The training of teachers in the United States of America — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The training of teachers in the United States of America
John Stuart Mill · en
In the University of Missouri there are two distinct courses,
elementary and advanced. The elementary course corresponds very much
to a Normal School course. The subjects for the first year’s study
are chiefly English, algebra, physiology, zoology, botany, physical
geography, rhetoric. In the second year, pedagogics, including applied
psychology, history and school organization, are taken up with history,
literature, physics, chemistry and civil government. Drawing and
elocution are required subjects during all but one term of the course.
The certificate at the end of the elementary course qualifies the
holder to teach for two years in any public school of the State. The
advanced course leads on to the degree of bachelor of pedagogics. The
required work in this department may be taken by students who are
preparing for degrees in other courses, or by those who have already
a degree conferred by this or any approved University. The graduate
students may, by selecting four of the offered subjects, and devoting
five hours a week to the pedagogical work, complete the course in one
year. Others, take certain prescribed courses, and certain optional
courses in pedagogics, during the third and fourth years of their
ordinary graduate work. The degree entitles to a life-certificate to
teach in any of the public schools of the State. It is noticeable, in
connection with the prescribed courses in this University, that the
study of education, historically, comes before the consideration of
theory or philosophy of education and its application in school work.
The elective or optional studies are four--viz., school systems of
Europe; school systems of the cities and States of the United States;
the educational theories of Herbert Spencer; the philosophy of Froebel.
Of the other State Universities, some make pedagogics a complete course
for graduates or undergraduates, while some, as at Missouri, make it
an elective study during the third and fourth years of an ordinary
graduate course. Where two complete courses exist--an elementary and
an advanced--in the same department, the distinction is based chiefly
on the difference of qualification needed for admission. Students
qualified to enter the University may pursue the elementary course;
only those of the third year or fourth year, or graduates, may take up
the advanced course. As a rule, the students of the elementary course
teach in the Primary or Grammar Schools, those of the advanced courses
become teachers of secondary schools and colleges.