Oak Street UNCLASSIFIED «y NEW SERIES SEPTEMBER, 1912 Vol. I. No. 1 SUPPLEMENT TO PEABODY COLLEGE BULLETIN George Peabody College for Teachers UNIVERSITY OP ITS FUNCTION PUBLISHED BY GEORGE PEABODY COLLEGE FOR TEACHERS JANUARY, APRIL, JUNE, SEPTEMBER NASHVILLE, TENN. Application for Entry as Second-Class Matter at the Postoffice at Nashville, Tenn., Pending George Peabody College for Teachers ITS FUNCTION September, 1912 NASHVILLE, TENN. Published by George Peabody College for Teachi 1312 THE TRUSTEES OF GEORGE PEABODY COLLEGE FOR TEACHERS PRESIDENT JUDGE EDWARD T. SANFORD, Knoxville, Tenn. VICE-PRESIDENT PROF. J. B. ASWELL, Natchitoches, La. SECRETARY-TREASURER E. A. LINDSEY, Esq., Nashville, Tenn. CHAIRMAN OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE JUDGE J. C. BRADFORD, Nashville, Tenn Dr. B. J. Baldwin, Montgomery, Ala. Prof. Hugh S. Bird, Fredericksburg, Va. W. A. Blair, Esq., Winston-Salem, N. C. Stuart H. Bowman, Esq., Huntington, W. Va. James E. Caldwell, Esq., Nashville, Tenn. Hon. J. M. Dickinson, Nashville, Tenn. Thomas B. Franklin, Esq., Columbus, Miss. Joseph K. Orr, Esq., Atlanta, Ga. A. H. Robinson, Esq., Nashville, Tenn. Bolton Smith, Esq., Memphis, Tenn. Prof. W. K. Tate, Columbia, S. C. Gov. Ben W. Hooper, Ex-Officio, Nashville, Tenn. "Education, a debt due from present to future generations." — George Peabody. The Function of George Peabody College for Teachers The Trustees of the Peabody Education Fund, who have been for almost half a century the earnest students and supporters of every phase of education in the South and who in establishing George Peabody College for Teachers are concretely perpetuat- ing the noble spirit of George Peabody's philanthropy, have de- clared that the purpose of the College is "To serve as an educa- i P II s tional crown of the systems of schools which - w u t?a the Southern States have established and are nig e u- maintaining. It is to be a college for the ucation of higher education of teachers for all the South. 1 eacners tor Articulating at every point with the state sys- All the oOUth terns of schools and colleges and supplement- ing them in a field all its own, its mission will be to send out into all these states men of trained ability to build up and administer state stystems of education. . . . "All experts on the subject know that such a college for the training of teachers is the greatest and crying need of the South today." The above statement will be heartily assented to by practically every educator in the South and every student of Southern school progress. The most urgent educational need of the South at present is trained leadership, which it is the peculiar function of this institution to develop. Peabody College must lay special em- phasis on this feature of its work and must unite most heartily with all the other teacher-training agencies in the South intended to develop educational leaders. At no period in our history have we needed intellectual power as we do at this time of industrial, social, and educational transformation and regeneration. 6 George Peabody College for Teachers: In the language of one of the most prominent educators of Th T ' * « i ^ le South, "Big men must go into big school- 1 ne 1 raining ot houses> else the educational revival of the bducational South will amount t0 but little » p ea body Leaders College will join most earnestly in the effort to increase the number of these big men, believing that in this way its greatest contribution can be made to every phase of South- ern development. Among all the forces at work for human civili- zation the schools must be given a very high place ; and in this effort a college, the specific purpose of which is to discover and develop with all its energies the future leaders of education, can not fail to be a most important factor. In the present reorganization of our whole social order, we must have highly trained experts, able to grasp the advanced edu- cational thought of the rest of the world and translate it into the serviceable working terms of our own needs at home. The South is calling for more leaders who embody the vitalizing forces of a larger life and whose outlook transcends the limits of the state in which they live. This breadth of view, this catholicity of spirit, which is the life-giving element in any education for citi- zenship, is especially significant and powerful in the training of educational statesmen; for they must form the habit of dealing with great forces, working over broad areas and through long periods of time. In brief, George Peabody College for Teachers intends to do for the South what Teachers College in New York City and the School of Education at the University of Chicago have done for those sections ; what the Medical College of Johns Hopkins Uni- versity, of Harvard University, and the other medical colleges have done for the profession of medicine; what the School of Agriculture at Cornell University, at the University of Wisconsin, and the other agricultural colleges have done for leadership in farm life. It proposes to shape educational thought and practice in men of large directive capacity, and to train experts in all phases of education, who will, in turn, transmit this training to other leaders. It will increase the number, information, and skill of those leaders within each state, who always Leaders Dear the burdens of educational progress. In view of this obligation it purposes to sur- round itself with a faculty fitted for leadership. The young men and young women who are to become the future leaders of the South must come into contact with men who possess the enkind- ling spirit of leadership. Its Function. 7 The mission of Peabody College, through cooperation with other teacher-training agencies, will be to extend and intensify the instrumentalities of service in the field of teaching. It will supplement all the activities at work for the betterment of South- ern education in this field, not duplicating any of the indispensable agencies now in operation. Peabody College will best fulfill its mission by laying particu- lar stress upon certain lines of effort. It proposes to make a definite attack on those urgent needs which have brought its present policy into existence and which are so generally recog- nized. The following statement of the function of George Pea- body College for Teachers has been formulated with direct ref- erence to these needs of Southern education. There is no demand in the South more difficult to supply than that of trained teachers, supervisors, and administrators for nor- T T o ma l schools. The agencies for the prepara- ' tion of these much needed officials are so few Normal Schools and so far removed f rom t hj s section that it is almost vain to attempt to procure them. In training these teachers and administrators, Peabody College will help to define the aims and determine the spirit and methods of these institu- tions. It will, in other words, teach the teachers who teach the teachers of the South, and no other form of education will multi- ply itself so rapidly as this. A very definite demand comes to Peabody College from many newly organized Departments of Education in Colleges and Uni- H~ . versities. These higher institutions must l-'I'Qtpccoyc ' . bear an increasingly important relation to the Of Education for secondary school systems of their states. They Colleges ana are ^ therefore, in need of professors with ex- Universities tended training in their chosen specialties. The teacher, to be vital, must beyond question possess a broader, richer training than that given by the school in which he teaches. Peabody College will further round out and give symmetry TTT \A A t0 tne wor ^ °f tne n o rm al school by supply- r ' ing more advanced training to those of its Courses for graduates desiring it. INormai bcnool An unanswerable argument for a Teachers Graduates College in the South is the fact, well known by every normal school president, that an increasingly large pro- portion of the graduates of the normal schools each year desire something higher, but there is now no place in the South to which 8 George Peabody College for Teachers: they may be directed. Peabody College will, therefore, tempt to larger fields of usefulness those who have hitherto been con- fined to smaller areas of service. Selecting the most promising youth from all the normal schools of the South, Peabody College will endeavor to change and ex- pand the range of their activities, so that when they pass out of the College to become normal school administrators and teachers, they will uplift not only the students whom they teach, but also the entire commonwealth which they serve. A graduate school of education, comprehensively planned and fully equipped, does not exist in the South today. Peabody Col- TV A Cradnatp ^ e £ e ^ nten< ^ s t0 su Pply such a graduate school, o I t e n It will extend the work of the departments of education in colleges and universities and will partments 01 enhance the opportunities for more prolonged Education and anc j intensive study by such of their graduates for Colleges as desire wider preparation. The graduates of these departments are imbued with the idea of rendering the largest possible service to their generation and their section. They, therefore, willingly submit to long periods of preparation and the most careful study of the best means of discharging efficiently their full educational and social obligation. And the graduates of Southern academic institutions, which have their curricula cast in the cultural and classical form and do not offer specific courses for the training of teachers, are like- wise permeated with more or less idealism for social service. They willingly enter upon the teaching career, but too readily become discouraged and abandon it for other professions, be- cause they find in it only the monotony of a vocation leading no- where and learn to rate it as far below the standard of a real profession. Lacking within themselves the training and skilled insight for constructive educational leadership, they miss the thrill of enthusiasm which comes from progressive endeavor. Peabody College will offer to such promising young men and young women the opportunity of a higher plane of work, and to the active, restless imagination an appeal to greater constructive- ness, thereby adding to the profession many of these coveted in- dividuals of rare talent and creative ability. There is no present-day problem which is more insistently projecting itself into the social consciousness and conscience than that of the rehabilitation of country life. Perhaps eighty-five per Its Function. 9 cent of the citizenship of the South, and far more than that of its strength and backbone, have in the past resided in the country V The Improve- anc * w *^ continue to do so. Rural life must ment of Rural oe m ade more economically profitable if men Life and the are to remain in the country. The cities will Rural School continue to rob the country of the cream of its population, if rural life is not made more humanly interesting, more richly enjoyable. The rural school is the most potent agen- cy through which these ideas are to be realized and country life made more profitable and interesting. Peabody College proposes to establish strong departments of rural education, rural life economy in all its phases, agriculture, domestic science and domestic art, applied art and design, home decoration and home gardening, and manual training. The ground plans call for an agricultural building, with a large ex- periment field, a manual training building, a domestic economy building, an applied arts building, and a fine arts building, be- sides buildings for the teaching of those sciences closely related to the foregoing. We have scarcely begun the search for the school best suited to country communities. Our entire educational scheme needs revamping in order to contribute most directly to this school. It is with the greatest difficulty that a young man, wishing to prepare himself for the office of county superintendent, can find technical training for rural school supervision. A Teachers Col- lege centrally located in this great rural section should devote its best energies to the study and enrichment of country life through country schools. These activities will be organized by Peabody College into a distinct group of courses, with special professors and students, and with a distinctive title, "The Seaman A. Knapp School of Country Life." This will insure an intensiveness of investigation from which will result some solutions for the insistent demands of country life. Besides the courses offered on the campus in the Knapp Memorial Building for the study of agriculture and rural conditions, it is intended to have a farm in some typical rural section within ten or twelve miles of Nashville. Here will be exemplified the best practical forms of effort, both for leading backward communities into better ways and for proving to pros- perous communities new roads to still greater prosperity. In this environment of model barns, fences, implements, and of high- bred farm animals and farm plants, will be developed a model 10 George Peabody College for Teachers: rural school as a community center. This farm will work out its results with reference to varying Southern conditions and will become a suitable rallying point for demonstrations and confer- ences of rural workers. Thus through the country will the entire South be assisted in its economic and social betterment. In offering specific courses in industrial education, Peabody College will have a field all its own. Although the South is pre- eminently an industrial section, and although much has been writ- ten recently about industrial training, yet this most important group of subjects has not actually found its way into the schools of the people, except through sporadic attempts. The greatest VT I H t ' 1 difficulty is encountered in ordering the sub- VI. industrial j ec t-matter to the understanding of the child and in procuring teachers for the few schools which are ready to introduce these subjects. Within the territory to be served there is not a single higher institution of learning which offers the requisite training for specialists in teaching in- dustrial arts, or which is seriously undertaking a study of the kind of industrial education most needed in the South. Since reforms begin at the top and filter down, that study which most directly fits the young citizen for his environment will never find its proper place in the curriculum of the common school, until such an institution as George Peabody College for Teachers dignifies and emphasizes industrial education and supplies the demands of normal schools, high schools, city and county school systems for efficient instructors in that subject. It is generally agreed that the conservation of human life and energy is the foundation of the economic, in- VII. Health tellectual, and social power and progress of any people. Hopeless life-failures are usually body-failures first. In the vigorous and far-reaching public-health movement now going on, the strategic point of attack is in the children of each generation. Prophylaxis is the accepted and most economic mode of attack, but leadership in this vital undertaking requires spe- cially trained supervisors and experts to spread information and institute reform. Opportunity will be offered through the de- partment of physical education for prolonged study in sanitation and health, physical training, medical inspection of school chil- dren, organized games, etc., which will look to the creation of a new type of educational leadership. Its Function. 11 Peabody College will put special emphasis upon systematic training for social and religious service. Upon the crowning point of the campus will be situated its noblest edifice, the Social- Religious Building. Standing at the head of Vlll. oOCiai ana t j ie acac j em i c quadrangle and in the center of Keligious |- ne dormitory section, it will indicate at once Service by its position and character the supremacy of religious experience and the unification of the entire life with- in the institution in social service. Systematic training in relig- ious education and definite preparation for social participation will be provided. Both by actual instruction and by cooperation in community affairs the students of the College should increase not only their purpose but also their ability to serve. Thus the College hopes to assist in perfecting the connection between edu- cation and human affairs, religion and life, moral ideals and social practice, so that those who go out to administer the schools may be fitted to equip them with religious and moral efficiency as well as with intellectual and motor skill. Such an institution zvill constitute an educational clearing house for the Southern States. Into this center will pour educational data of all kinds and from all quarters, here to be stored, digested, TY EM f 1 formulated, and put again into circulation. ' . It will become the headquarters for the most Clearing House trustworthy information upon all Southern educational conditions. Through its graduates, its faculty, its departmental bureaus, and its research publications, the data thus gathered and organized will return to the people in the form of enlightened opinion and wise counsel to direct educational ac- tivity over this whole territory. It will be the chief center of all sound educational reform throughout the whole system of educa- tion in the Southern States. It will take care to assist and make its contribution to the efficiency of all agencies working in the South. The many good things happening in the South might also be profitable — very profitable — to educators in other sections of our common country. Peabody College will attract a high order of talent to the pro- fession of teaching. In the industrial awakening now occurring Y R . . the teaching profession is likely to suffer dis- ' ■» astrously from the desertion of rare genius lalent for the to the other pro f ess i ons . But, with the estab- rTOtession lishment of an institution inviting young men and young women to more prolonged and intense study in spe- 12 George Peacody College for Teachers: cial fields, thus offering opportunities for a more efficient career than could otherwise be attained by the unskilled, the profession may hope to select the best and most promising spirits, those showing decided aptitude for educational leadership. In offering a greater variety of courses of instruction, it will stimulate the more diverse talents of youth, act as a sort of magnetic tower to genius, and prove an incentive to those brighter minds which are inspired only by the rarer reaches of endeavor. It will thus be- come a source of inspiration and will create objects of hope bright enough to tempt the finest powers into the profession. One of the most significant enterprises to be affected by this institution is the high school movement. Professors of secondary Yi tk w u education connected with state universities, c L IM anc * *"gh school inspectors connected with ocnool Move- state departments of education, have accom- men t plished during the past six years thrilling re- sults in persuading legislators and local authorities to establish systems of state, county, and township high schools. Money for buildings, equipment, and faculty has not been withheld, but this is still inadequate to the needs of the South. Moreover, adequate ideals, sane principles, records of successful practice, and results of scientific investigation are also needed to prevent incorporating in the very foundations of these schools serious mistakes requir- ing years for correction. No class of educational promoters in modern times has turned to the usual sources of guidance and inspiration with more empty and more hopeless results than have these professors of secondary education and their colaborers, who were pioneers in furthering the establishment of "the people's college." In answer to the foregoing urgent demand, Peabody College will offer courses in secondary education for prospective high school principals and supervisors, and will train professors of secondary education and high school inspectors. A much needed service in the South is the organization and direction of all the forces at work in the field of elementary edu- cation. The South will soon be able to finance an adequate sys- tern of public schools, for which the high All. rLiemen- school and normal school will prepare local tary bcnool teachers. But the supervision of these teach- SuperviSion ers anc [ the proper expenditure of these ac- cumulating funds will require more highly trained leaders than the high school and normal school can supply. Its Function. 13 Fifty per cent of the taxes in the South goes to schools, and eighty per cent of this fifty per cent is expended by the county superintendent. Through his hands the largest portion of such funds reaches the elementary schools, and it should be wisely disbursed. A trained superintendent demands that all of his time be purchased for supervision. An untrained superintend- ent, on the contrary, is satisfied to divide his energies between the schools and other more lucrative employment, to the detriment of the schools. It is plain that we shall never have the most efficient system of elementary schools, until we can guarantee to them that sort of expert supervision which will systematize and unify all the activi- ties of teaching; this, too, notwithstanding the training which the normal schools may supply to the individual teachers within the public schools. A Teachers College must provide itself zvith such a faculty and give them such equipment and leisure from the drudgery of ex- XIII Educational cesswe teaching that they may become edu- Surveyors and cational surveyors. If it is a good thing to Investigators make geological surveys and coast surveys; (a) Surveys of Childhood if it is a good thing to make surveys of our soil, of plant life and animal life, it is a far better thing to survey the needs of childhood and to diagnose the human and psychical needs of our people. We are learning how to raise better hogs and better corn; are not our children of much more value than many swine? The great manufacturers employ the rarest inventive skill to devise improvements in their products. In like manner will Pea- body College gather to itself those who are (b) The Training equipped to advance thought, to discover and investigators transmit better ways of doing things in edu- cation, to analyze educational systems into their elements and submit improved methods of treatment. Under the present conditions, research and investigation are well nigh impossible in normal schools and departments of edu- cation attached to colleges. In these institutions the members of the faculty are not usually allowed sufficient leisure from their class teaching for the pursuit of original studies which tend to advance the borderland of the science. They are, therefore, right- ly but transmitters of the science as handed down to them. George Peabody College for Teachers assumes as one of its functions this creative study, this discovery-method. Blessed with freedom 14 George Peabody College for Teachers: from political, ecclesiastical, and local opinion, it may undertake those experiments in the field of education by which, and by which only, permanent progress is made possible. The South furnishes the environment in which its average stu- dent is likely to do his work. If education is to adapt the pros- pective citizen to his environment, then by all means it should make a careful analysis of that environment, (c) Training in the The social structure of the South must be o "the Work studied before proper direction can be given to instruction in any subject. All educational data need to be worked over in terms of social and economic needs of our section. A great unordered mass of material awaits the critical study of scientifically trained experts, a task which could be undertaken by specialists in the faculty and among the grad- uates. The study of economy in the administration of school funds, of improved methods in the management of schools, and of waste engendered by the duplication and overcrowding of the instrumentalities of education, offers a hitherto neglected field of unusual importance to the South. It is very apparent, therefore, how vastly important it is to train teachers for this work in the environment with which they are to deal. In order to meet with any degree of success, it is tremendously necessary to understand all the local conditions and aspects of the territory in which these leaders must labor. Even a definite understanding of different conditions will not serve fully for work in the South, which is an unusually cohe- rent territory as regards topography, racial characteristics, tra- ditions, and ideals. A thorough understanding of all these at first hand is the prime essential to further progress. If the South is to make her proper contribution to national life, it must be done by taking proper stock of her capacities and working out- ward from the center of her historic life. Perhaps the most far-reaching service which can be rendered by the College will be in the field of training experts in school administration, in the scientific handling of school budgets. It is well known how wasteful have been our expenditures of school YIV PH money and how much needed is a set of * " trained men who can administer school finan- tional fcxonomy ces an( j ^ ve w j se direction to school legisla- tion. Trained experts who can eliminate the financial waste so prevalent in our present administration of schools will prove a Its Function. 15 blessing far above almost any other contribution that might be made. We need to introduce a better system of educational book- keeping. From no other vantage point can the educational campaigns of the future be conducted with such effectiveness and with such YV t ii' f vigor. The educational campaign of the fu- XV. intelligent ture win be different from that of the past> iL,aucationai though campaigning will have to continue un- Lampaigns remittingly, since public sentiment will need revising with each new generation. The day when the educator can be no more than a campaigner, however, has passed in the South. He must know how to teach, how to organize, how to direct, how to administer, how to inspire. The educational booster has served his day. He must now have first-hand knowledge of the best in the profession, and must speak more accurately and concretely concerning the very definite problems presenting themselves for solution. Peabody College, through its faculty and graduates, purposes to conduct a perpetual campaign of popular education, directed by the most intelligent and consecrated leadership. The ethnic unity of the South, as well as the similarity of its traditions, ideals, and educational conditions, emphasizes the need of one really adequate institution of learning on its own soil. It YVT Th IT *fi * s °^ ^ e utmost importance that the South " should possess one great teacher-training cation of Tested school? and that it shouM be free and unham _ rnnciples and pered in its search for truth. George Pea- rractice body College for Teachers, perceiving these vital advantages, proposes to incarnate them and transmit their life-giving force through its graduates to the whole South. Here educational administration may be made uniform with regard to those successful experiences that have borne the test in other states with similar conditions. Here moral and religious training, always acceptable to the South, may be developed with- out the fear of dogmatic control. Here new paths of investiga- tion may be blazed without fear of political interference. Here, too, democratic education may find its fullest realization, among the most homogeneous native population on this continent, un- fettered by the alien influence of imported innovations. WILLIAMS PRINTING COMPANY. NASHVILLI UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 3 0112 111958879