Excerpt from Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Education, Together With the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board, 1872-73: January, 1874 While this Board has no direct control over the Common Schools of the State, it may affect them indirectly, and most efficiently, through those diversified agencies which have for their object the training of Common School teachers. In the first place, to the Board is entrusted the care of the four Normal Schools of the State. These schools, during the past year, have admitted and have graduated more pupils than in any former year of their existence. The success of Normal Schools has been more marked and satisfactory, and their im proved methods of teaching have been better _understood and more fully and cordially appreciated the past year than ever before. The universal experience of mankind in every other department of skilled labor, instructs us that the schools of the Commonwealth can never become what they should be, except by the labors of well-trained teachers. The relations of the Normal Schools to the State are such, and so intimate, as to warrant their most liberal support and encouragement. In order that their methods of teaching may be fully illustrated and made more practically useful, they urgently need ample philosophical and chemical apparatus, and greatly enlarged cabinets, and more thorough courses of study. 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.