the ability to control adolescent emotion and to direct adolescent will. That is the superlatively fine art of teaching, the birthright of a few, the despair of the many. Nevertheless, few schools can boast of having many geniuses on their staffs, and in some way the average teacher must be trained to realize the responsibility of his position. School organizations of many kindsfor social intercourse, mutual benefit, recreation, athletics - springing up over night must be directed aright or they will surely go wrong. Each boy is a problem, each girl an enigma, and yet the well-being of the school demands instinctive, prompt, sympathetic, effective action on the part of those who stand in loco parentis. I mention this, not because our high-school teachers are ignorant of their duties or neglectful of their opportunities in my experience they are prodigal to a fault of their time and energy when their pupils are in need of personal guidance — but because I want to suggest a way of measuring the efficiency of their action. I would apply the same test that I use in other forms of school work. Is the fraternal society intelligently selfdirective? Can the debating club single out a worthy topic for discussion, attack it logically, reach sane conclusions and maintain self-control in doing it? Does the athletic team stand on its own feet, fight its own battles, and win its prizes as men do who struggle honestly for the prizes in business? Is the boy who needs correction encouraged to face his problem rationally and work out his own salvation, or is he told what to do and commanded to do it, or worse still, is he made a dependent upon some stronger personality? These are questions which every

teacher, he who is born as well as he who is made, may profitably put to himself. The professional school may help him find his way, but only experience under wise guidance will bring the answer.

Proficiency standards in training.—I have a word to say to the college professor and the school superintendent. The training of high-school teachers is a work in which they are both vitally interested and in which they should take a part. Unfortunately, neither has as yet seen fit to recognize the obligation. The college teacher is prone to give his recommendation as soon as the student has acquired a smattering of his subject. Colleges should know better than to turn loose the average graduate on unoffending children. The college department of mathematics does not consider its graduates engineers, or the department of physiology its graduates physicians. Why should they think the college student of Latin a fit teacher of Latin? And how does the superintendent of schools justify himself in putting the novice in teaching, even a graduate of our best professional schools, in independent charge of a class? When it is known that so much of our academic training is faulty and that professional training at best is only a preparation for service, how is it that no provision is made for a period of probationary teaching under competent guidance? I venture to say that if our colleges should treat the profession of teaching as they do other professions, and if our school system should provide adequate apprentice training, we should have no excuse to spend a session in discussing the theme of this afternoon. The main reason why we talk so much on this subject and say so little is that the two dominant

influences in shaping the preparation of teachers are in league to hinder progress. Let the colleges refuse to sanction poor teaching and let the schools make it possible for a teacher to perfect his art, and we shall soon have teachers who can do professional work. Until that time we shall waste our breath in talking, and the craftsmen in our schools will head straight for trade-unionism. If that is what you want you will surely get it without effort. But that is not what you want; you want something better. The time is ripe for a change. The public is dissatisfied with what is being done. Greater efficiency is the watchword of the hour, and with greater efficiency go better remuneration and more certain professional standing. It is the high privilege of some of us to help make a few teachers more worthy of their positions. We need coöperation in a task which combines in highest degree professional service with patriotic duty.

The trinity of professional service. In summary, I repeat that the professional training of the high-school teacher follows a course of general training which should give sound scholarship and breadth of view characteristic of the culture such as may be best acquired in a good college course. The distinctive professional factors in a teacher's training are (1) specialized knowledge of the subjects to be taught, including their relations to other subjects of the curriculum and their applications to everyday life, (2) technical skill in teaching, and (3) the ethical aim of education. The perfection of the teacher's equipment along all these lines is a life work, but the professional school may make a beginning by putting the novice in the way of understanding what others have done and

are doing, and by making him self-critical and selfdirective with respect to his own work The greatest need to-day in the development of professional training for high-school teachers is the coöperation of the colleges and the schools—of the colleges by way of making suitable preparation for professional study, and of the schools by way of providing adequate means for giving apprentice training under competent guidance.

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CHAPTER VIII

SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 1

HE finest portrait of the general practitioner, drawn in our time, is that of the Scotch doctor

in Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush.2 "There were no specialists in Drumtochty, so this man had to do everything as best he could, and as quickly. He was chest doctor, and doctor for every other organ as well; he was accoucheur and surgeon; he was oculist and aurist; he was dentist and chloroformist, besides being chemist and druggist." For fifty years he rode up and down the glen, in fair weather and foul, through snowdrifts and flooded fords, to bring consolation and health to the sick and suffering in his district. His presence inspired confidence" the verra look o' him wes victory"; "a blister for the ootside an' Epsom salts for the inside dis his wark, an' they say there's no an herb on the hills he disna ken."

But when the life of Annie Mitchell, Tammas' wife, was ebbing slowly away, Dr. MacLure reached the limit of his skill. Then one hour's work of the city specialist brought relief to the distracted husband and joy to every heart in the glen. No one rejoiced, however, more than the old doctor who saw himself eclipsed; while the great specialist learned enough in his short visit to enable him

1 A revised reprint from the AMERICAN SCHOOLMASTER, September, 1913, used by courtesy of the publishers.

2 These extracts from Ian Maclaren's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush are used by special arrangement with the publishers, Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.