Educators Say New Plan Will Set National Example

The new School of Education program to train teachers through actual classroom experience in addition to regular instruction may be prototype for the nation to follow, three educators agreed yesterday.

Harold B. Gores and Harold Gilson, superintendents of the Newton and Winchester public schools which will participate in the cooperative plan, joined with Edward Noyes of Yale in expressing hope that the experiment may eventually solve the acute shortage of secondary school teachers.

The program, announced Wednesday by Dean Francis Keppel '38, provides for actual teaching practice as a part of the regular Education School curriculum. Candidates for the plan will be specially selected from graduates of ten Massachusetts colleges.

Scarcity of Teachers

Superintendent Gores predicted that the plan may be a vital factor in determining methods of dealing with the critical scarcity of teachers expected when the nation's post-war babies reach secondary school age. "State normal schools provide elementary teachers, but this is the first time that a way has been devised for encouraging the necessary numbers of well-qualified people to teach in the high schools." The deluge of children is now in the lower grades of the public school systems.

Gores said that the new plan would bring a much-needed integration of college and secondary school policy "in the New England liberal arts tradition. It will put the hiring of teachers in an utterly new dimension because the employer will be seeking out the prospective employee," he added.

No Resentment Expected

Gilson, Winchester superintendent, said he expected that present teachers will bear no resentment to the inexperienced college men. "The old teachers realize the situation is serious and they will welcome fellow faculty members of high calibre," he said.

"We haven't begun to see the worst of the teacher shortage, and this may be part of the answer," Gilson concluded.

Yale's Noyes, director of the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at New Haven, warned that the plan depended to a large degree upon the quality of the school children which the trainees will teach. "Harvard is particularly fortunate in having excellent public schools near by for this experiment," he said.