Teacher-Training in High Schools

It is the purpose of this paper to make a study of the efforts being made in the United States to train rural-school teachers in the public high schools and county training schools.

An interest in this study, on the part of the writer, has been awakened by a growing conviction that the normal schools are not functioning in furnishing a force of teachers that love the business of country teaching well enough to stay with it until they can effect permanent improvement, even if the number of normal graduates were equal to the demand; and that normal schools, in the main, are training away from country life instead of for it; and furthermore, that city dominated normals will never produce the need number of rural teachers and leaders; by a conviction, also, that rural teachers need less training that will advance them toward graduation in college and more training that gives knowledge related to country life and that can be used in building up neglected country schools and communities.

To even a casual observer the need of the rural districts is apparent and that, for the sake of our country that is being impoverished and for the sake of rural humanity that is being denied its educational rights, some effective remedy ought to be applied.

A personal observation of school work in rural counties for the past fourteen years has brought a growing conviction to the writer, of the need for Teacher Training in High Schools.

Is is the final purpose of this paper to try to gain from a Study of Teacher Training something worthwhile as a suggestion to be added to what Tennessee, a rural State, is already doing to train teachers for her rural people.

Is is not the purpose to suggest ideal school conditions but what is rudimentary enough to function, in building upon what we already have, toward the ideal.