THE NORMAL-SCHOOL SITUATION Such a system does not exist in this country to-day. All of the states, and many of the cities, support normal schools, and many of these institutions render excellent service by sending into the lower schools a small but steady flow of well-equipped teachers. But, taking the Nation as a whole, the normal school system is utterly inadequate. The normal schools themselves are more penuriously supported by the public than is any other type of educational institution of comparable grade. Their instructors are notoriously underpaid and overworked in spite of the momentous character of their service for what service is more momentous than that which prepares the teachers for the Nation's schools? The period of training is far too short for effective work; the maximum preparation for prospective elementary teachers involves only two years of professional study and training following the high school, and this, as has been pointed out earlier in this chapter, must be looked upon, not as a maximum but as the barest minimum. The most deplorable fact regarding the normal schools, however, is that they do not attract students in sufficient numbers to begin to meet the need for trained teachers. Even in the pre-war years their total annual output of graduates never amounted in the aggregate to more than one fifth of the number of recruits needed each year in the teaching service. Indeed, if the number of graduates who do not serve in the schools is subtracted from the total output, the annual contribution of the normal schools is but barely adequate to furnish the new teachers needed because of the increase in the general population. For the five years before the war, the average number of new teaching positions opened each year was not less than 12,000. During these years, the public normal-school graduating classes averaged not more than 18,000. When one remembers that the total number of vacancies to be filled each year is upward of 100,000 the quota of trained teachers supplied by the normal schools appears to be almost negligible. It is far from negligible because the better service rendered by this small fraction of trained teachers stands out in conspicuous contrast to that of the immature and untrained recruit; but this very fact only serves to bring into high relief the inadequacies of the system. The conclusion is inescapable that a comprehensive and nation-wide program for the preparation of publicschool teachers is a matter of imperative concern to the Nation. The steps that should be immediately taken to enlarge and improve the teacher-training agencies will be discussed in Chapter XXI. In the following chapter the steps essential to the solution of the ruralschool problem will claim attention. CHAPTER XX THE EQUALIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES IN Chapters XVIII and XIX the outstanding weaknesses revealed by the war were traced to an educational system that is defective at the very points at which, for the welfare of the Nation, it should have the greatest strength. In so far as the rural schools are concerned, the situation thus revealed may be conveniently referred to as a gross inequality of educational opportunity and its correction must involve policies and programs that will aim to reduce these inequalities. It should be insisted (1) that such a reduction must involve a "leveling up" rather than a "leveling down," and (2) that it is urged not only as a matter of justice to individuals who are now denied adequate opportunities, but more fundamentally as a means of insuring national security and promoting national progress. To establish firmly the principle of tax-support for public education has required a long, uphill struggle, and the struggle has been the more difficult the larger the unit of taxation. Even in the "neighborhood" unit the local school district the individual citizen was slow to see both the justice and the expediency of contributing through taxation to the education of other people's children. The notion that the value of his property and the welfare and prosperity of his own family depended upon the morality, the intelligence, and the industry of his neighbors was slow to dawn. But eventually the light came. Far more difficult of development has been the notion that the welfare of each unit neighborhood, town, county, or state- depends upon the level of intelligence that characterizes every other unit. Slowly but surely, however, this principle has taken root, and the roots have deepened and ramified. To-day the principle of general state taxation for school purposes is fairly well established.1 Eventually the logical extension of the principle will carry the taxing unit to boundaries no less circumscribed than those of the Nation itself. That no unit less comprehensive can satisfy the educational needs of the new era is the thesis of the present chapter. THE JUSTIFICATION OF "GENERAL SCHOOL FUNDS" While the essential justice of a large taxing unit for the support of schools has only recently been clearly recognized, efforts were made very early to establish permanent state school funds, the interest on which was to be distributed to the separate towns, townships, or school districts. These were not, however, funds 1 An excellent account of the struggle for this principle is found in Cubberley's Public Education in the United States, pp. 118-181; also, pp. 489-492. raised by general taxation; they were rather funds derived from the sale of public lands, and consequently were not "felt" by the tax-payer. Connecticut was especially fortunate in the sale of her Western Reserve and the money thus derived became a permanent state school fund. The states that were formed from the public domain, the land originally ceded to the Federal Government by the original states, together with all other territory acquired through purchase, discovery, or conquest, sought in various ways to establish state funds, the interest on which should be used for the support of education; but again the funds were not tax-derived. The establishment of general state funds based upon the proceeds from the sale of lands, however, paved the way for a general state school tax, particularly by making necessary the framing of plans and principles governing the distribution of the proceeds of the funds. The constitutions of the states frequently provided a method of distribution.1 The plan commonly followed in the earlier days was to give to the local school district a sum proportionate to its "school population." The "school age" was usually from six to twenty-one; in some cases it was four to twenty; in still others it was from six to sixteen. This method of distribution was, 1 See Swift's Public Permanent Common School Funds, Part II, for details; also, Cubberley's Public Education in the United States, pp. 118 |