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NORMAL
NORMAL.
NORMAL DEPARTMENT.
Its aim is the realization of the highest possible type of the true teacher.
Teaching, as a science, when complete will embody all the principles that come from the correlations of mind and truth. As an art, teaching is the right application and use of these principles in the actual practical work of imparting knowledge.
The teacher, the product of normal instruction, is the artist in this most refined art, and that course of instruction and training that succeeds fully to qualify and equip him to work most intelligently and skillfully to build in the human mind human science and lead out the faculties into vigorous and symmetrical growth, deserves the title Normal instruction.
Theories One impracticable theory is, that method is everything and that matter is nothing, in Normal instruction; that instruction in matter is the exclusive province of the school and university; that methods alone are to be taught in Normal schools. However beautiful this may be in theory, it lacks practicability, in Kansas at least, to commend it.
Another faulty theory makes the Normal school little other than an academy, merely a model school for observation and imitation. Scholarship, general intelligence, all that broadens and beautifies manhood and womanhood gives power and value to the teacher; but through all of these like a shaft of living light must run the unifying utilizing idea of teaching power.
How rightly to use and impart knowledge; how to improve and guide life; how to make true men and women, and true citizens; these questions must be answered
by a course of Normal instruction. And however good of their kind other schools may be, and though the richest and rarest fruits of general culture ripen in them, still for the differential purpose and determining aim of Normal schools, they are radically defective.
A true theory of Normal instruction embraces and embodies the merits of both the academic and the strictly professional theories, yet mounts higher in the excellencies of its results; as the dome rises above its base and is itself nobler than any of the complementary parts, are opposing yet reciprocal forces which hold and build it in well rounded symmetry, the crowning glory of all materials and means that enter into the structure below. The Normal school should be a vital organ in a living organism. While it should be orthodox in embodying the true philosophy of teaching, it should be rooted in the felt wants, sympathy, pride and patriotism of the people.
Missouri appropriated nearly a million of dollars for higher education last year; more than twenty times as much as our own Kansas did for the same purpose.
The Normal Literary Society convened Friday January 8, 3 P. M. without one vacant seat. After the installation of officers a good programme was rendered. Immediately following recess the best lecture of the course was delivered by Chancellor Lippincott. His subject was "The solar day as a measure of time." This was discussed by him in a manner which won the praise and admiration of those present to such an extent that he was requested by a unanimous vote to continue the subject, which he consented to do at our next regular lecture, February 1st.