preparation for elementary teaching is not preparation for secondary teaching any more than experience in the university prepares for efficient work in secondary instruction. It may be and has often been maintained that it involves merely a question of adaptability on the part of the teacher. Without denying the contention, we still hold without fear of denial that the facts observed indicate pretty strongly that such adaptability is lacking, and the practical result is that we find at the present moment all kinds of courses, from essentially college work to essentially grade work, offered to the high school student. And this is not right.

It very frequently happens also that teachers in the elementary school, allured by the large money return to be obtained in high school positions, amplify their normal school training by taking work in the summer and seek high school places. This indicates an ambition on the part of such teachers which is at once to be commended and deplored, and a condition in our school system only to be deplored. We condemn without qualification the failure to recognize, in an economic way, the worth of the kindergarten and the elementary teacher. Their office is no higher and no lower, their responsibility no greater and no less than that of other teachers; and, utopian or not, we look for a time when the pecuniary reason for a progress, if we may so call it, from the elementary to the high school will be removed.

There is, however, another reason for the change sought by many teachers, a reason which must be recognized as valid and working out for good on the whole. Without qualifying our contention as to the equal value of elementary and higher edu cation, we are forced to admit differences in temperament and mental life which make elementary teaching as much of a drag to some as a delight to others. These are differences which qualify or disqualify, and a man or woman whose intellectual life is not, to a fair measure, satisfied and stimulated by the more heterogeneous elementary course, may well endeavor to find satisfaction in the less heterogeneous character of the high school course. Recruits to the force of secondary teachers of this kind should be welcomed, but only on the satisfaction of rigid demands to be outlined further along. Barring such

exceptions as just indicated, we can not admit that the average elementary teacher who has gained admittance to the high school in the way here under discussion, is in any degree fitted for the work. Years in the lower school have fixed ideals and conceptions of teaching which, as expressed in method, are not adequate for the high school, and on the whole tend to lower the standard and nature of secondary education. Add to this the usually wofully deficient and hazy knowledge of the special subjects on which they are required to concentrate, and we have the cause for a lamentable degree of failure in development of the high school. If any proof is needed of the truth of the last statement, one has but to be subjected to the necessity of examining a few normal school graduates on the most important general knowledge of physiology, by which we mean physiology of animals and plants-knowledge which is fundamental for each and every teacher, without which any presentation of botany or zoology must necessarily be completely inadequate and misleading to be convinced. I do not attempt to throw blame on anyone, teacher or student, in particular. The normal school has avowedly its definite object in preparing teachers for elementary work. It certainly can not, under its present construction, expect to do more. It is maintained that the means to one end may not properly be regarded as the means to another.

Before closing this part of the subject, it would be only fair, if time permitted, to consider at greater length the case of teachers who, after extending their education by studying at summer schools, gain entrance to high school teaching. To make sweeping generalizations is here specially dangerous, and the best one can do is to argue from the few definite cases which come under one's notice, and from the nature of the preparation in general.

In the second place, we see the high school staff recruited from the ranks of those who have received their bachelor's degree. This implies at most some general work in education proper, without any practical work, and at best an insufficient knowledge of the subjects which the candidate is required to teach.

It will be seen that the normal school graduate is thus in a position of advantage in point of professional training, and on

this rests the belief, only partially justified, that the deficiency in scholarship is made good. We may here not improperly acknowledge the debt the community owes to the normal school for carrying on a work which has made for a body of teachers. of constantly increasing efficiency; we still maintain, however, that the aim of the normal school is at a different-not a lower or a higher-mark than that of the high school, and therefore is inadequate to our present needs in this regard.

That the college graduate is not sufficiently prepared for the work before him as a high school teacher may not be doubted. His attainment is represented, in biology, by, say, two years of zoology-occasionally more, often less; and what shall we say of botany? In a great many cases, the credit of a 14 week course in "analysis" or "picking flowers to pieces" is a flattering maximum. Very frequently, in many of our leading colleges, a sort of appendage to the course in elementary biology, by a zoologist, is made to do duty for the whole subject of botany. It would be laughable if it were not almost pathetic. Is it any wonder that elementary teachers in botany are still floundering around in a mire of antiquated morphology? Is it any wonder that botany, which in most people's minds is still "picking flowers to pieces," is regarded as a study for girls? An examination of a class of girls offering a college entrance option in botany had disabused the speaker's mind of even this. And it was Huxley, that veteran in the fight for progress in education, that urged so often the placing of botany and human physiology in the schools. Does any one suppose that, in his mind, botany was the namby-pamby kind of thing it has grown in this country so frequently to be?

The knowledge of physiology, too, which the college graduate, as such, possesses is very often far from sufficient to give him anything like what is called a grasp of the subject, and may more rightly be characterized as a conglomeration of confused ideas.

Here, again, I must not be interpreted as criticizing directly our colleges or their graduates, though neither may be said. to be beyond criticism. Each institution has to be governed according to its own resources and can not, if it would, always satisfy external demands. Too often, however, they will not.

As to the students, they are ill prepared partly because of the failure, for one reason or another, to use all the opportunities at their command, or because of their immaturity. The latter, I believe to be the real difficulty. The college course in the matter of time alone does not mean enough in the effect it has in refining the judgment; and the acquaintance with the subjects has not been long and intimate enough to result in that accumulation of knowledge from direct observation which alone makes a resourceful and inspiring teacher, independent of the textbook and full of his own invention.

As to the particular knowledge of the practical problems in facing a class, in planning and carrying out a laboratory course adapted to high school students, we may say that they know nothing. The result has almost invariably been that teachers who have had no training in these lines have taken their college courses and given them in rarefied, if not clarified, form to their students, and there has been a misfit all along the line.

In those communities in which higher demands have been made, where, accordingly, teachers holding the master's and even the doctor's degree have been obtained, some of these insufficiencies have been less apparent, sometimes more so. For greater special knowledge of the subject, with the total absence of professional training, has not always been an improvement on the other condition. Eminently successful teachers who have never had a special professional training, there are, but in spite and not by virtue of their lack. To say that teachers are born and not made does not exclude the proposition that, granting the qualities of birth, they may be vastly improved by definite training.

Having surveyed the present conditions of education, we may now move forward to our conclusion by outlining the ground which, we believe, the training of the secondary teacher ought to cover.

The requirements may be regarded, for convenience, as those in subject-matter and in education.

1The requirements in subject-matter should consist in at least nine points of undergraduate study in biology, of which at least

The following is a digest of the speaker's remarks under this head.

three should be either botany or zoology. The work in biology should be buttressed by thorough work in physics and chemistry.

During the senior year in college courses in education should be had, consisting in the history and principles of education, and in the theory and practice of secondary teaching in biology. The latter, with which we are specially concerned here, should consist in lectures treating of the various problems which confront the secondary teacher, of reading and discussion. This should, as far as possible, be made to yield practical results in giving the student exercise in the command of his powers of presentation. When possible, there should, also, be some time given to observation of public school work, carried on in an efficient and organized way.

The postgraduate preparation should consist of further study of biology at a recognized university for at least one year, during which period the student should receive training in methods of independent thought and investigation. This is not a demand that all secondary teachers should be actual research workers, but rather that the spirit and methods of the discoverer should be familiar to them through experience. At least the master's degree should be earned.

In education the work should consist in (1) a course in general secondary teaching, and (2) an advanced course in the theory and practice of secondary teaching in biology. The ground covered in such a course should be mainly practical, and should consist in a detailed study of the materials and methods involved, the construction of the course of study, and of actual teaching in the high school, under criticism.

The student's power to collate and organize the materials and to present the same in a scholarly manner should be evidenced by the preparation of a satisfactory thesis treating of some problem of secondary education. Such a course should lead up to the grant of a master's diploma coordinate with the master's degree, and of equal value with it, but with special significance.

The standard of scholarship set in the above statement is the master's degree, and, for the country at large, it is as high a standard as may at present be urged. It will be sufficient probably for some years to come, except in the largest cities, pro