Since the First Schoolmen's Week was held in 1914 at the University of Pennsylvania, it achieved the status of a teachers' institute offering more than a hundred programs and attracting a total annual attendance of more than twenty thousand people. In 1916 the first Proceedings of Schoolmen's Week were published and these have continued to be published each year without interruption, making available to members of the teaching profession and to the general public many notable statements regarding the art, science, and craft of education.
This volume, edited by Frederick C. Gruber, represents a sampling of the papers delivered at the Forty-third Schoolmen's Week held in April, 1956. The subjects of these papers cover not only the general problems faced by our teachers and schools in a turbulent world atmosphere but specific matters relating to elementary and secondary education as well as to school administration.
From Helen C. Bailey's opening article, through Pearl Buck's moving discussion "In Search of Teachers"—in which she describes teaching as "the supreme task of creation"—and on through each of the succeeding twenty-four papers by leading educators, the reader of this volume is given an incisive and invaluable view of some of the key problems and important achievements of the teaching profession in America.