University of Northern Iowa - Old Gold Yearbook (Cedar Falls, IA)

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Departments of Instruction

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The Professional Department Then» are two sources of knowledge, viz.: Experience and authority. The teachers in this department of the Normal School may justly be said to be equipped in both kinds of knowledge, for all have labored industriously for years to know what authority has said on education and have also served long and severe apprenticeships in actual experience before taking up their labors here. Collectively their experience covers work in country schools, academy, college tutorship and professorship, assistant in high school, and long experience in city supervision. The head of the department, President Seerley, has long been a recognized authority himself on problems of theory and administration. There are two views of professional work in a normal school. The purely theoretical and academic consists of ordinary class work in the subjects involved. The practical application of these principles in the training school under compe- tent supervision is the other phase. Some schools have one of these; some, thi other. Rarely as in the Iowa State Normal School do we find .the two combined. The problem of correlating the various subjects in the academic work is a constant though simple one; methods, management, principles and philosophy of education, Psychology, History of Education, supervision and a course of lec- tures by President Seerley on American Education, comprise the work in this line. The principle of proving all things and holding fast that which is good is a constant guide in practice here, and, while the attempt is made to keep in touch with educational progress elsewhere, there is no attempt to follow the “Lo, here,” or “Lo, there,” heard in many quarters; but rather to keep in mind the tact that the mind of the child is an organic unity, that th • personality of every child is an open text-book in the ‘‘New Psychology,” and that the chapters in this text-book repeat themselves from generation to generation with a certain degiM of sameness plus infinite variation. This constitutes the correlation of the professional department. It is as absurd to suppose that any of these .sub- jects can he taught separately as to think that algebra can be taught with no reference to arithmetic, or to suppose that memory or reason can be treated as belated powers of the mind independent of the will and the imagination; and if it be true that science is related and classified knowledge, then certain it is that the inter-relation of these subjects is the basis of the Science of Education, and th master of these subjects who has also acquired skill in their application in some general or special lint of instruction is entitled to he regarded as a profes- sional teacher, a member of the new profession founded upon the needs of civilization. Who is able for these things