The problem of the training of teachers both prior to their appointment and after they begin service varies so much as you pass from city to city that it is very difficult for a person trying to deal with the subject in a general way to say anything that will be helpful or stimulating to a body of superintendents. Hence, it seems to me that it would be well to begin our conference together with a statement of the fact that the first thing, as I see it, for a superintendent to do is to define his problem of the training of teachers in relation to the general policy which he is trying to carry out in the schools over which he has charge. He mist see the problem of training teachers in relation to his larger problem, and in order to do this it is necessary for him to make a survey of conditions as he finds them in his local environment. This survey should determine, first of all, the greatest needs of the system and, secondarily, the most practical ways of meeting those needs. Any survey of the greatest needs of a city school system would include, it seems to me, a study of such matters as the following: The superintendent ought to study his teaching corps. He ought to find out just what sort of material he has to deal with, how well the corps has been selected, what the native ability of the teachers really is, what their past training has been, what their present attitude toward teaching is, whether that attitude is a professional one or otherwise, whether or not there is an appreciation of the science of teach-