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State Normal School
KIRKSVILLE, MO.
SUPPLEMENT TO BULLETIN, SEPTEMBER, 1907.

A STATEMENT OF THE ISSUES NOW CONFRONTING THE NORMAL SCHOOLS OF THE UNITED STATES.

Paper by President John R. Kirk, State Normal School, Kirksville, Mo.
(At Los Angeles Meeting N. E. A.)

The most far-reaching movement affecting American education is the organization of the universities. 
Their tremendous energy and well marked progress delight us all; but the men managing these 
institutions are probably not cognizant of the top heavy condition into which their restless and 
unreflecting ambition is forcing our school system. They doubtless feel that "education is from the top" 
and that it should be directed and dominated by those in higher education circles. In many places they 
have destroyed local initiative. They have reduced many institutions to a state of obsequious servitude. 
Consciously or unconsciously they undermine the foundations of Democracy. They are becoming mighty 
monopolies.

Their immediate objective point is the high school. This is the instrument through which to organize and 
control all other schools. If through natural expansion high schools should come within reach of all 
children and the universities should gain control of the high schools, then the so-called "small colleges," 
the Normal Schools and the various independent technical schools would cease to have the means of 
competition and the universi-

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ties would be all powerful. The man is short sighted who does not see that this is the educational trend 
in our country.

Hopeful young men, fresh from Ph. D. courses, are being installed into those university offices which 
have to do with the immediate relations of the universities to the public schools. These young fellows 
are usually bright and honest, burning with zeal to reform the world; but their horizon is circumscribed 
by their experiences or by their own recent graduating theses. Most of them are visionary. It is bad for 
education that men of this type are willing to assume suddenly such grave responsibilities and wield at 
once the weapons of warfare in education.

The attendance at the universities is so great that many of them are unable to control their students. 
The good hearted, bachelor-like specialists who direct the lecture room and laboratory work in the 
universities have little or no taste for personal contact with students. Hence their personal influence 
does not affect the students' conduct.

The administrative department of universities is commonly inaccessible to the student who thus finds 
himself not only without restraint but lacking access to any advisors and to the wholesome influence of 
companionship with older persons of the type of teaching professors.

Conditions in our country are rapidly changing. Youthful persons in large numbers are flocking to 
institutions of higher learning. The popular doctrine of the free and easy way at the university, the 
absence of surveillance, "the miniature world" and all such doctrines need overhauling. If the university 
students were nearly all in graduate work and above the age of adolescence, their needs would be 
different and the current university doctrines and practices might suffice; but the universities are not 
merely failing to control their armies of semi-responsible or irresponsible under-graduate students; the 
dominant sentiment of their Faculty men ignores the need of such control. Therefore the direction and 
control of education by the universities themselves should not be expected to conduce to law and order 
in the State.

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If any one doubts the failure of the large universities properly to control their students at the present 
time, he has only to inform himself. His doubts will vanish.

In the last dozen years most of the universities have reversed their policy regarding the professional 
preparation of teachers. For a long time it was not unusual for the university professor to ridicule the 
Normal School and the content of Normal School education. There were, to be sure, good grounds for 
criticism. There are yet. But the universities discovered that the people believed in the special 
preparation of teachers. The change of front came suddenly. Now scarcely any university is without a 
"school of education" or a "teachers' college" or at least a "department of pedagogy" in actuality or in 
theory. The institution that can draw to itself the public school teachers even in summer time is the one 
having access to the heart of the people. Hence Pedagogy, so long ignored and abused, has become a 
source of popularizing the university.

In some parts of the country the universities have traveling agents called high school inspectors. Some 
of these inspectors are men of high type, knowing and sympathizing with the public school system in its 
entirety; but no matter how broad-gauged and fair an inspector so constituted may be at the outset, the 
nature of the case necessarily tends to reduce him, in spite of himself, to a peripatetic functionary 
whose business is: (1) So to modify the instruction in the high schools as to serve distinctively the 
purpose of the university with a view to its enlargement; (2) To control the appointment of high school 
teachers; (3) To secure direct contact with members of the high school graduating classes.

The universities just mentioned usually support teachers' employment bureaus designated as 
"committees on positions and recommendations." Through such committees and the inspectors, school 
boards and superintendents are indoctrinated as to the discrimination which the university would make 
among teachers. I think no one should doubt the honest purposes of these committees and agents; but I 
think they and all other

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school men should try to discover whither we are drifting and where we are likely to land. I think these 
men would pattern after foreign countries and I do not believe that European Imperialism or any similar 
system becomes Democracy when transplanted to America. All these committees and inspectors become 
propagandists. They can't help it. They are supported financially and otherwise by large resources. They 
publish extensively their doctrines. With or without definite purpose they are doing what they can to 
specialize, cramp and devitalize the high school; to suppress and supplant the college; and to hamper, 
restrict and undermine the Normal School whose chief function they seek to take over into the University. 
They would leave to the crippled and handicapped Normal School only the routine and so-called training 
which constitute the lowest and poorest part of the professional preparation of teachers. They are full 
of fine phrases about setting energy free through training. But training is a term badly over worked and 
misapplied in educational nomenclature. The dog and pony show illustrates training at its high water mark. 
Training commonly exhausts energy without setting it free. Training and marking time are too commonly 
synonymous. Training and education are different processes. Training and the professional preparation of 
teachers are wide apart.

University men in many quarters proclaim that the Normal Schools should confine themselves to 
superficial training courses of two years' duration with a view to preparing elementary teachers. They 
are worried lest the Normal School should advance a few students sufficiently to make of them, 
according to current ideals, good high school teachers. They claim that this would damage elementary 
schools by withdrawing the energy of the Normal School from the restricted services through which it is 
supposed to contribute exclusively to the promotion of elementary education. This university creed is 
fatally weak. Its effect would be to collect and concentrate the ambitious, capable, resourceful, 
prospective teachers in the university, there to consume their energies in alleged preparation for 
teaching in high

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schools. This, doctrine is directly detrimental to elementary education. It would send the uncalculating, 
unambitious, immature and unpromising would-be teachers, through a brief, secondary school course 
and then through a short cut professional course into elementary schools.

The influence of some city training schools is doubtful if not harmful. These training, schools are too 
largely filled with immature high school girl graduates. The girls have usually had only the child's view of 
elementary subjects and; at best the adolescent view of secondary school subjects. In two years these 
immature, though well meaning young persons, are made over and officially stamped as professional 
elementary teachers. In many State Normal Schools the procedure is quite similar and equally 
indefensible.

Some State Normal Schools advertise themselves as feeders and preparatory schools for the 
universities. Recently some of the struggling young State Normal Schools vying with one another had 
gotten themselves "approved" by numerous universities and were able to show that their graduates 
could enter the universities with a little advanced standing in the freshman year. It was made very clear 
that these Normal School graduates could enter universities without being conditioned. Is it not 
ridiculous that a Normal School should be on so low a plane as to bring itself voluntarily into unfavorable 
comparison with high schools and make itself appear so clearly in the light of an unstable preparatory 
school?

As for inspection by university inspectors, the independent self respecting Normal School should put the 
matter on the plane of inter-inspection. The universities need inspection; the inspectors themselves are 
not beyond some egregious blundering. It looks as if Normal Schools should say to the universities: "You 
may inspect us at your pleasure and we will inspect you at our pleasure." One has as much authority for 
inspection as the other. The matter of advanced standing should be a matter of mutual interest, not of 
solicitation by one institution and dogmatic authorization by another. Each institution should stand

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upon an honest and independent basis and say to all the world: "Take our students as we leave them. 
Start them in subjects at the points where they leave off with us. Test their ability to carry the new or 
more advanced work. Judge us in this way by our students or we will have our students go where this 
will be done. In education we are for the open shop."

Several Normal Schools in the middle west prepare both academically and pedagogically teachers for all 
sorts of public schools from kindergarten to high school inclusive. And why shouldn't they do so? The 
universities are full to overflowing. These Normal Schools are large. They can offer advanced academic 
and pedagogical courses without undue expense and without duplication that is in any way harmful to 
any institution. As to duplication, there is really no subject matter which is sacred to any particular 
institution. This is a free country; not a monarchy. Several of these Normal Schools have as good 
laboratories and as good libraries as the best colleges can support. Some of them pay better salaries 
than the colleges can pay. They have faculty men of the highest attainments, skill and ambition.

Normal Schools of this type are characterized by noticeable masculinity in their student corps. They have 
teachers' courses and various preparatory courses to which almost any young man with a teacher's 
certificate can be admitted. They notice that boys who graduate from high schools seldom intend to 
become teachers either by the Normal School or the university route. They represent the notion that 
some masculinity is a good thing to have in the teaching corps of our country. They stand for such 
policies as will attract into the teaching profession as many robust young men as possible. Viewing 
education as a whole it is discovered that the supply of masculinity in the teaching corps is chiefly 
through the ambitious, progressive, self-determining Normal Schools that stand firmly and always for 
the admission to the Normal School of all persons of honest intentions who give undoubted promise of 
developing into good teachers. These Normal Schools represent the wholesome doctrine that for a long

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time to come teachers' certificates in our country should be secured by virtue of reasonable culture, 
common sense and wholesome personality, regardless of degrees and graduating systems. This doctrine 
or policy will for some decades at least be practiced in many states and will prove to be the chief means 
of supplying a reasonable proportion of male teachers for our public schools.

The college courses in Normal Schools of the type here mentioned have the same effect upon students 
in the ordinary courses of the Normal School that graduate courses in the university have upon the 
under-graduates of the university. Where such Normal Schools are in operation the people know what is 
being done and believe in it. They want it just that way. The People and the Legislatures give ample 
support financially both to the universities and to the ambitious Normal Schools. Those Normal Schools, 
too, that make the most marked growth and the best impress upon education are the ones that are 
most ambitious and aggressive.

During the past fifteen years the university of a certain state has quadrupled its facilities and almost 
doubled the difficulties as to entrance and graduation; but the Normal Schools of this same state have 
remained almost stationary during the same period. They still offer short courses which are chiefly 
pedagogical. They content themselves with "preparing teachers for elementary schools." They are over-
shadowed by the university and controlled by politicians. They are not known to have made any 
effective contribution to elementary education. They have learned the popular school room practices 
and have passed the processes along for use in public schools. They will never materially modify 
education in their state till they change their policy. From the nature of the case an institution that has 
limits easily reached and no freedom to rise higher by self effort and no outlook of its own into higher 
student life of its own, can not make effective contributions to those forms of education which it 
professes to supply with teachers. An institution that is dead at the top can't be much of a stimulus to 
life in any other institution.

One fatal obstacle in the pathway of those Normal Schools

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that offer exclusively or chiefly pedagogical courses is this: Pedagogy itself is not yet in pedagogical form 
as a subject to be assigned, illustrated and taught. It doesn't contribute sufficiently to mental virility. It 
doesn't compare with the organized courses in Mathematics, Latin, History and other subjects. Hence 
the efficient Normal School applies about two-thirds of its student energy to the strictly academic 
subjects and about one-third of its student energy to professional subjects. In our discussions it is 
noticed that those who would restrict American Normal Schools to the exclusively pedagogical courses 
never mention the procedure of Normal Schools in foregin countries. There is good reason for their 
silence on this phase of the issue.

The interpretation of the more common creed of the universities is that a half educated person is good 
enough to teach children up to and including the last day in the eighth grade but a fully educated person 
is necessary to teach children from and after the first day in the high school. This creed is practically 
identical with the notion in some rural districts that a cheap teacher will do for small children and that a 
good teacher is necessary for large children. But the fact is that if we should tolerate anywhere in 
education a teacher who has taken a short cut to his own education and who has restricted resources, it 
is in the departmental work of a high school where a settled scheme or plan must be followed and 
things even in narrow channels are pretty sure to be effectively done. But think of an ignorant, narrow 
and poorly equipped man or woman pretending to teach in the fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth grade. 
Think of the varied and immeasurable responsibilities. Who else in the wide world has need of greater 
resources? Where should scholarship be more thorough or accurate? Is it not clear beyond reasonable 
doubt that if any man or woman acting in the capacity of a teacher should have a college education it is 
the teacher in the elementary school?

We advance backwards when we concentrate our best energies and our best culture in the higher parts 
of the curriculum and leave the lower parts of it to be exploited by poorly educated

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people who may have been filled with all the prescriptions, devices and so-called methods of a short 
course Normal School.

And again, who that has studied education can give a single reason why the salary of an elementary 
teacher should be lower than the salary of a high school teacher?

I believe we shall all some day agree that if a college atmosphere is necessary to make a good teacher 
for any school it is necessary to make a good teacher for every school. I believe, too, that the true 
college atmosphere so much talked of by university men, is now found in several ambitious Normal 
Schools of the middle west. Should not such atmosphere pervade them all?

The only tenable doctrine seems to be that all Normal Schools should, as soon as conditions will permit, 
raise their standards until the academic content of Normal School education will include the culture 
represented in a college education. Then we should have Normal School graduates (and those university 
graduates who attempt to teach) distributed from high school to kindergarten according to their natural 
and acquired traits, their adaptability and their special preparation, some teaching in rural schools, 
some in kindergartens, some in elementary graded schools of villages, some in high schools, and some 
filling principalships and superintendencies.

The speaker recently had his attention called to the distribution of the graduating classes in the school 
which he serves. Some of the graduates will enter rural schools; some, graded village schools; some, 
approved high schools; some will fill superintendencies in different states.

The speaker supports enthusiastically the university of his own state. He went farther than any other 
man in his state to urge the creation of a teachers' college in the university of his state. He urged the 
establishment in that teachers' college of a complete Practice School from first grade to high school 
seniors inclusive. That good teachers' college is now in operation. It is a stimulus to the co-operating 
State Normal Schools. It compels the Normal Schools to have a progressive, constructive

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policy so that they can not cater very much to current demands and fashions or feel satisfied when they 
have copied, commended and disseminated the practices and ideals of educational theorists past and 
present. Side by side with this new competition, the Normal Schools seek to create better ideals, to set 
up higher standards, to conduct more sensible experiments and to exemplify constructively the best 
attainable practices in school education.

Among other Missouri experiments is a Model Rural School House on the Normal School campus. This 
School House demonstrates that a rural district can for about $1400 have a school house offering all the 
comforts and conveniences to be had in any city school district excepting electric light. During the 
ensuing year this school house will contain a model rural school with its free text books, transportation 
of rural children and all the other facilities that can be thought out and secured.

In brief, then, the issues or some of them are: Shall Normal Schools advance or stand still? Shall they be 
free severally to determine for themselves what they ought to do or shall they be limited in view of the 
designs, ambitions and interests of other institutions? Shall they be conservative and follow the trail 
marked out by others or shall they be rationally aggressive and assume leadership to the extent of their 
capabilities and opportunities? Shall they seek affiliation and approval by other institutions standing 
between themselves and the people or shall they affiliate themselves directly with their constitutents, 
the people at large whom they are created to serve?

There are things to be done that the people want done, things that ought to be done in the schools of 
our country, things that only Normal Schools can do. So anxious and responsive are the people in some 
states that they are easily led to institute and support a variety of superficial but inadequate and 
spurious substitutes for Normal Schools while the men alleged to be managing the Normal Schools are 
engaged in somnolent restfulness.
Surely none will say that Normal Schools should all be of one type. It is doubtful whether any two should 
be just alike.

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Surely the best ones differ from one another in many particulars. The greatest issue seems to be 
whether Normal Schools shall remain contentedly in static condition while all the world moves or 
assume an attitude of eager and inquisitive expectancy, constantly anticipating a wider horizon, greater 
difficulties, more responsibilities and higher efficiency. Each Normal School can have whatever it ought 
to have if only those in charge of it will stand up and honestly contest every inch of the ground with 
whatever may stand in the way. Finally, the Normal Schools should welcome wise counsel but always 
and everywhere demand freedom to do and to be whatever from their own point of view is clearly seen 
to be for the common good in education.

[caption] MODEL RURAL SCHOOL HOUSE 28' x 36' 
FLOOR PLANS.

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[caption] MODEL RURAL SCHOOL HOUSE.