schools from our modern ideal,--from the pleasant, active,
animated school, such as we conceive it to-day,--there is none the less
obligation to do justice to La Salle, to pardon him for practices which
were those of his time, and to admire him for the good qualities that
were peculiarly his own."[114]

He established the first normal school in history at Rheims in 1684,
thirteen years before Francke organized his teachers' class at Halle,
and fifty years before Hecker founded the first Prussian normal school
at Stettin. La Salle magnified the teacher's office, and urgently
demanded professional training for instructors of the young. Brother
Azarias forcibly sums up La Salle's great work in this respect as
follows: "He is the benefactor of the modern schoolmaster. He it was who
raised primary teaching out of the ruts of never ending routine, carried
on in the midst of time-honored noise and confusion, and, in giving it
principles and a method, made of it a science. He hedged in the dignity
of the schoolmaster. He was the first to assert the exclusive right of
the master to devote his whole time to his school work."[115]

Education, therefore, owes to La Salle three important
contributions,--(1) the Simultaneous Method of Instruction, whereby a
number of children of the same advancement are taught together; (2) the
first Normal School, established at Rheims, France, in 1684; and (3) a
dignifying of the teacher's profession by setting apart trained persons
who should give all their time to the work of teaching.

=Rollin (1661-1741).=--This great teacher, connected for many years with
the University of Paris, and deposed therefrom in connection with the
Jansenists to whom he adhered, was not merely a university lecturer, but
also an author of educational works and a student of general education.
His most important educational work is his "Treatise on Studies." Rollin
anticipated modern practice by seeking to make learning pleasant and
discipline humane. He would use the rod only as a last resort--a theory
quite contrary to the practice of that time. Too much freedom, he
thought, would have a tendency to make children impudent; too frequent
appeal to fear breaks the spirit; praise arouses and encourages the
child, but too much of it makes him vain. Therefore the teacher must
avoid both extremes. While he would have girls know the four ground
rules of arithmetic, that is about all they should have except domestic
training