the knowledge which
they have or may acquire; the best mode of training and dealing with
children in all that regards both temper, capacity, and habits, and the
means of stirring them to exertion, and controlling their aberrations."

_Normal schools are essential_ to the complete success of any system of
popular education. The necessity for their establishment can not fail to
be apparent to any one at all competent to judge, when he considers the
early age at which young persons of both sexes generally enter upon the
business of school-teaching--or, perhaps I may more appropriately say,
of "keeping" school; for the majority of them can hardly be regarded as
competent to _teach_.

For the purpose of being more specific, and of impressing, if possible,
upon the mind of the reader, the necessity of professional instruction,
the author trusts he will be pardoned for introducing a few paragraphs
from a report made nine years ago as county superintendent of common
schools in the State of New York and which was printed at that time in
the Assembly documents of that state. The author, at the time referred
to, exercised a general supervision over more than twenty thousand
children, aided in the examination of the teachers of twenty large
townships, and visited and inspected their schools. Nine years'
additional experience--four of which have been devoted to the
supervision of the schools of a large state, and a considerable portion
of the remaining time to the visitation of schools in different
states--has convinced him that the condition of common schools, and the
qualifications of teachers in those states of the Union where increased
attention has not been bestowed upon the subject within a few years
past, are not in advance of what they were at that time in the county
referred to. The paragraphs introduced are included within brackets.

[LITERARY QUALIFICATIONS.--Some of the teachers possess a very limited
knowledge of the branches usually taught in our common schools. This is
true even of a portion of those who have bestowed considerable attention
upon some of the higher branches of study. There is in our common
schools, and indeed in our higher schools, an undue anxiety to advance
rapidly. A score of persons may be heard speaking of the number of their
recitations, of their rapid progress, and perhaps of skipping
difficulties, while hardly _one_ will speak of progressing
_understandingly_, and comprehending _every princip