Excerpt from State Normal School, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Thirtieth Annual Catalog: For the Year Ending June Twenty-Sixth, Nineteen Hundred Twenty-Five A professional school The public schools need teachers. The State Normal School at Fitchburg, in common with all the Massachusetts state normal schools, is maintained by the Commonwealth for the purpose of preparing teachers for its schools. The public school is the instrument of society for initiating its new members, Civilizing them, and preparing them for the worldis' To teach is to help another to learn. The teacher must under stand how children learn, what they need to learn, and how to induce them to learn when they are not eager to do so. The task of the normal school is to lead its students into this understanding, to practice them in giving this help in the most intelligent, sympa thetic, and skillful way of which they are capable, and to set before them ideals toward which they will continue to strive as long as they continue to teach. Our normal schools, if they are to prepare their students to teach, must have students who are fit mentally, physically, and morally, to help Children learn what they must learn to fit them to take their part in civilized society. The prime qualifications for teaching are to be earnest and to be teachable. The state is searching for people who possess these qualifications, who are in earnest to serve, and who will make it their chief purpose to help children on toward the highest possible usefulness. To this end it has placed normal schools Where they will be accessible to all the towns and cities that employ teachers or that furnish students who wish to train for teaching. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.