28: The Certification of Teachers: A Consideration of Present Conditions with Suggestions as to Future Improvement

From small beginnings we have gradually evolved, during the past fifty to seventy-five years, a series of American school systems of which we may feel justly proud. Though each state and territory has a different school system, the systems in different states often differing greatly in important features, there is nevertheless such a similarity of aim and purpose between the different state school systems that we not uncommonly group them all together and speak of them collectively as our American public-school system. In this so-called American public-school system we teach sixteen and a half millions of children each year, nearly half a million teachers are required for the work, and for this system we yearly expend over a quarter of a billion of dollars . . .