such schools become permanent institutions whose utility as a part of our educational system cannot be questioned? How do the number of Normal schools in Minnesota and the outlay for their support compare with the same points in other states?

We certainly need some general information of this kind in order to an intelligent management of our own Normal schools. Statistics of 1874 are the latest that can be given. From these I present the following:

133

22

$459,417 00

20,882 00

Average enrollment in private schools.

Number of states making annual appropriations to Normal

schools....

Total appropriations for 1874..

Average to each of the 27 states..

Item 1.

Item 2.

Item 3.

NORMAL SCHOOLS IN NINE STATES.

Number of schools.

Total state appropriation for current expenses, not

including buildings and apparatus.

Average appropriation to a school.

Item 4.

Population to a school.

For this table I have selected states having a large number of schools, and two that have but one school each. To this last class may be added Connecticut, Alabama, Delaware, Rhode Island, Virginia and Tennessee. It will be noticed that the average to the five schools of Massachusetts is about that of the three schools of Minnesota. The former state also supports a Normal Art school, the current expenses of which in 1875 were $10,987. The ratio of its schools to its population, and the cost to a pupil, are about as in Minnesota. The figures in Kansas are about on the scale of Minnesota, except item 5, which is probably reduced by including large model schools or preparatory departments. In the other states tabulated, the population to a school is from two to six times larger than this item in our own state. In Missouri, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the current expenses to a school are less than in Minnesota. In New York, Illinois and

Michigan they are nearly double this item in Minnesota. Normal education in Ohio, with the exception of two city schools, is left to private enterprise. There are eight schools of this kind in the state with an average enrollment only of 89 less than that of all state schools.

Wisconsin has a permanent Normal school fund, resulting from lands, and amounting in 1875 to $976,364, and yielding an income larger than any state appropriation, except that of New York.

Iowa has relied for Normal education mainly upon a system of county institutes, held under the direction of the State Superintendent. The state on certain conditions makes an annual appropriation to counties which they supplement out of county funds. A permanent Normal school in connection with this plan, will increase in efficiency. The results of these comprehensive measures will be watched by other states. New York supplements its Normal schools by arranging for Normal instruction in academies and high schools. The law provides that the sum of ten dollars shall be paid by the state for each pupil not exceeding twenty, to an academy or union school, Normally instructed under a course prescribed by the Regents of the University. Both the Iowa and the New York plans recognize the fact which will have to be admit ted in Minnesota, that Normal schools proper cannot personally reach the majority of our common school teachers. However good such schools may be, they must be supplemented by more facile institutes, or by temporary classes organized and professionally instructed in connection with other schools.

RAPID INCREASE OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.

A Normal school was opened at Stettin, Prussia, in 1735, another at Berlin, 1748, and a third at Hanover, 1757. Others were opened soon after in various parts of Germany. The utility of such schools was well established before conservative England opened one, about 1812. The first Normal school in the United States was opened at Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839, and subsequently removed to Framingham. Two others soon rose in that state, and other states gradually established such schools, until in 1870, about fifty existed in the United States. Since that date the increase has been rapid. Some seventy-five schools, more than half our present number, have sprung up within the last seven years. It is held by their friends that these schools are not an inference from the logic, the more of a good thing the better, but that well wrought results in the earlier schools, justify this rapid increase.

PROFESSIONAL TRAINING OF TEACHERS NECESSARY.

It is generally admitted that no one should be licensed to practice surgery or medicine who is ignorant of the structure of the human system, and has had no professional preparation. We are not apt to let men undertake to repair our watches unless they have had experience in the business. Manufacturers do not put their machinery into the hands of workmen, ignorant of its nature and uses. Normal schools are designed to make a practical application of this principle in the business of teaching. Dr. Channing has said, "It requires more wisdom to educate a child perfectly, than to govern a state." The wisdom necessary to the best results in teaching, is not innate in young and inexperienced teachers. It is not an inspiration caught by the beginner without help. It is no chance gift, no product of blind experiment. A knowledge of the wonderfully constituted child-mind, and an ability to instruct. it successfully, like surgical and medical skill, will not exist in the great body of our teachers unless we maintain professional training schools. Such schools are necessary to create and preserve the art of teaching. Without them the mass of our teachers would be where our justices of the peace would find themselves, were there. no higher courts for legal investigation and opinions. The Normal schools establish a pedagogic code, test theories by actual practice, and illustrate methods which sensible teachers, varying and adapting to local conditions, find of great value. Here we can notice

A FALLACIOUS OBJECTION TO NORMAL SCHOOLS.

The objector ascertains the number of teachers in the United States. It is 249,845. He finds from our catalogues that our Normal schools in any year contain but a small fraction of these figures, and that in the states having the greatest number of Normal schools, their graduates are in the ratio of only one to eight or ten, compared with the total of their teachers. That is, from seveneights to nine-tenths of our teachers are not personally educated in the Normal schools. From this fact it is inferred that these schools are limited to a very narrow sphere of influence, benefiting but few. But this inference is hasty and very much like the notion that the military school, because it educates personally only a limited few, has nothing to do with national ability for self-defense. When citizens are suddenly called to become soldiers, we can appreciate the necessity for such a school. Not one in a thousand has been under the immediate influence of the school, but indirectly

and remotely the mass of citizens have been affected by its cultus. Ideas of military engineering and fortification, of moving armies, and equipping navies, are abroad in the public mind, that would have had no existence, had not the sciences on which such operations depend, been studied, and the arts to which they give rise, been mastered in the military school. So it is with the cultus of our Normal schools. They constitute pedagogics an art, and exalt teaching into a profession. They create ideals of the teacher's work not restricted to graduates. The principles of school organization and the methods of instruction which they illustrate, are diffusive in their influence, affecting for good the views and the work of thousands of teachers who never saw the inside of a Normal school. For this reason the objection to which I refer has no force. Our system of public instruction is improved and strengthened by the general influence of our professional training schools, even upon teachers not personally educated in them.

THE SPHERE OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.

Theoretically, such schools are designed to teach how to teach. To persons already possessing a knowledge of the branches taught in our public schools, sufficient to analyze them and to consider their elements philosophically, they are designed to impart a practical knowledge of methods of organizing, governing, and instructing our schools so as to secure the best results possible. As a law school does not undertake to teach the grammar or mathematics and Latin which are antecedently necessary to a first-class lawyer, but confines itself to teaching what is distinctively professional, so Normal schools are in theory strictly professional. In our scheme of education they are not meant to teach the facts of the sciences of which one must have a knowledge in order to sustain an academic examination. Assuming that candidates for admission already understand the scientific facts of the studies required to be taught in our public schools, it is the special work of the Normal schools to train their pupils into an ability to help the youthful mind to culture and to strength, by a wise use of these branches of study as a means of mental discipline; not to cram, not to leave the child without any aid, but to help him when, and as he ought to be helped; to govern him wisely, to develope him symmetrically, and above all, to teach him how to acquire knowledge for himself, and when acquired, how to put it to the best possible uses. This is in brief the sphere of our schools for training teachers, to take students already educated up to the knowledge