two years receive a certificate which is equiva¬ 
 lent to thet diploma of the past and they can return and complete the 
 other two years and receive their degree by taking extension courses 
 which are numerous and valuable for teachers in service. On Tuesday 
 and Thursday from 4: 30 p. m. onward and on Saturday all the fore¬ 
 noon are various courses all of which will count on a certificate or on 
 the degree of Bachelor of Education.” 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 15 
 
 A WORD FROM MICHIGAN 
 
 Very excellent arguments for the teachers college are given 
 in a recent letter from President Charles McKenny of the 
 Michigan State Normal College, Ypsilanti, Michigan. He 
 writes: 
 
 “I believe the normal schools should just as rapidly as 
 possible extend their courses to four years and grant degrees. 
 Some of my arguments are the following: 
 
 “1. To get a better type of faculty members. The upper 
 grades of college work stimulate teachers and relieve them of 
 the monotony of elementary teaching. 
 
 11 2. It keeps on the campus mature students who help 
 leaven the student body. They are a stabilizing and stimulating 
 element in college life. 
 
 “3. Future superintendents need to live in the atmosphere 
 of elementary education. This the normal school furnishes. 
 
 “4. A very large number of students who want to do high 
 school work are unable to pay for a university education. Then 
 normal schools offer college training at minimum expense. 
 
 “5. It is not a good thing for the universities to have the 
 full sweep of college education. They should not train all of 
 our high school teachers. Competition is the life of business. 
 Any institution which has the monopoly of any particular field 
 of work grows heavy. The university is no exception. 
 
 ‘ 1 While of course the great bulk of our work is confined to 
 the freshman and sophomore years, it does us good to have 
 fifty to one hundred advanced students. The time is coming 
 when we will graduate fifty to one hundred with the bachelor’s 
 degree. It is worth working for.” 
 
 f 
 
 DATA FROM OTHER STATES 
 
 The normal school people of Minnesota, wishing to follow 
 Michigan, endeavored some years ago to get authority from 
 the legislature to grant a college degree. But they were un¬ 
 successful, more or less because of the opposition of the state 
 university and the denominational colleges of the state. They 
 are repeating the endeavor this year and will probably be 
 successful. 
 
16 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 Kansas has excellent normal schools. They have a large at¬ 
 tendance, give the degree, and demonstrate how necessary the 
 four-year course is. Letters from Presidents Butcher and 
 Brandenburg testify to this. 
 
 Missouri has converted all of its normal schools into teachers 
 colleges. 
 
 Pennsylvania expects to have the four-year course in its 
 normal schools as soon as the legislature permits this step. 
 The heads of the normal schools in this state seem to be of one 
 accord in favoring the four-year course. But Pennsylvania, 
 like Massachusetts having many colleges, may make the change 
 gradually, adding a third year before the full four-year course 
 is inaugurated. This does not mean, however, that the two-year 
 course will be dropped. The new superintendent of public in¬ 
 struction and the Governor are strongly in favor of this new 
 forward movement. 
 
 The Wisconsin normal schools, less the children of tradition 
 than those in the East, are making, through their presidents, 
 a strong effort to secure four-year courses and the granting 
 of a degree, at an early date. 
 
 The state of New York is following the plan of Massa¬ 
 chusetts. 
 
 NORMAL SCHOOLS SHOULD BECOME TEACHERS 
 COLLEGES 
 
 A perusal ,of the catalogues of our more than 160 state 
 normal schools and of the letters I have received, in the light 
 of educational demand and supply, quantitatively and quali¬ 
 tatively, leads to conclusions like the following: 
 
 Our state normal schools should, wherever it is possible and 
 practicable, cease to vie with high schools. They should not 
 solicit student material from the eighth grade or encourage 
 high school students to make a break in their high school work 
 in order to take up studies at the normal school, unless the 
 remoteness of the nearest high school or some undesirable con¬ 
 dition in the home school justifies such a change. 
 
 Our state normal schools should, as soon as conditions per¬ 
 mit, give a four-year course and a degree, without doing away 
 with the two-year course, or even with high school work where 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 17 
 
 the retention of this is absolutely necessary, for some years. 
 Such an arrangement would not create disharmony. There are 
 many schools in the United States that offer a four-year high 
 school course, a four-year college course, and a three-year theo¬ 
 logical course—all under the same roof. Anyone intimately 
 acquainted with the working of such a school would find no 
 difficulty in coordinating a four-year course of collegiate stamp 
 with the other courses already given in our normal schools. 
 Of course, the normal school would not and should not become 
 an “allround” college. Which courses it should give would 
 be determined by the composition of the faculty. One normal 
 school may be strong in natural sciences. It would seem that 
 the three courses offered in the Norwegian gymnasium could 
 be profitably followed: the natural-scientific course, the lan¬ 
 guage-history course, the classic course, with adaptations to 
 preserve the teacher training aim. And yet, it would do no 
 harm, on the contrary prove beneficial, to have some students 
 preparing for law, medicine, etc., without obligation on their 
 part to study methodologies and reviews. 
 
 A WEAKNESS IN HIGHEB EDUCATION 
 
 The trouble with many of our colleges to-day is this: They 
 have aspired to be universities, they have copied the English 
 system, making the college the zenith institution of education. 
 And yet, the copying has been so imperfect that the average 
 American B. A. lacks three years of being equal to an Oxford 
 B. A. For some inexplicable reason our colleges have built 
 a German postgraduate department on top of the collegiate, 
 and called the entire confusion a “university.” It is amusing 
 to see the freshly graduated product of the college department 
 of a “university” parade as a “university graduate,” while 
 he, at most, is not more than the equal of a German “primaner. ” 
 As secretary of the American Students’ Association at Leipzig, 
 1902-1903, I heard discussed at one meeting the German gym¬ 
 nasium as compared with the American college. More than 
 sixty college graduates from! different American colleges and 
 universities were present. The German gymnasium was given 
 the majority vote of being better than our college, a surprise 
 
18 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 to those who had read in books that the German gymnasium, 
 and, with that, the Norwegian, the Swedish, the Danish, and 
 the Finnish are only about as goood as our high school. The 
 salvation of the American college will depend on its becoming 
 a college proper, and of the American university on being 
 turned into a university proper, as on the continent of Europe. 
 
 Among the colleges proper, normal schools should hold an 
 important place. They should be teachers colleges, at least be 
 accorded the recognition given to independent, denominational 
 colleges. 
 
 Our schools of education in the universities should do strictly 
 postgraduate work in Education, where they are capable of 
 doing it. 
 
 The conversion of the normal school into a teachers college 
 would naturally be combated by schools of education, which 
 might go so far as to preach the dictum of the Iowa Survey 
 Commission, which advised that normal schools give up all 
 non-professional courses, abolish all but vocational courses. 
 However, this advice is sponsored by a host of independent 
 colleges, in which Iowa abounds, rather than by a strong 
 university. 
 
 Better advice is given by Professor Ernest C. Moore, form¬ 
 erly president of the state normal school at Los Angeles, now 
 director of the southern branch of the University of California: 
 “Our own conviction is that the normal school is a disappear¬ 
 ing member of the educational organization,.. .that the normal 
 schools must be converted into teachers colleges or become parts 
 of the universities already in existence . 99 
 
 The latter recommendation is also that of the Carnegie Sur¬ 
 vey of the normal schools of Missoufi. This survey contends 
 that the normal schools should remain where they are, but 
 become integral departments of the state university system. 
 
 COLLEGE SUBJECTS IN NORMAL SCHOOLS 
 
 Some normal schools have tried the experiment of elim¬ 
 inating college subjects. It has had the effect of an amputation 
 of sound limbs. Very appropriately says the book “Self Sur¬ 
 veys by Teachers Training Schools , 99 by Allen and Pearse: “It 
 
MAYYILLE, NORTH DAKOTA i9 
 
 has not been proved that eliminating college courses—i. e. col¬ 
 lege students—from normal schools will do as much to raise 
 the standard of instruction in the normal and other public 
 schools as will the retention of college courses and of students 
 planning to take a four-year course.” It wisely continues: 
 “No dangers have ever yet been pointed out in the college 
 courses as found in normal schools which are not attributable 
 to administrative breakdown and which cannot be corrected 
 by administrative steps. The president is there; the buildings 
 are there; there are regents and a state department of instruc¬ 
 tion; there is no justification for giving up the advantages 
 that would flow from college work available in several different 
 parts of the state until after thorough effort has been made 
 to separate abuse from use, and to correct abuse. ’ ’ 
 
 This trend of thought receives support in the Carnegie Sur¬ 
 vey of normal schools in Missouri. Says this most fascinating 
 survey: “Longer to maintain the distinction between the uni¬ 
 versity and the normal school as representing a distinguishable 
 difference in grade or quality of instruction is, in the cases of 
 best normal schools in this country, purely factitious; and 
 its eradication would be the best possible reason for requiring 
 of inferior schools a genuine enforcement of standards to which 
 most of them now profess their adherence. In the numerous 
 American normal schools now doing thoroughly standard work 
 the instructors have as broad and as intensive training as 
 those giving instruction to students of equal advancement in 
 good colleges and universities, and are quite frequently superior 
 
 in this respect.The teaching of the first class normal schools 
 
 is probably in advance of that to be found in the ordinary 
 arts colleges or even in the better medical and law schools . 11 
 
 EXPENSES 
 
 Will the conversion of the normal school into a teachers 
 college increase the expenses? It is safe to say that in most 
 normal schools there would not be any need of additional teach¬ 
 ers to do the extra work required for the extended course, 
 though in some of the schools the present number of teachers 
 is not large enough to carry even the courses already allotted 
 
20 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 them. This holds true especially of schools that are offering 
 five years of work, three of which cover a high school course. 
 But if they get the number and quality of teachers they are 
 entitled to, even without a thought of extended curriculum, 
 there would not be any additional expense to speak of, if at 
 all, to make the normal school a teachers college. The slow 
 elimination of ninth and tenth or eleventh grade work would 
 mean a correspondingly gradual increase in the teaching forces 
 in the college work, though this factor would at the outset be 
 rather negligible in the budget of the school. However, just 
 as there are those who prefer to teach in a normal school at 
 much smaller salary than in a high school, so there are those 
 who prefer to go to a teachers college at a smaller salary than 
 to remain in the normal school, which is doomed to move only 
 as fast as its straitjacket will permit. Many an instructor of 
 ability would be glad to teach in a teachers college, on account 
 of better opportunities for study and research, on account of 
 social or professional prestige, and on account of a larger 
 sphere of influence. 
 
 FUTURE RIVALS 
 
 The fact that it is seriously proposed by some that every 
 county establishes a junior college, shows what normal schools 
 may expect in the future, if they do not sense their oppor¬ 
 tunities and responsibilities. They will be reduced to state 
 high schools, and, probably, lacking the support of such a com¬ 
 munity spirit, as a high school has and deservingly has, will 
 finally perish. 
 
 MONOPOLY IMPOSSIBLE 
 
 Hence: the normal school must become a teachers college. 
 But it must not and can not monopolize the training of teach¬ 
 ers; for, there is, and always will be, something incommen¬ 
 surable in teacher training that even a college laying no claim 
 to assets in professional subjects may possess and with which 
 it may possibly excel. In the very nature of things, the 
 teachers college cannot be a monopoly for any length of time. 
 The recognition given the Departments of Education at the 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 21 
 
 University of Chicago or at Columbia University, judging by 
 the extensive pilgrimages they enjoy, of teachers young and 
 of teachers old, who flock to them to get the first or ultimate 
 touch of scientific pedagogy, is a symptom of educational 
 juvenility or senility. One need not be a worshipper of the 
 educational standards of the old world; but if he is not a 
 chauvinist, he will ask, Why are universities of the old world 
 so chary in giving recognition to “ wissenschaf tliche Padago- 
 gik”? In the universities of Germany and Austria there were 
 in 1917 only five “professors ordinarii” in Education: Rein in 
 Jena; Foerster and Gottler in Munich, the former in the philo¬ 
 sophic faculty, the latter in the theological; Toischer in 
 Prague; and Ziehen in Frankfurt a. M. Even the large uni¬ 
 versity of Berlin had only an associate professorship in edu¬ 
 cation. Sometime the philosopher Fr. Paulson lectured in 
 pedagogy. Halle has an honorary professor in this field, 
 Tuebingen has a 11 privat docent. ’ ’ A regular professor in 
 philosophy teaches, as a “side line,” pedagogy in the universi¬ 
 ties of Bonn, Giessen, Halle, Leipzig, Marburg, Braunsberg, 
 Freiburg i B., Vienna, Wurzburg, Strassburg. A regular pro¬ 
 fessor of classical philology gives lectures on pedagogy in Er¬ 
 langen, Heidelberg, Munich, Munster. The annual publication 
 “Minerva” says nothing about any lectures on pedagogy or 
 education for 1913-14 in the universities of Breslau, Gottingen, 
 Greifswald, Kiel, Konigsberg, Rostock, though their catalogues 
 announced lectures on a number of educational themes by pro¬ 
 fessors of philosophy and theology. Of course, a number of 
 valuable courses on pedagogic themes are also given in the 
 departments of medicine, law, and economics. This must not 
 be underestimated. The fact remains, however, that the uni¬ 
 versities on the continent of Europe, on the whole, have resisted 
 the establishing of professorships of pedagogy, which they do 
 not regard as a “ vollgueltige Wissenschaf t. ” This attitude has' 
 led to the foundation of independent schools of education, like 
 the “ Zentralinstitut fur Erziehung und Unterricht” in Berlin, 
 founded in 1915, or like the department of the university forma¬ 
 tion “ Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen ” at H amburg, headed by 
 Meumann, and later by Stern. 
 
 If the continental universities withhold the acknowledgment 
 of pedagogy as a “ vollgueltige Wissenschaft, ” the tendency in 
 
22 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 various circles in America is to regard it as the only “voll- 
 gueltige Wissenschaft. ’ ’ This is unfortunate, because of the 
 reaction that is bound to follow. 
 
 PARITY ASKED FOR 
 
 In stressing the value of the teachers college, it is, there¬ 
 fore, well to be cautious. We do not expect too much of it 
 either as a college or as a postgraduate department. But we 
 ask, for the college stage of it, that it be put on a par with 
 the independent college; that its graduates be not barred from 
 positions in public schools open to graduates of denominational 
 colleges. Our people need the latter institutions, and they in 
 return need the conlidence and good will of the state. But 
 it is not fair to discriminate by legislation in their favor, at 
 the expense of the institutions which the state calls its own. 
 Therefore, the normal school does not request that it be made 
 a primus inter pares among the collegiate schools of a state, 
 but it pleads for parity on a collegiate basis. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS AND DEMOCRATIC SPIRIT 
 
 Before finishing, I wish finally to call attention to two 
 things which make the denominational colleges seem stronger 
 than the average state schools. It is the attitude of the former 
 toward religion and democracy, friendly in both cases. It 
 cannot indeed be denied that many of our state institutions, 
 especially universities, do little to suppress aristocratic tenden¬ 
 cies and much to suppress religious thought under the cloak 
 of neutrality; though privately owned institutions like Harvard, 
 Yale, the University of Chicago are not working under any 
 restraint. Now the state normal schools in most states profess 
 in theih catalogues that they foster Christian ideals and appre¬ 
 ciate Chr'itian nurture, a trait from the days when the majority 
 of normal schools were owned privately. From personal ex¬ 
 perience I can say that the Christian spirit in a few normal 
 schools I know, is more in evidence than in some church-owned 
 schools. It is indeed encouraging that the State Manual Train¬ 
 ing School at Pittsburg, Kansas, has for the last ten years 
 carried a Bible course of study, one hour a week, and has given 
 credit for it; and that it in the past three years has given 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 23 
 
 courses in Christian Evidence, New Testament, Old Testament, 
 Social Teachings of Jesus and Ethics of Jesus. This trait alone 
 makes the teachers college more desirable than a state college 
 of the type where information on Homer, Plato, Moses, Mo¬ 
 hammed is required, but where information about Jesus or 
 Paul is taboo, as if they never contributed anything to history. 
 
 As to democracy, the fact that the normal school is not 
 a school of social prestige, but is the struggling teachers 
 school—is significant. Add to this its close contact with the 
 children in the grades, its reserved attitude toward aristocratic 
 fraternities, its discouragement of class rivalries—and the 
 preservation of the democratic spirit is self-evident. 
 
 President Frank H. H. Roberts, of the New Mexico Normal 
 University, has well said, 11 The state institutions cannot 
 duplicate the religious and democratic spirit as the normal 
 schools can.” 
 
 THE TEACHERS COLLEGE A RESPONSE TO THE 
 NEEDS OF THE HIGH SCHOOL AS WELL AS 
 TO THE NEEDS OF THE GRADES 
 
 The normal school attained to its majority, or the teachers 
 college, is through its graduates morally entitled to create the 
 same kind of spirit in the high schools and should be legally 
 entitled to respond to the demands of high schools for normal 
 school graduates as teachers. For, as President E. L. Hendricks 
 of the Central State Teachers College at Warrensburg stated 
 in an address before the Normal School presidents at Atlantic 
 City, February, 1918, the high school is known as the weakest 
 section of our entire system of education. “Why is it true 
 that if we begin with the kindergarten and the graduate school 
 of the university our converging lines of least effectiveness 
 will meet in the high school ? i9 His answer is: the lack of 
 professional training. 
 
 This training can be had in the teachers college, not ex¬ 
 clusively, but to such a degree, both socially and educationally, 
 that there should be no hesitancy Ln making the normal schools 
 teachers colleges, thus giving them their proper, and by in¬ 
 heritance rightful, place in our educational system, so they may 
 serve the high schools as they have served and shall serve the 
 grades. 
 
24 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 Extracts from Letters of Normal School 
 Presidents Favoring a Four Year Course 
 above High School Graduation 
 in Normal Schools 
 
 (The letters were received by Dr. Evjen as replies to an inquiry 
 made by him October 14, 1920.) 
 
 - 0 - 
 
 ALABAMA, JACKSONVILLE 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President C. W. Daugette writes: “I am convinced that the normal 
 school should go four years beyond the high school work and give 
 degrees. It requires this to make young people have the respect for 
 the profession of teaching that is employed by medicine, law, dentistry, 
 and other professions. They must have the respect for the profession, 
 before they will be willing to spend money to prepare themselves to 
 enter it.” 
 
 CALIFORNIA, SAN JOSE 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President W. W. Kemp: ‘‘I find myself an advocate of collegiate 
 status for normal schools, with the power to confer an appropriate 
 baccalaureate degree. Normal school presidents of California are pre¬ 
 paring legislation to make possiblei collegiate status for all their insti¬ 
 tutions. though with the proviso that the State Board of Education 
 shall set up minimum standards which must be met by any institution, 
 before it can acquire collegiate status. If such legislation is passed, 
 I am sure the Fresno school and ours may early seek to become college 
 normals.’ ’ 
 
 COLORADO, GREELY 
 STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 
 
 President J. G. Crabbe: “This institution has been on the four 
 and five-year course basis for thirteen or fourteen years and gives the 
 A. B. and A. M. Every worth-while normal school in the country ought 
 to look forward to the four-year course at the earliest practicable date.” 
 
 CONNECTICUT, DANBURY 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 Principal J. R. Perkins: ‘‘It is the business of the state to prepare 
 all teachers needed in the public school system. In order to prepare 
 high school teachers a four-year course is needed in the' normal schools. 
 I see no reason why they should not also give a degree after four years 
 of work.” 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 25 
 
 CONNECTICUT, WILLIMANTIC 
 STATE NORMAL-TRAINING SCHOOL 
 
 Principal George H. Shafer: “I believe that two years’ work 
 
 beyond the high school is not adequate for the kind of training that 
 public school teachers ought to have, so that it is my opinion that our 
 school curriculum should be lengthened in time to four years, and an 
 appropriate degree given, possibly the degree of Bachelor of Pedagogy. 
 
 “I am entirely out of sympathy with the four-year college course 
 which emphasizes everything else under the sun but the training of 
 teachers. It is not numbers that we want. Teaching should be re¬ 
 garded as a profession in the same way that medicine is regarded as 
 a profession, and the science upon which it is based is so extensive 
 that four years is 1 none too long, but medical schools apply themselves 
 to the training of physicians. They do not attempt to give a Liberal 
 Arts course nor should the normal school attempt to do this thing.” 
 
 IOWA. CEDAR FALLS 
 
 IOWA STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 
 
 President H. H. Seerley: “The only successful end for the old 
 
 standard normal school is that of the four-year standard. It is no use 
 to fight against decisions made by civilization. The only institution 
 recognized in several states is one with college standards of entrance 
 length of course, and ideals.” 
 
 ILLINOIS, CARBONDALE 
 
 STATE NORMAL UNIVERSITY, SOUTHERN ILL. 
 
 President H. W. Shryock: “If you will examine page 32 [of 
 
 catalogue] you will see that we are offering senior college work. We 
 had just begun to develop this phase of normal school training when 
 
 the war struck us.We are planning to ask the legislature for more 
 
 than $40,000 additional equipment for our laboratories, and for not 
 fewer than six additional members of the faculty, in order that we 
 may develop our senior college work. If we are to train high school 
 teachers we must offer four years of work beyond high school.” 
 
 ILLINOIS, CHARLESTON 
 
 EASTERN ILLINOIS STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Livingston C. Lord: “I have been opposed until recently 
 to the normal schools giving four years beyond the high school, but 
 we are doing this now, and so are all the normal schools in this 
 state, with the emphasis, of course, on teacher training. 
 
 ILLINOIS, MACOMB 
 
 WESTERN ILLINOIS STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President W. P. Morgan: ‘‘I feel quite sure it is the business of 
 the normal schools in Illinois, at least, and I think elsewhere, to pre¬ 
 pare teachers for the common schools, of whatever type they may be. 
 This will include both elementary and high schools, of course. I am 
 not at aR sure in my own mind that teachers who teach in high schools 
 should Have a longer course of training than those who teach in the 
 grades. A four-year course is preferable for either. We have three 
 curriculums leading to the bachelor’s degree.” 
 
26 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 ILLINOIS, NORMAL 
 
 ILLINOIS STATE NORMAL UNIVERSITY 
 
 President David Felmley: “Thirteen years ago we obtained from 
 the state legislature authority to grant degrees in Education. Since 
 that date we have granted about one hundred twenty degrees to students 
 who have completed a full four-year course beyond the high school. We 
 call the curriculum that they complete the Teachers’ College Curriculum. 
 . . .It is my opinion that the normal schools should he regarded every¬ 
 where as the state’s chief agencies for the training of teachers; that 
 they should determine the standards and ideals of teaching; and that 
 they should undertake to prepare every sort of teacher needed in the 
 public schools from the kindergarten to the high school.’’ 
 
 INDIANA, TERRE HAUTE 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Wm. W. Parsons: “On the question of a four-year 
 
 normal course, I stand unequivocally for such a course of study. I be¬ 
 lieve that every state normal in the country should offer its students 
 the opportunity to pursue such a course in a strictly pedagogical at¬ 
 mosphere.” 
 
 KANSAS, EMPORIA 
 
 KANSAS STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Thos. W. Butcher: “The four-year course was established 
 in this school approximately fifteen years ago. During the years since 
 the course was inaugurated, it has demonstrated its necessity over 
 and over again, and in very many ways. First of all, there is no 
 institution, outside of a normal school, anywhere in the country, which 
 prepares superintendents especially for village and small schools. 
 High school teachers can be prepared and are prepared in the colleges 
 and universities, but the graduates of colleges and universities are, 
 almost without exception, young people who have not interrupted their 
 school courses since they began in the first grade. In other words, the' 
 have marched straight through the school course and have graduated 
 young in years, and younger still in experience. In the normal schools 
 quite the contrary is true. Nearly every member of our graduating 
 classes, through the years, has had teaching experience. The superin 
 tendent of a small school must know the high school and he must 
 know, the primary and intermediate grades. If he cannot supervise 
 his high school teachers, he fails. If he cannot supervise his primary 
 teachers, he fails. Normal schools, offering training for all grades of 
 teaching from the primary to the high school inclusive, prepare city 
 supernitendents for small systems in which it is impossible to employ 
 a special supervisor. 
 
 “I would be willing to rest the case of our normal schools in 
 
 this state upon the above statement of facts. However, there are 
 additional reasons for the degree granting normal school. Young people 
 of vision do not care to enter a school that does not go beyond two 
 years. They want a real Alma Mater. They want to be in a school 
 with a complete course of training. In a degree granting normal 
 
 school, you will find just as capable and as ambitious students as in 
 the best colleges and universities. Many of these students do not reach 
 the goal of their ambitions, and drop out to become teachers in the 
 grade schools. Their training, whatever they have had, fits them for 
 these positions. Whereas, students who drop out of the university 
 before completing the course are fitted for the most part for no specific 
 work. Then, too, the atmosphere of a teacher training institution is 
 
 conducive to the development of interest and pride in the teaching 
 
 profession. Students in. the Department of Education in the University 
 do not have generally the same social rating given students in law. 
 medicine, engineering, and other departments.” 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 27 
 
 KANSAS, PITTSBURG 
 
 STATE MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL 
 
 President W. A. Brandenburg: “In regard to the subject ‘Should 
 the normal school do two years or four years work above the four-year 
 high school’ there is but one sensible answer. x 
 
 “The normal schools of this country should become real teachers 
 colleges and therefore should do fouh years of real college work above 
 the four-year high school. This course should be so arranged that 
 teachers can be certified from time to time during the four years while 
 they are continuing the work of completing their four-year course. This 
 should be done for two reasons: It is a good thing for one taking a 
 four-year course to get some actual teaching while they are taking this 
 course. Second, many of our young people, end especially those enter¬ 
 ing the teaching profession, have not means whereby they can attend 
 school four years successively. Possibly a third reason, the shortage 
 of teachers, makes it necessary for people to be released before their 
 training is completed.” 
 
 KENTUCKY, BOWLING GREEN 
 
 WESTERN KENTUCKY STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President H. H. Cherry writes: “This institution gives a course 
 in junior college work. We believe there should be four years above 
 high school graduation. 
 
 “We are very much interested in the subject which you are studying 
 and we are writing to most earnestly request that you let us have a copy 
 of this study if you have copies of same. We have just begun an 
 investigation along this line and would greatly appreciate the survey 
 which you are making together with such conclusions as you may ar¬ 
 rive at.” 
 
 LOUISIANA, NATCHITOCHES 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Y. L. Roy writes: “Ten years ago we admitted in a 
 haphazard fashion first and second year high school students; and in 
 the four years of the normal course covered not only three or four 
 years of high school work, but two years of normal school training— 
 at least this is what we attempted to do. 
 
 “Two years ago we finally reached the point at which we had 
 eliminated all work of secondary school grade from our curricula, since 
 which time we have offered a four-year course of strictly college grade. 
 We require graduation with sixteen units from Louisiana approved high 
 schools, or the equivalent, for admission. 
 
 “At the end of the first two years of our course we award the 
 normal diploma, and at the end of the four-year course, we confer the 
 A. B. degree. 
 
 “The charter of this school does not specifically authorize it to 
 issue degrees, but a legislative enactment confers such rights on all 
 institutions of learning which offer four years of college work following 
 high school graduation, provided each year consists of 180 school days. 
 
 ‘•‘That this normal school should gradually evolve into a normal 
 college was settled in the office of our state superintendent several 
 years ago, at which were present our state superintendent and heads 
 of all the state institutions of learning. The argument that determined 
 the settlement of the question was the following: State institutions 
 of learning must and should continue to offer four-year curricula; and 
 since Louisiana has an extensive, efficient and thoroughly organized 
 system of high schools, it is not proper that the State in its state 
 schools should offer any work of secondary grade, thus not only com- 
 
28' 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 peting wiht the high schools of the state in the matter of students, but 
 imposing a needless financial burden on the state treasury. 
 
 “Personally I am convinced that the time is rapidly coming when 
 in all progressive states of the Union, the normal schools will relegate 
 work of secondary grade to the high school.” 
 
 MAINE, FARMINGTON 
 
 STATE NORMAL AND TRAINING COLLEGE 
 
 President W. G. Mallet: “If we can have state law by which 
 
 superintendents must recognize with better wages and higher grade 
 certificates those who have done the normal school course of two or 
 four years, I would then favor an increased amount of preparation, sa> 
 four years, but not without such a law. 
 
 “I wish very much we may bring that about in this state with 
 wages offered to graduates of four-year normal schools such as will 
 offer inducement to undertake it.” 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS, FITCHBURG 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President John G. Thompson: “I believe emphatically that the 
 
 normal school should offer four-year courses leading to a degree.” 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS, HYANNIS 
 HYANNIS NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President W. A. Baldwin: “In regard to the length of courses. 
 I believe as follows: As things are now constituted, the two-year, 
 three-year and four-year courses should be offered, and students. who 
 are more promising intellectually should be encouraged to take the 
 longer courses. Mediocre students should be encouraged to return for 
 postgraduate work after teaching for a year or two, or to summer 
 sessions on each succeeding summer.” 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS, LOWELL 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Clarence M. Weed, Acting Principal, writes: “I think 
 the principals of the Massachusetts normal schools are all in favor 
 of lengthening the course and eventually of making it a four-year course 
 and granting a degree, with the emphasis always upon the professional 
 side.” 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS, WORCESTER 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Wm. B. Aspinwall: “I am heartily in favor of a normal 
 school course of four years. During the past winter I was chairman 
 of a committee of the Principals of the Normal Schools of this State 
 appointed to investigate this matter and make recommendations. En¬ 
 closed is a copy of our report. Although no definite action has been 
 taken by our State Department of Education, this report has been 
 endorsed by the School Superintendents of the State and by the Massa¬ 
 chusetts Schoolmasters’ Club, so that we feel that there is a growing 
 sentiment in favor of such a change.” 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 29 
 
 MICHIGAN, KALAMAZOO 
 WESTERN STATE NORMAL 
 
 President D. B. Waldo: “The normal schools of Michigan all have 
 a four-year course. Three of the schools were put on the four-year 
 basis only two years ago. Every member of our faculty, so far as 
 I know, is enthusiastically in favor of the four-year course. The pres¬ 
 ence of even a small minority who are working for the A. B. degree 
 is helpful in many ways. Inasmuch as high schools are constantly 
 calling on us for teachers, we could hardly be fair to them if our 
 students were all on the two-year basis. 
 
 “Law, medicine, engineering, etc., are on the professional basis— 
 why not put teaching on this same basis, and expect at least a con¬ 
 siderable percentage of normal school graduates to represent four years 
 of training beyond the high school.” 
 
 MICHIGAN, MARQUETTE 
 NORTHERN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President James H. Kaye: “In regard to the normal school ex¬ 
 tending four years beyond the high school I have always been in favor 
 of having a course for all classes of teachers. A normal school ought 
 to train every class of teacher, including high school teachers. To do 
 this, it requires a four-year course. We have such a course started. 
 So far we have only graduated three from that course, but we expect 
 to have more graduates from now on.” 
 
 MINNESOTA, DULUTH 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President E. W. Bohannon: “As to the desirability of placing the 
 courses in the normal schools on* a four-year basis I have to say that 
 we have recently asked our own board to appeal to the legislature for 
 authority to grant a degree in Education in order that we may offer 
 such a course. We endeavored some years ago to have such legislation 
 enacted, but were unsuccessful, more or less because of the opposition 
 of the State University and the denominational colleges in the state. 
 I believe very earnestly that the normal schools should be authorized 
 to do four years of work. They cannot possibly meet the requirements 
 for the training of elementary teachers which prevail or ought to 
 prevail unless they offer more extended courses. Two years is to'i 
 short a time in which to train a teacher, and all of the supervisory 
 positions in elementary work call for a more extended period of train¬ 
 ing than most of us are now able to offer. As a consequence many of 
 these people are trained in other institutions which are much less 
 qualified chan the normal schools are to do the work. Furthermore 
 two years is too short a period in which to develop the spirit, the 
 atmosphere or traditions which play so large a part in carrying the 
 gains of the succeeding years along to those who may follow.” 
 
 MINNESOTA, MANKATO 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President C. H. Cooper: “We have on paper a three-year course 
 beyond the high school, but there is no special inducement for students 
 to take this course and it is not successful. We are hoping to get 
 authority to establish a four-year course leading to a degree in Educa¬ 
 tion with the idea of training solely for the more important positions 
 in the field of elementary education. We have no thought of training 
 high school teachers.” 
 
30 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 MINNESOTA, WINONA 
 
 WINONA STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President G. E. Maxwell: “I am decidedly in favor of elementary 
 teachers extending their course to one of four years. There certainly 
 is no reason why the leaders, if not the regular teachers, in elementary 
 education should not have the same effective education and professional 
 training and skill as teachers in the high school. To be sure, the normal 
 must not lose its primary problem of preparation of elementary teachers, 
 but at the same time its possibilities of growth should not be limited 
 within the confines of the two-year curriculum.” 
 
 MISSOURI, CAPE GIRARDEAU 
 
 SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 
 
 President W. S. Dearmont: “The normal schools and teachers 
 
 colleges should by no means limit their work to two years above a high 
 school course. They should by all means be standard four year colleges 
 offering degrees. There is every reason for their offering a four-year 
 course, and no legitimate objection to their doing so. A four-year 
 college course is not too much to demand of all teachers in the public 
 schools, both in the elementary grades and in the high school.” 
 
 MISSOURI, MARYVILLE 
 STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 
 
 President Ira Richardson: “Our experience, with the four-year 
 
 course, as president and my previous experience in normal schools as 
 instructor, convinces me that normal schools and teachers colleges are 
 falling short of their obligations to the children of our country if they 
 fail to establish four years of training as a standard preparation for 
 teacher training for any phases of the public school work. We may 
 be compelled to continue shorter programs by legal limitations, but 
 I am very decided in my opinion as to the need of all teachers having 
 four years of training with special application to the field which the. 
 are to serve.” 
 
 MISSOURI, SPRINGFIELD 
 
 SOUTHWEST MISSOURI STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 
 
 President Clyde M. Hill writes: “The legislature of Missouri, upon 
 the request of the presidents of the normal schools in this state, changed 
 all of them to teachers colleges in 1919, and gave us the degree granting 
 privilege. It goes without saying, therefore, that I consider that less 
 than four years’ training is unsatisfactory for teachers in any line of 
 work. Please note the statement under ‘College Work’ on p. 19 of 
 the bulletin.” 
 
 NEW HAMPSHIRE, KEENE 
 THE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Wallace E. Mason: “In regard to the four-year course. 
 I am thoroughly in sympathy with it as you will see by our catalogue. 
 We have five three-year courses in operation now. . .We are working 
 for the extension of the three-year courses with degrees. You could 
 get helpful suggestions from the Rhode Island Normal School, which 
 has just taken this step.” 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 31 
 
 NEW MEXICO, LAS VEGAS 
 
 NEW MEXICO NORMAL UNIVERSITY 
 
 President Frank H. H. Roberts: “I think, without any question, 
 the normal schools should have a four-year course. This institution 
 is making a brave fight and winning all along the line. The only place 
 to prepare teachers is in a normal school. The state institution cannot 
 duplicate the religious and democratic spirit as the normal schools can.” 
 
 NEW MEXICO, SILVER CITY 
 
 THE NEW MEXICO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President W. O. Hall: “I see no reason why the normal schools 
 should not do four years’ work leading to a degree, the emphasis, as 
 you state, is put on the training of teachers, which is a legitimate 
 function of the normal schools. We offer four-year courses in the state of 
 Mexico.’ ’ 
 
 NEW YORK, ALBANY 
 
 NEW YORK STATE COLLEGE FOR TEACEHERS 
 
 President A. R. Brubacher: ‘‘You ask a difficult question*regarding 
 the four-year normal school or college normal as you designate it. 
 Perhaps my position will be clear when I say that I believe it would 
 be folly to have a four-year course which consists almost exclusively 
 of professional work. On Ihe other hand, if the four-year course means 
 two full years of informational and, cultural courses, followed or accom¬ 
 panied by two years of professional work, then I am heartily in favor 
 of it. Perhaps it goes without saying that I do not believe, with many 
 others, that professional courses also have cultural value to the same 
 extent that the regular courses offered by liberal large colleges have.” 
 
 NEW YORK, BROCKPORT 
 
 STATE NORMAL TRAINING SCHOOL 
 
 President Alfred C. Thompson: ‘‘We are in favor of as many years 
 of normal school work beyond high school as possible. It is certainly 
 advisable for every teacher to have all the education possible. Our 
 course is now two years. We are about to adopt a three-year course.” 
 
 NEW YORK, CORTLAND 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL AND TRAINING SCHOOL 
 
 President H. DeW. DeGroat: ‘‘It is designed to extend the courses 
 of the New York State Normal School three years beyond the period 
 of high school graduation. Eventually the course will go to four 
 years, but these courses,, except special ones, will be aimed to prepare 
 the teachers for the elementary school and not for high school.” 
 
 NEW YORK, ONEONTA 
 
 STATE NORMAL AND TRAINING SCHOOL 
 
 President P. J. Bugbee: ‘‘There are ten normal schools in this 
 state. Their field is elementary education only. The high school field 
 is occupied by the State Teachers College at Albany. For entrance to 
 the normal schools graduation from a four-year high school course is 
 
32 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 required. The course - at present is two years, although the State De¬ 
 partment and the principals of the various normal schools are con¬ 
 templating a three-year course in the not distant future. This probably 
 will not take place until the attendance in the normal schools increases. 
 The attendance is about three-fifths at present of the pre-war regis¬ 
 tration. ” ; * a 
 
 NEW YORK, PLATTSBURGH 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Geo. K. Hawkins: “If, as is the case in our state, the 
 normal school diploma licenses its holders to teach only in the elementary 
 grades, in my judgment two years beyond a high school is sufficiently 
 long for the course. If the diploma should be unlimited in character, 
 then at least three years and possibly four should be given to this 
 extended course which naturally would involve a very substantial amount 
 of academic work.” 
 
 OHIO, BOWLING GREEN 
 
 BOWLING GREEN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President H. B. Williams: “You will see from our catalogue that 
 we are offering both two-year diploma courses for elementary teachers 
 and four-year degree courses for high school teachers. This means that 
 we are covering the field of a teachers college. We believe strongly 
 in the four-year program for two reasons: first, the demand for profes¬ 
 sionally trained high school teachers is far in excess of the output of 
 all types of institutions which undertake to train such teachers. In the 
 private foundations and state universities the professional training of 
 secondary teachers is too often a side issue, whereas in a professional 
 school the atmosphere and point of view is distinctively favorable. 
 Second, even though the demand for professionally trained secondary 
 teachers should not warrant the maintenance of four-year courses in 
 a teacher training institution, the needs of the two-year courses would 
 justify the maintenance of a four-year course. I am very certain that 
 we could not secure the type of instructors which we have unless they 
 had the opportunity of giving some advanced courses. I consider this 
 reason very significant. I am very much interested in the problem 
 upon which you are working and shall be glad to receive any informa¬ 
 tion that you may print as a result of your study.” 
 
 OHIO, KENT 
 
 KENT STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 
 
 President John E. McGilvrey: “We believe that the normal school 
 should extend its two-year course to four years as soon as conditions 
 in its particular field will permit. The benefits resulting from the 
 reaction of the student body in the additional two years’ work on the 
 students in the first two years are marked.” 
 
 OHIO, OXFORD 
 
 TEACHERS COLLEGE OF MIAMI UNIVERSITY 
 
 Dean H. C. Minnich: “I wish to call your attention to the report 
 of Mr. C. L. Allen made on a number of phases of education: one on 
 the normal college or normal school, and recommending that all our 
 normal schools be called normal colleges. A copy of this report ma 
 be obtained by addressing Mr. C. B. Galbreath, Acting Secretary of the 
 Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Reorganization, Colum¬ 
 bus, Ohio.” 
 
MAYV1LLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 33 
 
 OKLAHOMA, WEATHERFORD 
 SOUTHWESTERN STATE NORMAL . 
 
 President) J. B. Eskridge writes: “In January of the present year 
 the Board of Education voted to make colleges out of our normal 
 schools, and we are adding two years more to the curriculum. We put 
 the emphasis, of course, on teacher training. It seems to me this is 
 the only hope of our normal schools, most especially in our part of 
 the country.” 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA, BLOOMSBURG 
 BLOOMSBURG STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President C. H. Fisher: “Some of our Pennsylvania normal schools 
 will very likely become four-year institutions within a few years, witn 
 authority to grant degrees. Which schools will became four-year schools 
 will depend partly on their geographical location, but what is even 
 more important, on the facilities which they can command for student 
 teaching. A number of our schools are located in remote places, away 
 from centers of population. . .Such institutions are likely to remain 
 two-year institutions, but may add another year....” 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA, INDIANA 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President John A. Keith: “As far back as 1S92, the normal 
 schools of the country were attempting to standardize their work to 
 the equivalent of two years beyond graduation from a four-year high 
 school. Twenty-eight years have elapsed since that time and except 
 in a few* cases the standards of the training of teachers for the elemen¬ 
 tary grades have not advanced. My feeling is that these standards 
 should have advanced in the interval. Society has advanced, industry 
 has advanced, everything seems to have moved forward at a more rapid 
 rate than education has moved forward. This lagging behind has been 
 due in part to the lack of leadership in normal schools, and in part 
 to the unwillingness to pay taxes on the part of political parties which 
 must seek reelection. 
 
 ‘ ‘The high schools are parts of the public school system. In fact, 
 the high schools the country over, except in the East, were organized 
 and fathered by normal school graduates. In the East the high school 
 seems to have been developed from the academy and the college man 
 and the academy man have been in the saddle from the first. The normal 
 schools ought, in my opinion, to resume and expand the training of high 
 school teachers. This ought to be in four-year courses with degrees. The 
 teachers of special subjects such as music, drawing, manual training, 
 domestic science, physical education, commercial subjects, agriculture, 
 etc., should be required to spend three years in training and later four 
 years. All normals should conduct differentiated curricula after the 
 manner of the curriculum for the training of special teachers in order 
 that they might effectively prepare teachers for rural schools, primary 
 grades, kindergarten, immediate grades, and junior high schools. The 
 junior high school curriculum should be made three years in length at 
 once and before another ten years have passed, it should go to four 
 years. The other curricula should remain at two years until such 
 time as the normal schools of the country have gotten inside of the 
 demand for teachers. You will be interested to know that this is the 
 direction in which we are now moving in Pennsylvania, with the support 
 of the new superintendent of public instruction and the Governor.” 
 
34 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA, KUTZTOWN 
 KEYSTONE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President A. C. Rothermel: “There is a movement in our state to 
 transform our normal schools into normal colleges. I am personally 
 not sure whether in the beginning we should require all those who take 
 the normal course to remain for the four-year course, but I am pretty 
 definitely decided that ultimately this is what should happen. I am 
 of the conviction too that there should be a reasonable amount of 
 academic work in the third and fourth years of the normal course 
 after the schools have been converted into normal colleges. There is 
 a scarcity of high school teachers in our state and the average college 
 does little to give teachers an adequate professional training for teach¬ 
 ing in a high school. I cannot quite understand why the high school 
 teachers should have less of professional training than the grade teacher 
 and yet that is true, I judge, in most of the states today.’’ 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA, MANSFIELD 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President William R. Straughn: “Our normal school course in 
 Pennsylvania is two years beyond the high school, but I am personally 
 very much in favor of a four-year course leading to a degree. I am 
 also in favor of retaining the present two-year course for those who 
 expect to teach in the graded and ungraded schools, but offering the 
 four-year course, which would be two years beyond the two-year 
 course, to those who may want to prepare for high school teaching. 
 
 “To my mind, in order to dignify the teaching profession properly, 
 and to have a real claim on public support, our normal schools ought to 
 be on an equal basis\ with colleges. If we do not do this, it is going 
 to be only a question of time when the normals will pass out of 
 existence.’ ’ 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA, MILLER,SVILLE 
 MILLERSVILLE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President C. H. Gardiner: “All of our normal schools in Pennsyl¬ 
 vania are owned and operated by the State, and the work is quite 
 uniform. At present the course in each school calls for two years in' 
 addition to four years of high school work, but we are considering the 
 advisability of also putting in a four-year course for those that wish 
 to specialize along special lines. Just how soon this will come I do 
 not know, though some schools have already made a beginning. 
 
 ‘ ‘Educational matters in Pennsylvania are in a wonderful state of 
 transition owing to the entire reorganization of the State Department 
 of Education with the new superintendent and entire new force. It 
 will take us a year or two to settle down, but if the present plans 
 materialize, this state will make wonderful strides within the next few 
 years.’’ 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA, SHIPPENSBURG 
 CUMBERLAND VALLEY STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Ezra Lehman: “We expect to extend our normal school 
 course to four years beyond high school in the near future. Personally 
 I believe that the normal schools should be raised to the rank of 
 teachers colleges and that they should give regular degrees in educa¬ 
 tion on the completion of a four-year course. 
 
 “I also believe that the two-year course should be retained. Our 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 35 
 
 special field, after all, is the preparation of teachers for the elemental- 
 schools, and a four-year course would deter many high school graduates 
 from beginning the work. On the other hand I realize that if teachin 
 is to be raised to the dignity of a profession it must demand very 
 different qualifications of those who enter it. Certainly every principal 
 and supervisor should have more than a two-year course. 
 
 “The ordinary college is neither qualified nor inclined to give - 
 course of this kind. Hence I believe that it is incumbent upon the 
 normal schools to take up this work. The four-year course should 
 coordinate definitely with the two-year course so that if a student 
 desires to finish the work after teaching on a two-year certificate sh' 
 can return to school and take up the advanced work without loss of 
 time.” 
 
 PENNSYVANIA, SLIPPERY ROCK 
 
 THE SLIPPERY ROCK STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President J. Linwood Eisenberg: “I believe that the normal schools 
 should as soon as possible throughout the country arrange to give 
 addition to the two-year course after high school graduation, a four-yea v 
 course leading to a degree in education with special emphasis upon 
 training of teachers. Part of our program in Pennsylvania is to move 
 in this direction as fast as possible by permission through legislation. 
 
 “We have just in the last year made high school graduation 
 requirement for entrance into the normal school. The work, of course 
 in the normal school should be of college grade in thoroughness 
 intensity at all times. I think one of the failures of the normal schools 
 in the past has been the failure to make the work thorough.’’ 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA, WEST CHESTER 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Andrew T. Smith: “I would express my definite con¬ 
 viction that for the preparation of elementary school teachers, two yea 
 of normal school training, based upon college entrance preparation, seems 
 f° me entirely adequate to fit an individual to grow in the teaching 
 profession, and that is about all we can reasonably hope to secure. 
 An idea that is growing generally throughout Pennsylvania, is that in 
 due time we shall establish a four-year course in our present normal 
 schools, this course being designed to prepare teachers for second- 
 schools. If that comes, the likelihood is that the present schools will 
 be called Junior Colleges for Teachers, and the four-year course ti e 
 Senior College for Teachers. . ,** 
 
 SOUTH CAROLINA, ROCK HILL 
 WINTHROP COLLEGE 
 
 President D. B. Johnson: “We have been giving a four-year course 
 of study and awarding the degree of A. B. and B. S. for over twenty 
 years. I think this usage of ours will speak better for my opinion 
 ot the four years work leading to a degree than anything else I ca 
 say. 1 he plan has worked admirably with us.’’ 
 
36 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 SOUTH DAKOTA, ABERDEEN 
 
 SOUTH DAKOTA NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL 
 
 President H. W. Foght: “...This year we have added a third 
 and fourth year beyond the high school graduation, making a full-fledged 
 teachers college. About forty young people have entered the uppc 
 classes, as a result of which we will be able to graduate a group o 
 nine or ten people in the Senior Teachers College next spring. . . 
 
 “I believe with all my heart in the teachers college. I was instru¬ 
 mental in getting this school changed from a two-year normal school to 
 a four-year teachers college, which is all the argument you need from 
 me as to whether or not I favor the four-year institution. As a matter 
 of fact I am absolutely confident that we will never solve the problem 
 of getting professionally trained teachers until we get them to invest 
 
 more time and more money in preparation for their life work. 
 
 “A state like yours is now old enough and rich enough to do the 
 right thing by its schools and certainly it ought to be done, and now.’’ 
 
 SOUTH DAKOTA, SPRINGFIELD 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President C. G. Lawrence: “The work in our school is limited to 
 two years above high school, but we are hoping that in the near future 
 we will be permitted to add two more years to our course and thus 
 
 become a teachers college.It seems to me that this extension of 
 
 courses in the normal schools is absolutely necessary if the normal 
 schools are to be permitted to do more effective work in preparing teachers 
 for our public schools. In fact, it seems almost imperative that the 
 courses should be extended to four years beyond the high school be¬ 
 cause the recent state law limits the graduates of the normal school 
 with two years above the high school in grades below the tenth. . . 
 Unless we are permitted to extend our course to four years within 
 the near future our schools cannot expect to grow because many who 
 expect to prepare for teaching will select a teachers college rather thar 
 a normal school with a limited course.” 
 
 TEXAS, CANYON 
 
 THE WEST TEXAS STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 
 
 President J. A. Hill: “As to the length of the normal school cour 
 above high school, we have come to the conclusion in Texas that in 
 order to adequately prepare teachers for any grades of the common 
 schools, a four-year college course strongly emphasizing teacher traini ' 
 is necessary. We believe thgt for kindergarten, primary, and grade 
 teachers a four-year course of training is just as essential as it : 
 for high school teachers. Indeed, the Grade Teachers’ Association o* 
 Texas requested the normal school to give a training course for grade 
 teachers, leading to a degree, in every sense of the word equivalent to 
 a standard Bachelor of Arts degree. 
 
 “The teaching profession must impress itself upon the public as 
 a body of trained experts.” 
 
 TEXAS, COMMERCE 
 
 THE EAST TEXAS STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 
 
 President S. H. Whitley: “It is my deliberate and candid opinion 
 that the course of study for normal colleges' should cover four years 
 of college work leading to a degree in education. My conclusion wit* 1 
 respect to this propisition is based largely on the belief that training 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 37 
 
 for elementary teaching positions should he put on as high a level as 
 training for teaching in secondary positions. By offering four years 
 of work of college rank, normalj colleges may easily place the prepara¬ 
 tion of teachers for elementary positions on the same level as that for 
 secondary positions which has been emphasized for a long time.” 
 
 TEXAS, SAN MARCOS 
 
 SOUTHWEST TEXAS STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 
 
 President C. E. Evans: ‘‘I am strongly of the conviction that the 
 normal schools must offer four years of work of college rank leading 
 to the Bachelor’s degree. Unless the normal colleges do so, they will 
 soon lose ambitious and aspiring young men and women from the stu¬ 
 dent body. The two-year normal college course does not lead definitely 
 anywhere, unless it is to a ‘blind alley.’ 
 
 ”... Four years is much more satisfactory. . . Then, too, this will tenc 
 to put the profession of teaching somewhat on a par with law, medi¬ 
 cine, and pharmacy. A young man cannot now enter a medical college 
 unless he has had two years’ work of college rank. If normal colleges 
 are to/ be permanent institutions, they must go to the four-year college 
 basis.’ ’ 
 
 TENNESSEE, JOHNSON CITY 
 
 EAST TENNESSEE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Sidney G. Gilbreath: ”For graduation three years’ work 
 above high school graduation is required. Those who complete this 
 course are permitted to teach in high schools. . . We hope to add a fourth 
 year leading to the granting of the bachelor’s degree. We shall continue 
 to grant elementary teacher’s license to those who have had two years 
 of normal school training above high school graduation. 
 
 ‘ If we are going to make teaching a profession, the normal school 
 must offer the best preparation for teaching that can be given in an., 
 school.’ ’ 
 
 VIRGINIA, EAST RADFORD 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL FOR WOMEN 
 
 President John McConnell: “I feel that two years upon graduation 
 from a four-year high school is hardly adequate time for the training 
 of teachers. I do not think well of the three-year course. If we 
 extend our course longer than two years it will be, in my judgment, 
 necessary to make it a four-year course.” 
 
 WASHINGTON, CHENEY 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 Secretary to President: “I may say that the Cheney Normal School 
 is now a normal college carrynig the four years of work beyond hign 
 school graduation. President Showaltsr is very much in favor of the 
 plan. 
 
 “In explanation I may say that our two vears of upper colleg 
 work is arranged on the regular collegiate plan of choosing a major 
 and a minor to be worked out fully through special departments. The 
 lower half of the normal school work is so arranged that it will lead 
 to an elementary diploma at the end of two years. This is done in 
 order to keep the schools supplied with teachers and to make natural 
 
38 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 break in the work at the middle of the four-year period. The two 
 college years are worked out more completely because of the need& 
 which the teachers must prepare to meet. 
 
 ‘‘You will note from the sheet which I am sending to you that 
 there is a regular core of such matter required of all courses. Then 
 there is a differentiated core required for different courses within the 
 two years. We find that this plan works out very well and that every 
 year larger and still larger numbers of our students return for the 
 upper college work. With the new plan which provides that teachers, 
 elementary and high school, shall receive the same salary based upon 
 equal preparation and experience has proven to be a great stimulus 
 to the elementary teacher to work on through the advanced courses 
 President Showalter believes that every State in the Union should 
 adopt such a plan and believes it .to be commendable that the normal 
 schools of the country lead out in this recommendation.” 
 
 WASHINGTON. ELLENSBURG 
 WASHINGTON STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President George H. Black: ‘‘Replying to your direct inquiry con¬ 
 cerning the four-year course, I wish to say that the normal schools 
 of Washington are now offering two-year, three-year and four-year 
 courses for high school graduates. Conditions may differ in differen 
 states as to the demand for such courses. We find that teachers of 
 experience, especially those teaching in city schools, are beginning to 
 demand a four-year course in our state, and probably in the next three 
 or four years we shall see a decided movement toward a four-year 
 normal course. Such courses are already offered in a majority of the 
 normal schools of the United States.” 
 
 WEST VIRGINIA, HUNTINGTON 
 MARSHALL COLLEGE 
 
 President F. R. Hamilton: ‘‘Marshall College offers this year for 
 the first time the four-year college course. The conditions in this 
 state certainly justify the organization of work in this institution on 
 a four-year college basis.” 
 
 WISCONSIN, LA CROSSE 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President F. A. Cotton: ‘‘Our Board is just now consindering the 
 
 advisability of organizing four-year courses in all of the normal schools 
 of the state. The Attorney General recently decided that under the 
 normal school laws, the board is authorized to establish four-year 
 courses. All of the schools now have three-year courses, and it is 
 possible that during the next year or two four-year courses will be 
 established.’ ’ 
 
 WISCONSIN, MILWAUKEE 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Carroll Gardner Pearse: ‘‘We are now in Wisconsin 
 making every possible effort to establish full courses, four years in 
 length beyond high school. I believe that every progressive state 
 will do this within a few years. All state normal schools should be 
 teachers colleges with courses four years in length beyond high school 
 and the privilege of giving the appropriate degree in education to stu¬ 
 dents who complete such a course.” 
 
MAYVILLE, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 39 
 
 WISCONSIN, OSHKOSH 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President H. A. Brown: “The state normal schools of Wisconsin 
 are not giving four-year courses at this time, but a strong effort is bein' 
 made by the presidents of the normal schools to secure these courses 
 and the granting of degrees at an early date. We are hoping to pi 
 this through this year. We have a three-year course for high school 
 teachers and a three-year industrial course, and our other courses are 
 two years in length. 
 
 “I am firm in the conviction that the normal schools should give 
 four-year courses with degrees, but I am equally firm in the belief 
 that the work of normal schools in this case shall be strictly work 
 of university grade, both as to quality and quantity. 1 fear that a 
 good deal of the normal school work at the present time could not 
 qualify in this respect.” 
 
 WISCONSIN, SUPERIOR 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President V. E. McCaskill: “I might say that we do not lia,v^ 
 a four-year normal course. We are. hoping that the legislature will 
 look favorably upon such a proposition for the next two years. My 
 own personal opinion is that there is no reaison why the normal schoo 1 ' 
 should not do four years ’ of work. I believe they can do it and do 
 it as thoroughly as can be done by the great universities.” 
 
 -o- 
 
 Extracts from Letters of Normal School 
 Presidents Averse to a Four-year Course 
 above High School Graduation 
 in Normal Schools 
 
 ALABAMA, FLORENCE 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President Henry J. Willingham: “It is the business of the normal 
 school to serve its territory regardless of all other questions. Each 
 institution, or those managing it, must determine whether that service 
 can be best rendered through! a two-year course or a four-year course. 
 
 “In most; parts of the South a two-year course is all we can offer 
 yet if we are to reach the average village school with our graduates. 
 If we were to give them a four-year course they would never enter as 
 a teacher anything less than the very best and highest-paid teachiiv 
 places in the state. The average grade position, therefore, would never 
 know what a normal school graduate looks like. This condition does 
 not obtain, I am sure, in a. good many other states and a great man> 
 other sections of still other states.” 
 
 ARIZONA, TEMPE 
 
 TEMPE NORMAL SCHOOL OF ARIZONA 
 
 President A. J. Matthews: “...So far as we are concerned I 
 would not be in, favor of it [extending course to four years], as we 
 have such a small population and our university is not overcrowded. 
 Such a course for us would undoubtedly hold a few people, but not in 
 sufficient numbers to justify the expense. 
 
40 
 
 3 0112 105658287 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 KENTUCKY, RICHMOND 
 
 EASTERN KENTUCKY STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President T. J. Coates: “We are of the opinion that this institution 
 should devote its entire time to the first two years’ college work. With 
 the money we have to spend, we feel that we must think quantitatively. 
 We feel that we must devote our entire time to the work of furnishing 
 teachers with two years’ high school work. 
 
 “I understand fully that there are arguments for the full four 
 years’ college work for the training of teachers. Some day we may 
 advance to that point, hut we do not feel that we are prepared for 
 it yet.’’ 
 
 MISSISSIPPI, HATTIESBURG 
 MISSISSIPPI NORMAL COLLEGE 
 
 President Joe Cook: “I...believe that the normal school should 
 continue with two years of college work, the completion of which 
 is evidenced by a diploma, and leave the granting of degrees to colleges 
 organized for such work. 
 
 “Personally, I believe in a three years’ high school and above 
 that a three years’ college course leading to a degree... 
 
 “The normal school giving two years’ college work has already 
 demonstrated its usefulness, and I believe ’that usefulness would be 
 destroyed if the normal school should undertake to enter the field of 
 the regular college. I know that there is an argument that the normal 
 school can continue to give a diploma upon the completion of two 
 years’ college work, and thereby be relieved of the hurt that comes 
 from the taunt of the regular college. However, if such a course should 
 be followed, the student .would never feel that he had completed the 
 normal school upon receiving a diploma, the value of the diploma would 
 be depreciated, and the spirit of the normal school, which in my opinion 
 is the most valuable asset in the school work of the nation, would 
 be lost.’’ 
 
 TENNESSEE, MURFREESBORO 
 
 MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 
 President P. A. Lyon: “You will observe that our course of study 
 extends three years beyond a high school course. This is the first 
 year we have tried this, and we have not tried it sufficiently to de¬ 
 termine about the results... I doubt if we should enter into competition 
 with the state universities, by giving the four-year course leading to 
 a degree. . .We believe this is the best policy to pursue. However, 1 
 think this depends on circumstances, and I have known a number of 
 instances where the normal schools gave the four-year course very 
 successfully.’ ’ 
 
 I 
 
 GENERAL PRINTING CO.. MINNEAPOLIS