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schools, or have had a term in one of the training colleges. Opinions differ widely as to the result of this short training. Some Principals, in fact, prefer teachers who have not been so trained, and say that the best of their material consists of young graduates fresh from a Universitycollege; while others with equal confidence assert the value of primary-school training. The Principal of one of the largest of our boys' schools says: "We have but rarely, even in the difficult circumstances of the war, appointed teachers without previous experience, but it is a noteworthy fact that the most efficient of our young teachers during the past ten years have been, in the main, the men thus exceptionally selected." The head of a. large girls' school says: "It is certainly desirable that all teachers appointed to secondary schools should have had some training in method and some experience in teaching, but neither of these tilings will make a person a good teacher. There are teachers of twenty years' experience who cannot teach, and there are young men and women who, without anytraining or experience at all, have yet the faculty of imparting knowledge. Training and experience are only two factors, and these by no means the most important, in the composition of a good teacher. What 1. consider the essentials are personality, natural ability, scholarship, and a real love for the work. For a secondary-school teacher 1 would add education for four or five years in a high school." The headmaster of one of the smaller schools remarks : " Every one will recognize that, other things being equal, preference should be given to the trained teacher. At the same time teachers are born, not made. Training is important, but character and personality are'more important. Our two most successful teachers during the past seventeen years were untrained. The next in order was trained; all the others but two had had primary training." The truth seems to be that no amount of training will make a good teacher out of unsatisfactory material, but that, given a young person with a natural aptitude for teaching, technical training will certainly "speed up" the process of evolution of the accomplished teacher. What form should that technical training take.' The following are suggestions from various sources : — (1.) While the degree course is in progress the student should take a pupil-teacher's course of two years and attend the training college for one year. Many of our young teachers have done so. The objection to it is the excessive strain on the system, and the likelihood of the degree course suffering, even if health is not permanently impaired. (2.) One year should be spent in the training college after graduation. But it is objected that a graduate has usually earned nothing up to the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, and cannot afford to spend another unproductive year. It is also asserted that the experience gained at the training college is not the particular experience required by secondary-school teachers. (o.) Fuller advantage should be taken of the Regulations for Training Colleges (sec section 4, subsection (2), and section 7, subsection (5), of those regulations. " For the purposes of the wider observation by students of teaching methods, the Hoard, after consultation with the Committee of Advice, may appoint, subject to the approval of the Minister, selected teachers of public schools, secondary schools, or technical high schools ... to supervise and report upon the work of such .students as are sent by the Principal of the training college ... to observe the classes under the charge of (he said teachers. Teachers so appointed shall be recognized as associated normal teachers. . . . Every associated normal teacher shall . . . receive by way of salary under these regulations such sum not exceeding ,£3O per annum as the Minister shall approve.") We do not know of any secondary teachers who have been recognized as "associated normal teachers" under those regulations. Such recognition would give students intending to take secondary-school work an opportunity of observing the work of our most capable secondary specialists. (4.) Another suggestion is that a separate training college should be established for secondaryschool teachers. (5.) But the best course of all seems to be to free the Principals of large schools from ordinary class-work (at present under war conditions most of them are teaching full time), and make it the most important of their duties to train, in a formal way, the young members of the staff by watching their lessons, taking classes in their presence, giving specimen and criticism lessons, ive. Full notes of such training should be kept by the Principal and be submitted to the Inspectors at the time of their visit. All teachers on first appointment to a secondary school might be classed as student-teachers, and might, on the completion of a satisfactory course of study, be granted a certificate signed by (he Principal and endorsed by an Inspector of Secondary Schools, and no permanent appointment should be given to any teacher who has not been granted this certificate. '• Dioautio " Teaching. Beyond doubt the besetting weakness of many young graduate-teachers is " telling." They have the knowledge which they desire to find in their pupils, and they cannot help expressing it, and endeavouring to pass it on to those who need it, " like wealthy men who care not how they give." But true teaching is "causing to learn," and it is seldom that "didactic" teaching has this effect. Rousseau saw this clearly: "1 like no explanations given in long discourses of words," says he; "young people pay little attention to them and retain little from them. The things themselves I The things themselves! I shall never repeat often enough that we are attaching too much importance to words; with our chattering education we make nothing but chatterers." The editor of Education expresses the same thought somewhat quaintly but forcibly : "Psychologists tell us that impressions carried to the brain by the afferent nerves cause there cellular excitations or explosions which are harmful unless the forces generated are carried off

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