A study of the training of teachers of English in Kentucky high schools

Abstract

It is an old and true saying that no stream is higher than its source. One may apply this principle to the sphere of education by saying that no school is likely to function in preparing boys and girls for a large social service which is beyond the horizon of the training and outlook of its teachers. As is the teacher, so is the school, is a common expression of this great truth. The training of a teacher should, of course, be many-sided; for the preparation of youth for life can be profitably directed only by a larger conception than obtained formerly of what such service involves. No longer does the idea hold sway in educational thought that scholarship or a knowledge of facts alone is the only essential of a well-trained teacher of the young. We believe now that the teacher must also know man and his social relationships, that he must know the psychology of the mind at work, and that he must be acquainted with the scholarship of instructional activities and with the great educational movements of the time. To this end teachers colleges have come into existence, and a new era in the training of teachers of our youth has recently dawned. One hears on every hand, especially among college instructors, much criticism of the instruction which is being given boys and girls in the high schools. I must confess that I have added my mite to the chorus of voices raised in this censure, largely because of the poor showing made by the hundreds of high-school graduates who, now for a number of years, have been members of my college freshman classes in English. With a desire to study the causes of the inadequacies apparent in these young people, I recently took occasion to investigate the training and scholastic standing of the teachers of English in the high schools of Kentucky, the state from which nearly all of them came. In January, 1925, a carefully prepared letter of inquiry was sent, under the auspices of the English Club in the Teachers College, to the 497 high schools of the state. Replies were received from 166 schools. The high schools from which the answers came represent all types, from the three large city schools in the largest city in the state to the very