As we mingle freely and on equal terms with our friends and kinsfolk and acquaintance who are among the Ph. D.'s and LL.D.'s and D. D.'s of scholarly fame, and also with the younger sisterhood of educated women who are wearing recent college honors, we are sensible of no feeling of abashed inferiority, as though in the presence of things too high for us; nor do the attainments of these scholars, which we appreciate and greatly rejoice in, seem to dwarf in any degree the apparently equally valuable powers of many another friend whose mental acquirements have been gained in some widely different course of training in the great university of American life.
But there is something in the experience of that high-school teacher with the agencies which raises a query as to the relations of the high schools to the educational status of the modern age. If there is one point that seems fully proved by the educational progress of the last half century it is that kindergarten and primary-school teachers need professional training for their work. The time was, and not so very long ago, when it was thought that any one with a common-school education could teach little children. But it seems a far cry back to that position to-day.
Is it, then, true that the high school is the only part of our public-school system in which the teacher does not need to be a student of pedagogical science, to be in sympathetic and intelligent touch with modern school methods, and to have gained a degree of tried skill through supervised schoolroom experience before being placed in full charge of schoolroom work? This would indeed be passing strange. One would suppose that the high-school teacher must need for his equipment an intelligent understanding of the methods and plans of the lower schools from the kindergarten up, with some added study of the special needs of high schools—a more comprehensive rather than a shorter course of professional training. If not, then will some one tell us why not?
The question is not whether the high-school teacher should have a broad and thorough scholarship. That "goes without saying." And if it be said that the best place to gain this scholarship is within the walls of a good college, we of the normal school have no desire to challenge the assertion. But, given all that scholarship, all that native ability can do, the idea that high-school teachers have less need than primary teachers to professionalize their work is a baseless assumption which is certain to be undermined sooner or later by the tide of educational progress. It is not hard to predict that the near future will require of the would-be high-school teacher as much of scholarship as the college gives, and as much professional equipment as is given by the normal schools in their best and longest courses.
