"Frick Teachers: A Little Publicized School Is Quietly Noting a Quarter Century of Teacher Training." From The Bulletin Index, 8 April 1937.

Painful to most educators is the bromide definition of education as "Mark Hopkins on one end of a log, a boy on the other." Such a happy and homely resolution of the problem of education is, say they, a pure popular superstition. In order to teach well, teachers must first be taught how to teach. Pursuing that thesis educators have since 1900 prevailed upon state legislatures gradually to increase educational requirements until today in three-fourths of the states an A.B. or B.S. degree and specialized training in teaching methods, educational psychology, a half dozen other technical facets of the art are requisite for even the most lowly of teaching jobs.

Specialists in the art of teaching teachers how to teach are the faculty of Pittsburgh's little publicized Frick Training School for Teachers, alumnae of which are this week celebrating the school's silver anniversary with a banquet and accompanying reminiscent speeches.

Established as Pittsburgh Training School for Teachers when the 1911 school code extended requirements to include two years of post-high school training, Frick* school is maintained by the Pittsburgh Board of Education, contrary to popular belief receives no philanthropic Frick money. Reason for the name was the Board's desire to honor the founder of the Frick Educational Fund which finances European study trips for teachers and unofficially to commemorate Henry Clay Frick's deed of pulling the Board out of a nasty hole some years back when the city's depository for thrifty moppet pennies, the School Savings Bank. collapsed.

Frick's chief distinction among teacher training schools is a rigid weeding of applicants, a longer period of practice teaching than most schools, and the fact that graduates, unlike their Normal School sisters who must serve three-year apprenticeships in Class 2 ,3, or 4 school districts, may step directly into Pittsburgh's first class district schools, likewise commanding $1,300 instead of the usual $1,200 starting minimum. Pittsburgh School replacements are made on a 60-40 basis, 60 Frick graduates for every 40 outsiders.

Limited by the Board to 30 entrants a year, the school annually receives applications from over 200 Pittsburgh high school graduates, majority of whom are honor students. Correctable physical defects do not disqualify applicants; I.Q. ratings of less than those of the top thirty automatically do. Last spring a seventeen-year-old Allderdice High School lad cracked the tests for high scores, and next year will earn the distinction of becoming the first male student in Frick history.

The student body, currently numbering 120, attends teaching technique, observation, and subject classes in a roomy white brick building on Thackeray Street just off Pitt campus. To the same building troop l,000 primary grade children, a faculty of 24 for the primary grades, 9 full-time training school teachers. Strictly an "observation school," neophytes are restricted to watching procedure and gleaning ideas. Practice teaching is done under critic teachers in regular city schools.

Three principals have directed Frick since its inception: Dr. Herbert D. Davis (1912-1928) who established the fundamental two-year curriculum and guided the school through its formative stages; Dr. Herbert Spencer, now president of Pennsylvania College for Women, who instituted the 4-year curriculum in 1929 and concluded the arrangement whereby ten Pitt teachers stretch out their regular class room notes to cover the extra two months that Frick girls attend, and the present incumbent, Dr. Dana Zug Eckert.

A wiry, quiet-mannered little man, son of a New Lebanon, Pa., horse dealer, 43-year-old Dr. Eckert has served 24 of his 25 teaching years in the Pittsburgh system, as manual training teacher, vocational counselor, assistant principal, assistant director of curriculum. His last post was principal of Herron Hill High School. A hard worker—he completed his course requirements for a Ph.D. in 8 years of Saturday & evening classes at Pitt—like many another harassed school administrator he finds little time for vacationing. When he does, he scours the countryside for auction sales, picks up items for his growing collection of early American texts.

Proud of his school, ranking No. 2 in U. S. city-maintained training schools (No. 1: Kansas City), Principal Eckert denies rumors that Frick graduates, averaging 25 annually, frequently fail to be placed in city schools. There is a two-year lag, he admits, but points out that the majority of Frick girls either find places temporarily in schools outside the city or piece out with generous substitute work.

*Not to be confused with Falk Elementary School, University of Pittsburgh's progressive school where for $300 a year children may experience education's latest wrinkles from the kindergarten through the 8th grade.

Last updated: 22 June 1999.