arrayed against them; the blessing of three months' holiday is often a hidden curse.

Another cause of unproductive vacations, no doubt, is a too prevalent notion that scholarship belongs in the colleges, that, though a certain amount of erudition may be well for the secondary teacher, productive scholarship is not his affair. The fact, moreover, that scholarly work is not expected and is rarely done means that few teachers develop habits which encourage them to scholarly pursuits in their vacations.

Along with this too prevalent notion that scholarly work is not the province of the school teacher go certain misconceptions which must be here taken into account. It is not sufficiently realized, by teachers as well as by the public, that teaching is an art; hence it is too often assumed that almost any one, with a little book learning and a good character, can become a teacher; hence, too, the belief, in which a good many evidently indulge, that one can become a good teacher by studying in a normal school or a teachers' college, as one might become a good mechanic by studying in a vocational school. It may be that this misconception, buttressed by an observation of incompetents who keep their positions, is one of the parents

of the notion, also very common, that a teacher's work is not big enough for an ambitious man. A relative, if not actually a brother, is the idea that teaching means solely the imparting of information. These misconceptions, rather than what actually takes place, tend to give the teaching profession a sort of differentiation, if not a definite stripe, in the minds of those outside it, while the reaction on those inside is considerable: they unconsciously tend to become what the world tells them they are. A young teacher recently admitted to me that a professor in one of our better teachers' colleges had strongly advised him against teaching the subject he was headed for; and on talking it over with me he inclined to think that he had disregarded the advice, not because he set his own opinion above the professor's, but because he could not take in, even when the professor told him, the fact that the necessary information was only a small part of the qualification.

Yet we might be gratified, for a beginning, if all of our teachers had even the primary qualification-the necessary information. This our normal schools and teachers' colleges attempt to give them, but the demand for teachers is so much greater than the supply of well-educated

teachers that our schools are forced to take many who have had only a rather aimless college course and some who have had only a high school education. Suppose, however, that all had received at least a normal school education, the beginning would still be pitifully small. Our schools need not merely informed but trained teachers. There is a pretence, of course —or, it might be fairer to say, a desire―on the part of the normal schools and teachers' colleges to supply such training, but as yet only a few of them supply it in much more than name. Happily the condition is fast improving; there are many signs that these words will not be true in another generation. At present, however, the result is that many of our teachers begin their work without any training, do considerable injury to several classes while they are learning the elements of their technique or learning that they can't teach, and find themselves always without that substantial background which hospital work means to the doctor.

Partly no doubt because of the large number of mere drudges who enter the teaching profession, partly also because of a misconception on the part of some principals, teachers are rarely given great responsibility. It is true

that a sensitive nature at once perceives enormous responsibility in the smallest details of the work; a great many teachers, I believe, have a keen sense of obligations not definitely "nominated in the bond" and assume important and engrossing duties in the athletic, social, and moral life of the students. Some, however— far too many in the public schools-assume that their responsibility ends with the classThis is not altogether their fault, for the administration often fails to encourage a larger idea.

room.

The foregoing, I am aware, is a very hasty and imperfect characterization of teachers and their profession. By viewing the subject from these various angles, however the different outstanding types, the hours, the pay, the use of vacations, conventional notions about teaching, preparation, and responsibilities-we may be able in a rough way to get a sort of perspective; so that, considering the teacher in relation to the pupil and the work, we may later discuss with profit some of the important problems before our American schools.

CHAPTER VI

SOME AMERICAN TRAITS

IN DISCUSSING What American schools may do, one must naturally consider what peculiar traits mark the development of the American people; and though a detailed account of these traits, with sufficient illustration, is impossible in so short a volume, it seems wise to note the most outstanding-if in a somewhat categorical manner-in order to keep the whole problem before us. For the American genius has made the American school; and whatever our schools become in the future will depend at bottom on what the American people become. Further, since what the people become depends in large measure on what the schools do, a consideration of the traits must obviously be followed by a discussion of the needs.

There are many debatable points, of course, which I shall not attempt to cover. We may be brave, generous, vulgar, conceited, as many foreigners tell us we are, but these qualities are