in a high school who has not worked, after his college course, at least two years in the graduate school of a good university; no one ought to teach in a college who has not taken his doctor's degree in one of the best universities; and no one ought to teach in a graduate school who has not shown his mastery of method by powerful scientific publications. We have instead a misery which can be characterized by one statistical fact: only two per cent of the school teachers possess any degree whatever."[1]
It would certainly be an ideal state, if all teachers came up to the Professor's requirements, as laid down in this proposition; but one may justly object to the importance assigned to the doctor's degree and the scientific publications, as necessary requisites for teaching. Although this degree and productive scholarship are very desirable, still we must consider it a mistake to expect from them alone or even chiefly the men needed in our educational institutions. The present writer, in his own school days, had some teachers who neither possessed the doctor's degree – of course they all had undergone the "State examinations" – nor had published any books, and yet as teachers were far superior to others who possessed the doctor's degree and had published books. Scholarship and capability for teaching are by no means identical. Too much weight has been given of late to scholarship in preference to practical experience, combined, as is understood, with a sufficient knowledge of the matter to be taught. The documents of the Society insist strongly that the teacher should thoroughly master the subject which he is to teach. Father Ledesma wrote
- ↑ Atlantic Monthly, May 1900, p. 667.
