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has been gradually falling off for some years and is now far short of the demand.
This bias towards senior work seems to be partly due to the development of advanced
courses in secondary schools and the desire of students to pursue their advanced
studies with a view to becoming specialists ; partly to the fact that the course for
the teaching of juniors lies on a distinctly lower intellectual level that the course
for the teaching of seniors ; and partly to the feeling that there is a wider professional
field for the teacher of seniors than there is for the teacher of juniors. It follows
that the more intellectual and the more ambitious students choose the senior
course.
We venture to think that the training colleges themselves are not free from
blame in this matter. They themselves specialise in everything except education,
We mean that the course of study they offer in English, in history or in geography
gives the student more intellectual grist to grind than the course in pedagogy.
It is true that the Board of Education have given but little guidance in this subject
and that there is no recognised and authoritative body of doctrine that it is desirable
for all teachers to know. But it is not difficult to devise a professional course comprising
those special studies which centre round the child, his health and his development—studies
for which the term paidology is, perhaps, the most fitting. And
though this is but a portion of a wider field of educational theory and practice, it
is a very important portion and for the nursery school teacher the all-important
portion. Yet no training college adequately provides such a course. The Gold
smiths' College undertakes to do so and has a small nursery class attached to the
College, but only a small and diminishing number of students take the course. The
same seems to be true of the Darlington Training College. Neither of these gave
any teachers to the nursery schools or nursery classes we inspected.
The Mather Training College in Manchester has for some time ceased to exist
as a separate institution, and now forms part of the City Training College, which
has been preparing about a dozen nursery school teachers a year. But the City
Training College itself is coming to an end at Christmas, and we are left with only
one effective source of supply.
This source of supply is the irregular training college at Deptford—a training
college without a home or resident tutors—a college which is recognised temporarily
from year to year, and that for only ten students. But the college has the essential
things. It has a model nursery school on the spot where observation and practice
are constantly going on. And it has the nursery school spirit. Teachers interested
in this work come to Deptford as to a sort of Mecca from all parts of England (and
Scotland) and find that they get something there which they cannot get anywhere
else. The best nursery schools we saw in the North were conducted by McMillan
trained teachers, and the best premises we saw were based on the McMillan model.
We consider, therefore, that there is an urgent need for the establishment of
a training college whose primary function is the training of nursery school teachers.
It should provide a course in paidology which would be sufficiently comprehensive
to serve as a diploma course for third-year students; it should serve as a centre for
research and instruction in all that bears on the welfare and nurture of the young.
Nursery classes.-—The only new thing we saw in the North was the nursery class.
It is Manchester's way of solving the problem of the education of children under
five. A nursery class is a glorified babies' class. It is a babies' class wth some,
but not all, the amenities of a nursery school. It differs from the babies' class in
having smaller numbers and in providing each child with a towel, a toothbrush
and a drinking cup. It differs from the nursery school in not including children
between two and three years of age, in not providing a mid-day meal and in not
having a helper. The children are unselected, the doctor's visits are less frequent,
and the school hours are shorter. There is, moreover, the important administrative
difference that the nursery class forms part of the elementary school and comes under