nical subjects with workers in coal-mining plants, lead and zinc mining plants, railroad shops, and public-utility plants. Also it was provided that the university would accept two years of engineering from the State Manual Training Normal School, provided the work was comparable in character to that offered in the engineering school at the university. The subjects which the normal school offers for this purpose are, of course, essentially different from those prescribed in the two-year industrial engineering curricula. Graduates of the industrial engineering curricula receive no credit at the university unless they satisfy the regular entrance requirements, and then only for courses which have been taken in the regular normal school classes of collegiate grade. These courses include trigonometry, physics, drawing, and shopwork, elementary steam power plants, and three hours of elementary surveying. During the past year 13 students pursued courses intended to fulfill the requirements toward the first two years of a regular fouryear engineering curriculum. So far, however, a negligible number of normal school students have transferred credits of this character to the university engineering school. While the trade and industrial engineering courses are by far the most important variations from the program of teacher training at the State Manual Training Normal School, there are certain others. First in importance are the opportunities offered for commerce and business. The teacher-training high school has a two-year commercial course comprising the usual subjects of shorthand, typewriting, bookkeeping, and similar subjects. There are also two short business courses in stenography and bookkeeping, respectively, for vocational students. Ordinarily, the stenography course, which is more popular with the young women, requires about nine months for completion. The relative importance of the several kinds of service rendered to students by the department may be seen from the fact that there are 20 students in the two-year high-school commercial course; 40 in the regular two-year college curriculum leading to the special three-year teachers' certificate; 70 vocational students in the stenographic and bookkeeping short courses; and 15 or 20 students majoring in other fields who elected one or two courses in the commerce department. Of the 70 vocational students, 25 are Federal trainees, and the other 45 are chiefly young women from Pittsburg and the surrounding territory who are taking the stenographic course preparatory to office work. Plans for giving professional training in four-year degree courses in music are offered at the Pittsburg Normal School as well as at the Hays Normal School. The degree of bachelor of science in music is given in voice, piano, violin, and organ. Certificates in each of these fields of music are issued to students who finish three-year courses of study. The department also gives the two-year music supervisors' course leading to a special life certificate for teaching in the public schools. During the year just closed there were 23 students who planned to become music supervisors, as against 14 who expected to make music a profession. Besides these, there were 33 college students majoring in other departments who were pursuing one or more courses in music. The home economics division also plans its courses not only for teacher training and home-making purposes, but "to prepare students to pursue some special line of activity, such as dietitian and institution manager." Thus far the department has not attempted much beyond teacher training, except special night and extension classes for housekeepers in Pittsburg and neighboring small towns. EFFECTS AND CONCLUSIONS. From the illustrations which have been cited it is evident that two of the normal schools, particularly the State Manual Training Normal School, have departed considerably from the theory that normal schools should confine themselves to training teachers. Most of these departures have been made in recent years. At any rate, the conception that the State Manual Training Normal School should expand into other fields of activity was apparently not shared by the first board of administration, as the following quotation from the report of that board for the biennium ending June 30, 1916 (page 26), shows conclusively: The board of administration appreciates the wisdom of the time, the place, and the men who founded this institution (the Pittsburg Normal School), and in the selection of a president and faculty have sought to keep it true to the chart made at its birth. It was established as a normal school, not a trade or polytechnic school. For its founders realized that the institution could multiply its influence many thousand fold by dealing with future teachers rather than with individual artisans. It was established as a manual training normal school, which indicated that its founders and the State desired something different from the ordinary type of a normal school, of which they already had two. And so they emphasized the fact that this institution was expected to give special force and prominence to the training of teachers along manual lines. The board of administration, through the present president and his able faculty, emphasizes this purpose. The school lives up to the ideals for which it was founded; the opportunity of the place and the foresight and wisdom of the men who founded it. It is indeed and in truth a school that devotes itself to the training of teachers, rather than to the training of artisans or tradesmen, and to the training of manual and household arts. A comparison of this statement with that already quoted from the current catalogue of the State Manual Training Normal School shows how different is the present policy of the Pittsburg Normal School from that announced by the previous board of administration. The commission is convinced that so important a change in policy as is represented to a certain extent at the Hays Normal School but primarily at the State Manual Training Normal School deserves further discussion. In the first place, however, the commission wishes to acknowledge the fine spirit of devotion and sacrifice exhibited by the faculty at the two institutions in responding to what they believed were the demands made upon them for vocational and trade training over and above the regular work of the institutions. Instructors and professors have organized night classes and extension classes with no thought of reward save the satisfaction of doing a good piece of work. Also the State Manual Training Normal School has opened its facilities to the United States Government for the Federal trainees. Moreover, it is a fact that during each of the last two years from 20 to 30 of the vocational and industrial engineering students have become interested in teaching and have transferred to curricula leading to teachers' certificates. Notwithstanding these modifying circumstances, it is questionable whether, in expanding into vocational training, the wisdom of these two normal schools has equaled their spirit. The demand for the vocational training of former soldiers is temporary and will cease within a few years. The fact that some students transfer from the vocational curricula to teacher training would not usually be regarded as a sound reason for establishing vocational curricula or any other curricula. Moreover, notwithstanding some possible benefits in the association of future teachers with vocational students, the commission believes that the addition of vocational work has had an unfavorable effect upon the quality of teacher training at the normal schools. It is now an accepted standard among all standardizing and accrediting agencies that collegiate work is done in the most acceptable manner if it is entirely separated in classes, teachers, and buildings from work of secondary grade. For a number of years higher institutions have been steadily dropping their preparatory departments until the present time secondary schools, if retained at all, are maintained only as training schools for practice teachers. At the State Manual Training Normal School on account of the variety of work, it has not been possible to carry out this separation. Regular college students, high-school students, vocational students, and industrial engineering students all use the same buildings, the same classrooms, shops, and laboratories. The faculty also for the 1 The only exception to this rule is in the case of critic or supervising teachers who conduct classes for practice teachers. several classes of students is by no means distinct. The following table shows the number of faculty members who teach in the respective fields, as follows: 1. College subjects only. 2. College subjects and secondary subjects.... 3. College subjects and industrial engineering.. 17 18 3 4. College subjects and vocational subjects.... 5. College subjects, vocational subjects, and secondary subjects..... 6. College subjects, vocational subjects, and industrial engineering. 7. Industrial engineering only...... 8. Industrial engineering and vocational subjects... 9. Industrial engineering and secondary subjects.. 10. Secondary subjects only..... 11. Secondary subjects and vocational subjects 12. Vocational subjects only. Total...... 8 6 2 1 4 1 1 1 7 69 From this table it appears that, of the 69 members of the faculty, only 26 teach one type of work, 35 teach two types of work, and 8 teach three types of work. Of the 17 members who have only college courses, 13 also do either correspondence or extension work or both. Fifteen of the 43 members of the faculty scheduled for two or more types of resident work do extension work. The commission requested the department of mathematics and applied mechanics, the department of chemical and physical sciences, the commerce department, and the division of industrial arts to submit data for the second semester of the past year showing the classes which contained mixed students. These data show that there are in these departments 8 classes containing vocational students and industrial engineering students; 9 classes containing college and vocational students; 3 classes containing college and high-school students; 1 containing vocational and high-school students; 2 containing college, vocational, and high-school students; and 4 containing college, industrial engineering, and vocational students. During the first semester the number of mixed classes in the division of industrial arts was much larger than in the second semester. In that division alone there were during the first semester 13 classes containing college and vocational students and 4 classes containing college, vocational, and high-school students. The college and industrial engineering students received their credit as usual in semester hours and the vocational and high-school students in units. In a number of instances the classes included in the computation of mixed classes mentioned above contained only one or two students from outside the division in which the courses were scheduled. For a number of such cases special reasons were offered for permitting students to schedule work outside their respective divisions. In some instances students were said to be older than their classmates and sufficiently well prepared to do more advanced work. Also it should be remembered that a considerable amount of the elementary shop and wood work is essentially the same for all types of students. Notwithstanding these palliating circumstances, the commission is of the opinion that work done under these conditions at a normal school is as likely to lower the standards of scholarship as is commonly held to be true of higher institutions in general. Classes composed of students with a variety of preparations naturally have to seek a common basis from which to proceed. Hence there is an inevitable tendency to lower the standard of class work to that of the more illy prepared students in the class. This tendency has been true in too many higher institutions in the past. At the present time educators are coming to realize more keenly their deep obligation to develop the better prepared students. The zeal therefore to serve numbers of students with different preparations may detract from serving most effectively those who have made the preparation demanded by an institution to fulfill its primary function. In this case the primary function is the preparation of teachers. The commission holds that there is no greater function for a higher institution, and it believes therefore that the standard of preparation at the normal schools should not be endangered by zeal, no matter how commendable, for service in other than fields of teaching. Another reason freely offered to the commission at both the Hays and Pittsburg Normal Schools for extensive vocational courses was the argument that each institution was under obligation to meet sectional and local educational needs in other fields than teacher training. The peculiar constituency surrounding both these institutions and the fact that in both cases there is no other higher institution near at hand was held to justify a quite indefinite expansion to satisfy a large portion of the educational wants of the particular sections in which the institutions happen to be located. The commission understands that the presence of a higher institution in a certain section of the State may well be a source of pride to the people of that section, and it agrees that the institution may be more appreciated within a radius of 100 miles of its location than in more remote sections of the State. This condition does not by any means, however, justify indefinite expansion at all the higher institutions. The only logical conclusion to such an argument in Kansas is five universities. With increased cost and standard of scholarship at stake as possible sacrifices to this conception, the commission believes that it would be much more desirable and wholesome to hold to the theory that all five of the institutions are State institutions. They are supported and maintained by all the people of the State, and consequently they belong to all the people |