University of California Los Angeles - Bruin Life / Southern Campus Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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STATE NORMAL SCHOOL T the session of the state legislature held two years ago, President Millspaugh and many others made earnest efforts to have established here a teachers ' college in connection with the Normal school. These efforts failed. They may yet result in success; for there is wide agreement that the coast should have an institution for the special training of teachers comparable with those connected with Colimibia University and Chicago University. A part of President Millspaugh ' s argument, his statement of some of the functions of such an institution, has permanent validity and we reproduce it here. 1st. The teachers college is needed to furnish the elementary teacher an opportunity for study and instruction in every branch of knowledge that has educational worth, more thorough-going and advanced than that which the normal schools can furnish. The normal school may succeed in providing the grade teacher with equipment sufficient for the usual demands; it does not go far enough to meet the needs of the teacher who is assigned to de- partmental work; of the special supervisor of elementary instruc- tion; of the school principal; of the school superintendent; of the teacher of commercial branches; of those who are to direct the instruction of students in the practice departments of normal schools; of the specialist in industrial education; of the director of physical education; or even of the scholarly teacher who desires merely to increase his own knowledge and culture that he may have a richer life to share with his students. 2nd. The teachers ' college is needed also to furnish that higher knowledge which has special interest for the teacher only, as a member of a distinct profession. If teaching is ever accorded high rank as a profession, it will be when it rests upon foundations established by science. Educational measures, if successful, must be in harmony with nature, as it is manifested through the human organism, physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Acquaintance with that organism, acquired partly by experience and observation and partly by the aid of such sciences as physiology, embryology, psy- chology, and history, is absolutely essential to any intelligent and far-sighted direction of educational movements. Comprehension of public education, as an agency developed by society for the at-

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ALMA MATER m E SAY, ' ' Good-bye, to thee, Alma Mater, not only with a feeling of regret, but with a joy- ful determination to serve youth as Thou hast Served us. May we ever be Thy servants in circulating the high ideals and true spirit of democracy that exists within Thy walls.

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tainment of its most beneficient purposes, implies intelligent and intimate knowledge of the organization of society itself; an ac- quaintance with its problems and needs, its governing motives and aspirations, its purposes, and the goals of its endeavor; and it also implies a sympathetic appreciation of the relation of educational measures to the other social forces whose aim is human betterment. 3rd. The teachers ' college is the appropriate place also to obtain preparation to teach those arts and sciences and occupa- tions which recent experience has shown to have large educational as well as utilitarian value. With greatest cordiality we must wel- come this extension of educational effort to include the physical as well as the intellectual being; to train for practical efficiency and self-support; to develop the productive as well as the reflective capacities of the student. But is there possible danger that this splendid movement may lose its educational significance and de- generate into a project for the further exploitation of human be- ings for commercial ends? This nation cannot afford to quit the business of making men in order to make even intelligent factory hands and mechanics. Carpentry, masonry, metal working, agri- culture, sewing, cooking, and many other applied arts, as school subjects, have great social value, provided that their educational aspects are not lost sight of or disregarded; and provided that they serve to vitalize the educational curriculum, not to supplant it. To avert such a possibility, teachers of industrial subjects should receive their training in institutions which clearly comprehend the double function of such instruction and by their organization and administration give ample assurance that the utilitarian shall be fostered and that the human and the cultural shall not be neg- lected. 4th. Once more, the college for teachers is needed to serve as a place for the experimental study of teaching. Upon the develop- ment of this most important field of inquiry will, in large part, de- pend the rapidity and soundness of our educational progress. Some discoveries of great value to teaching, like many of our most im- portant inventions, have been, and will continue to be, made by accident. But really great contributions in this realm as well as in that of science and invention have been the result of persistent and patient study and rational experimentation. Unscientific empiricism has always been the bane of education. The time is ripe for the careful testing of newly discovered principles of teaching, for ascertaining which of them have practical value, and for the