The Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public Schools; A Study Upon an Examination of Tax-Supported Normal Schools in the State of Missouri (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 Excerpt: ...of every well-matured proposal, there should be abundant opportunity, and normal schools that are adequately supported should be encouraged to assume an important leadership in that type of educational progress which is represented by curriculum reform. But this phase of their work should not be confused with their primary duty of training inexperienced practitioners. A normal school may well have its experimental school with its staff of trained experimenters; but the practice school should not be an experimental school, in part because the decision regarding the value or worthlessness of this or that innovation should not depend upon what student-teachers can do with it, and in part because the student-teacher can be made most efficient for his proximate duties when he deals with the same kind of materials that he is likely to deal with in his actual teaching service. The practice school, in short, in so far as its curriculum is concerned, should represent the best approved conditions. This does not mean that it should limit itself to the standards of the median or average public school of its district; it means rather that it should not reflect a type of educational material that the graduates in all probability will never be called upon to teach, and readjustments from which in their first teaching will inevitably cause confusion and inefficiency. This, of course, should not preclude an open-minded attitude upon the part of student-teachers toward new departures; certainly it should not exclude the trial by them of various methods of teaching; "experimentation" of the latter sort should be encouraged. There is, of course, a vast difference between testing various methods of presenting subject-matter and attempting to test widely varying types ...