PROPER TRAINING FOR TEACHERS.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
21, Great Tower Street, 9th Nvventber 1846. SIR—Towards the conclusion of your article on " The Education of the Edu- cator," you state your design to have been to "stimulate thought." One thought has occurred to me on the subject, and I hesitate not to suggest it to you. Per- haps, at the moment that you are proposing plans for educating men at a great expense for a profession that at last they may find they have no ability for, there may be very many men of talent, zeal, and education, already qualified for the noble task: would it not be well at once to offer to such men a reward for their services worthy the ambition and the merits of " a finished scholar and gentle- man "?
So that a man be qualified for his task, what matters it how or where he gained his qualification? A rigid examination by competent judges should be all required of him: if he can satisfy them that he is a man of sufficient learning and talent for his post, the post should be his. A good market will be always well supplied: make the profession of a school- master honourable and .profitable, and you will have no lack of applicants duly self-qualified for it, without any expensive Government arrangements for their education.
[Our correspondent appears to have apprehended the scope and doctrines of the paper on the Education of the Educator somewhat imperfectly. Ample provision would remade against the entrance of any incapable person into the office of an edu- cator, first through the knowledge of the pupil acquired by the master during the a_Tprentieeship and secondly through the examination before the Board of Educatioa. Then, although we consider that a high class of educators can only be secured by a complete professional education, yet we see no reason why self-educated talent, if esteemed every way competent, should not take its appropriate place here as in other occupations. But the superiority, the vigorous originality, that the self- educated occasionally display, is no argument, either in this or in any other matter, for leaving everything to self-education. Though the self-educated have often been the great, they have never been the greatest: and it is impossible that prac- tical skill can be acquired in any art, science, or employment, without a long,
careful, and special preparation for it.—En.]
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