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printed by contract. The department store of T. Eaton Company, Limited, which has a printing plant for its large mail order business, was the lowest bidder. The offer was to furnish the Primer and the first four Readers at a total cost of 49 cents. Without saying anything as to the quality of these books, although educational experts have been practically a unit in pronouncing them inferior to our own texts, it is a fact easily ascertained that they are able to be sold at so low a price because of two reasons: first, a part of the expense is borne by the Government and second, another part by the department store for the sake of the advertising.

The same thing is true with regard to certain others of the Ontario books, particularly the arithmetic furnished by the Robert Simpson Company, Limited. Some of the books, however, are printed by regular publishing companies and undoubtedly with little, if any, help from the advertising idea already mentioned.

[Here follow a number of letters and replies, and a summary of costs under the Ontario plan.]

It will naturally occur to any thoughtful mind as strange that the Ontario System was not adopted by New York and Ohio if it were so far superior to our own as is frequently asserted. The thirteen million inhabitants of these two of our most progressive northern States are not generally suspected of being willing to pay more for school books or anything else than might be necessary and reasonable. The impression is somewhat more than a suspicion, and indeed is quite general, that these are the most astute and economical business men we have in the country. They are separated only by the St. Lawrence River and Lake Erie from Ontario; trains and boats cross from one side to the other every hour and there is continuous communication. This has been going on during all these years while Ontario has been making her own school books, and what these near neighbors and countrymen of ours have never even thought worthy of imitation or consideration, is not likely to be so wonderfully to the advantage of those of us a thousand miles away, who were stirred to action by a sensational newspaper article in the Saturday Evening Post.

The Ontario books are on file at the State Department of Education and accessible to any one who may desire to compare them with the books used in this country. As a rule, they appear to the

ordinary observer as clearly inferior to the United States texts, and all the experts to whom they have been submitted, with one exception, agree that this is true with regard to the workmanship and material used.

SUMMARY

Summarizing for your convenience, therefore, our answers to the questions which we were asked by you to secure are as follows:

FIRST. Compared with the prices paid for similar books in other States in this country, the cost in Georgia is not only reasonable but actually considerably less than the average paid in the other forty-seven commonwealths of this Union.

SECOND. The California plan, which involves the purchase and equipment of a printing plant, managed by State officials, for the purpose of printing State school books, does not appear to be desirable for Georgia.

Six members agree to the foregoing:

M. L. BRITTAIN,

J. T. PEYTON,

H. C. SHUPTRINE,
W. J. NUNNALLY,
G. R. GLENN,

T. J. WOOFTER.

Five members of the Committee namely, Messrs. J. T. Peyton, H. C. Shuptrine, W. J. Nunnally, G. R. Glenn, and T. J. Woofter sign the following as the third and closing recommendation:

THIRD. We would not recommend the publication of our school texts by the Ontario plan. (Chairman M. L. Brittain believes that the Ontario plan is worth a trial.)

One member of the Committee, due to illness, did not participate in its findings, and one member dissented from the entire report.

DIVISION VI

THE STATE AND THE TEACHER

CHAPTERS XXII-XXV

CHAPTER XXII

THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS

THE selections for this chapter relate to the work of the normal schools, and the efforts being made by certain states to secure a supply of trained teachers by utilizing the high schools.

I. TRANSFORMING NORMAL SCHOOLS INTO COLLEGES [Pritchett, Henry S., in the 7th An. Rept. of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1912, pp. 149152.]

How great a part personal and institutional ambition has played in the development of educational politics it would be difficult to say, but the results of it can be seen in every state where the divided institution exists. These appear usually in two forms: first, the endeavor of each institution to cover the whole field of education and the consequent duplications which ensue; secondly, the widespread tendency to drop the legitimate work for which the institution was founded in order to take up some other work, which appeals to the ambitions of its president, or of its board of trustees, or of its faculty or alumni.

Examples of the first sort have just been alluded to. Other examples in the educational history of Iowa, Colorado, Michigan, and various other states will readily occur to the reader.

Where three or four state institutions exist, this rivalry has inevitably led to much commerce with the legislature, to overlapping institutions, and in nearly all cases to a strenuous struggle for students. The three-cornered rivalry between the university, the agricultural and mechanical college, and the normal school in the states like Iowa and Kansas are typical instances of the results of such a régime.

A singular outcome of this situation in recent years has been the effort of the normal school in many states to transform itself into an arts college. The normal school is at best a singular institu

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