isua-isnscatalog-1888-1889-030

Description:	INDIANA STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 29for general culture, for its own sake. It is a professional school. Its central idea is to confer that knowledge which constitutes the science of education, and to train students in the art of instruc¬ tion and school management. Its leading aim is to give that knowledge and training which belong as distinctively to the teacher as does the science of medicine to the physician, or the science of law to the legal practitioner. A school is a normal school, in the sense contemplated in the statute quoted, only when it makes these its controlling ends. To hold the State Normal School to its one object as a professional institution, only those are admitted to its privileges who intend to prepare for the work of the school-room. To the work of preparing teachers for the common schools of the State, the Normal School has, during the twenty years of its existence, addressed its entire energies.By what means does it seek to give this preparation ? The answer may be made as follows : I. It seeks to lead the pupil to acquire a thorough, scientific knowledge of the branches he is to teach. This knowledge is the prime condition of any success in the school-room. The teachers instruction in a given subject can never rise above his own knowledge of that subject No. knowledge of methods of in struction, however excellent in themselves—no fund of general information, however accurate and extensive, can be substituted for the specific and thorough knowledge of the subjects which the individual is required to teach. He must at least know these. General culture and information will greatly augment the teach¬ ing power of one already possessing the requisite knowledge of what is to be taught, as will also correct methods of instruction  but these are auxiliaries to, not substitutes for, a definite under¬ standing of the matter of instruction. The teacher must himself know that which the pupils are expected to acquire under his tuition. His mastery of these subjects must be thorough and complete. Other things equal, he is the best teacher of a sub¬ ject who has the most thorough and complete knowledge of it. Not only must the teacher be conversant with the facts of the various branches he teaches, but he must know these in their logical connections. It is only thus that they form a subject of study. The facts of arithmetic, for example, constitute the
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/33007
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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