Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1880 — Educational Department. [ARTICLE]

Educational Department.

Edited by D. B. Xowels, Co. Superintendent. The Model Bchool. „ One of the leading faults of most normal schools is the lack of illustration in the art of teaching. The primary object of a normal or teachers training school is to train the young and inexperienced teachers for the actual duties of the school room. Many attempts hare been made with very unsatisfactory results to teach the theories of teaching by lectures, by forming classes of teachers who are to act the role of children, and by “experience” meetings of teachers. The first of these fails in its objeot because the theories advanced by aleotuier may not be applicable to all schools or successful in the hands of all te'achers. The second plan fails because the average teaoher cannot successfully play the part of a child. His imitations are eilhes too intellectual or too dull. The last plan fails because “out of school,” the teacher ia too much’ inclined to theorize and build castles in the air. Frequently in discussing a point the teaoher becomes more strongly convinced that he is right and others wrong. No immediate means of proof being at hand, the question is frequently discussed until those who have had experience in teaching will be thoroughly convinced of the trnth and utility of a method which in the beginning he regarded and treated as simply a venture, fie 'is thus compelled iq order to defend his first, position to waxj warm in the defense of a false doo-1 trine, and perhaps in addition to that, some young teacher may believe it, carry it into the school room, praotice it, and fail. The only remedy I can see for this is to Institute a model school of children in connection with the] normal sobool, where young teachers may see the results of methods, compare them, piok out the best methpd and practice it. This would leave no room for indulging in wild theories devoid of proof and injurious to the teaoher.

E. K. Pixbob.