who, finally, learn how to teach after a fashion; but who spoil a great many classes before they learn how to teach at all. The true economy of school management is the employment of professionally educated teachers, and the exclusion of itinerants and bunglers. "The chief function of the normal school," says Thomas Hunter, President of the New York Normal College, "is to prevent machine teaching." Our common-schools need not more laws, rules, and regulations, but better-trained teachers in the school-houses. "A good school," says President Eliot, of Harvard University, "is a man or a woman."

IV. THE PROFESSION OF TEACHING.

Except in a few colleges and universities, it cannot be said that there is in our country a profession of teaching. There are, it is true, many men and women who have made teaching their life-work; but they have little or no legal recognition as professional teachers. The peripatetic pedagogue is found only in the remotest rural districts on the borders of civilization, yet all teachers are still regarded by law and by custom as itinerants. In many states "the law" requires teachers to be examined annually for a certificate "to teach a common-school one year." In every state of the Union, law-or custom stronger than lawrequires that teachers shall be appointed annually "for the term of one year." But in no state does "the law” require any professional training whatever as a prerequisite "for teaching a common-school one year." The legal status of the teacher is strictly in accordance with the popular fallacy that anybody who can, in any way, get a certificate is fit to keep school. In a few states and cities there is a protozoic indication of an order of de

velopment higher than that of the single-cell certificate; but, before teachers can gain a professional footing, there must be some general system of permanent diplomas authorized by state law, as are medical diplomas, or licenses to practise law.

Have we not reached such a stage of progress that a normal-school diploma may safely be taken as prima facie evidence of fitness to teach, or that the life diploma of one state may be legally recognized in every other? Must local exclusiveness stand forever a Chinese wall in the way of the school-teacher? Must all teachers, when they change their residence, forever be compelled by legal enactments to halt at every state line, or city limits, or district boundary, and submit to an "examination," in order to prove that they are not educational "tramps ?" As iong as "the law" requires teachers to submit to frequent and humiliating examinations, so long will school officials regard them, if not with contempt, with "a certain condescension."

The annual election or appointment of teachers is another legal barrier against teaching as a profession. It is not possible to dignify as a profession an occupation in which men and women are subject to an annual loss of place at the caprice of ever-changing school-boards. Even under our civil-service system, by which places are parcelled out as spoils by the victors, the tenure of position is at least four years. There is need of school-service reform as well as of civil-service reform. There is only one large city in our country in which the tenure of a teacher's place is during good behavior; everywhere else appointments are made annually "for the term of one year."

Among the minor influences tending to prevent the

recognition of teaching as a profession are the short terms of school officials, the multiplicity of state laws and city ordinances, the low rates of teachers' salaries, and the almost total lack of any discrimination in wages between trained teachers and raw recruits. Before there can be a supply of professional teachers, there must be some demand for them by the people whose children go to school. There is still another stumbling-block in the way of the professional teacher in the large cities where boards of education are elected by direct vote at general elections, and that is the influence of ward politicians in securing. places for friends and relatives as a reward for political or partisan services. In the days of his power, Tweed was a dictator of school appointments in New York, and in smaller cities innumerable smaller Tweeds are still dictating appointments. As long as there is a public disposition to regard school departments as charitable institutions where needy and politically useful persons can be respectably pensioned, just so long will it be impossible to secure professional teachers.

People are apt to put too much faith in systems, and too little in devoted, educated, and skilled men and women. "It will be a sorry day for the development of American life," says Superintendent Hancock, "when school authorities shall come to consider organization and method in our school system, however perfect, a substitute for brains and character in the educator, or to look on mechanic as the equal of dynamic teaching." "If there be one profession," says Tyndall," of paramount importance, I believe it to be that of the schoolmaster."

John D. Philbrick, Ex-Superintendent of the Boston Schools, says, "We cannot too often repeat the great

fundamental maxim, 'As is the teacher, so is the school.' In the administration of a system of public instruction, therefore, it should be the first and foremost aim to select superior teachers, to retain them in service, and to insist upon constant progress in excellence. I trust the time is not far distant when no teacher will be permitted to assume the responsibility of conducting a primary school who has not been first thoroughly trained to the art in a model school."

V. THE NEXT STEP.

It must be evident that the weakest point in our school system is the very general employment of untrained teachers. The sheet-anchor of our hope for improvement is in the establishment by legal enactments that only those persons shall be eligible to secure teachers' certificates who, as a prerequisite, shall have graduated from a normal school, or shall have pursued in some other school a satisfactory course in the science and art of education, all holders of existing certificates to be ranked as professionals. In the outset, this plan can be carried into full effect only in the larger cities and towns. It will be impracticable to establish such a standard of attainments, for a long time to come, in the ungraded country schools, kept open only a part of the year; but to bring public opinion up to this point should be the objective aim of every educator. There are persons born with the natural capacities to make superior instructors, but there are no "born" teachers; they are the product of technical training superadded to education. Emerson's general statement applies with special fitness to the education of the teacher:

"Our arts and tools give to him who can handle them much the same advantage over the novice as if you ex

tended his life ten, fifty, or a hundred years. And I think it is the part of good-sense to provide every fine soul with such culture that it shall not, at thirty or forty years, have to say, This which I might do is made hopeless through my want of weapons.""

It is true that not all graduates of medical schools become good physicians; not all graduates of theological schools become eloquent preachers; not all graduates of art schools become great artists; and not all graduates of normal schools become efficient teachers; but in all these cases there is a far greater probability of success than there would be with persons both untrained and untried. Professional schools do send out teachers with some knowledge derived from the experience of educators, and some conception of right methods of instruction.

There are in the United States about 100 public normal schools which graduate about 2000 teachers every year. Into the standing army of 300,000 teachers there are enlisted annually at least 20,000 raw recruits who have to learn how to teach at the public expense. These facts do not indicate that the people have yet been educated up to the belief of Horace Mann, "that normal schools are a new instrumentality in the advancement of the race."

We need not on this account, however, despair of the future. From the very nature of the school systems, our progress must be slow. We have a multiplicity of state laws, hundreds of city charters and city boards of education, thousands of town committees, and tens of thousands of district trustees. Uniform advancement is impossible. The school district is the unit of political organization, and every district is, in school affairs, an independent republic, or rather a local democracy. The schools are