SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT APPLIED TO THE PROBLEMS OF CITY-SCHOOL SYSTEMS

FRANKLIN BOBBITT

Instructor in Educational Administration, University of Chicago

I. INTRODUCTION

At a time when so much discussion is being given to the possibilities of "scientific management" in the world of material production, it seems desirable that the principles of this more effective form of management be examined in order to ascertain the possibility of applying them to the problems of educational management and supervision. This paper attempts to suggest what some of the principles would probably mean when applied to the labors of our field.

Management, direction, and supervision are functions of all cooperative labor. While men act singly, direction can find no place; but when men co-operate for common ends, one must direct the diverse labors of the group in order to secure unity and effectiveness. The tasks of direction arose with the rise of human organization. Directive labors differ naturally from group to group in their specific details; but whether the organization be for commerce or for manufacture, philanthropy or education, transportation or government, it is coming to appear that the fundamental tasks of management, direction, and supervision are always about the same.

In any organization, the directive and supervisory members must clearly define the ends toward which the organization strives. They must co-ordinate the labors of all so as to attain those ends. They must find the best methods of work, and they must enforce the use of these methods on the part of the workers. They must determine the qualifications necessary for the workers and see that each rises to the standard qualifications, if it is possible; and when impossible, see that he is separated from the organization. This requires direct or indirect responsibility for the preliminary training of the workers before service, and for keeping them up to standard qualifications during service. Directors and supervisors must keep the workers supplied with

detailed instructions as to the work to be done, the standards to be reached, the methods to be employed, and the materials and appliances to be used. They must supply the workers with the necessary materials and appliances. They must place incentives before the worker in order to stimulate desirable effort. Whatever the nature or purpose of the organization, if it is an effective one, these are always the directive and supervisory tasks.

It appears possible therefore to find inherent in the nature of effective, fully developed human organization, of whatever sort, certain general principles of management and supervision that have universal applicability. These general principles have been recognized by different social organizations with very unequal degrees of clearness, and their application to the problems in hand has been made also with varying degrees of completeness. The principles appear to be most clearly conceived and to have been most fully and completely worked out by certain portions of the industrial and business world. Certain railroads and manufacturing corporations have gone farther in this direction than government, or philanthropy, or education, or any of the less materialistic institutions. These latter institutions, are, however, in fact, at present taking over the lessons to be taught by the industrial world; and they are busily making application of proven principles of good management to the special problems of their own field.

Educational workers can, therefore, perhaps see the nature of some of these principles of supervision rather more clearly from observing their application in other fields of human labor, partly because they have been more completely developed and applied in those fields, and partly because they can be viewed in a more objective and impersonal manner. In undertaking our discussion of certain of these principles, it seems well, therefore, to state and illustrate each of them in their most general form as they apply to any organization; then to show in detail how each of them has been worked out in the field of education; or, as it is unfortunately too often the case with us, how it is being worked out and the probable lines along which it is yet to be further developed.

Although we are in our field rather backward as compared with portions of the world of affairs in the recognition and development of some of these principles, together with their corollaries; yet, as a matter of fact, all of them are recognized in our work in greater or lesser degree;

and without exception, each is at present in process of rapid development. We can excuse our relative backwardness on the ground that our educational systems are institutions of very recent growth. Presentday forms of organization in the business world began in the Middle Ages. Our large and complicated public-school systems, however, have been mostly developed thus far, in matters of organization and supervision, within the memories of men now living. We are doing pioneer work as compared with the older institutions; we think we have a right, therefore, to expect some of these older institutions to show us the elements of organization that make for strength, and the elements of supervision that make for effectiveness.

In making application of these principles to the educational field, we shall find ourselves at times confronted with tasks for which our profession is at present almost wholly unprepared. Much of our present educational labor is on so low and empirical a level that a great many preliminary steps will have to be taken before we can raise our methods to the place demanded by the higher and more refined forms of empiricism; or yet, to the still higher plane of scientific control. Recognition of the principles, however, is necessary to any constructive program. It is for this reason that we have not hesitated in our discussion to make deductive application of principles or of their corollaries which cannot actually be applied in our supervisory labors until a number of preliminary and prerequisite tasks have been accomplished. While some of the matters discussed may therefore be impracticable for actual supervision at present, or in the immediate future, they are presented with a belief that they are highly practical for the investigations that lie just ahead of us, on the basis of which we can bring about such forms of scientific supervision and control in the educational world as already exist within certain other institutions.

It is not, in fact, possible at present to write a satisfactory practical handbook of school management or school supervision. So rapid have been recent changes in educational thought, that books on either of these topics of a type that was considered altogether permissible ten years or even so recently as five years ago, can no longer be written; and the facts are not yet at hand in sufficient quantity on the basis of which to write a practical handbook of school management of a type that will satisfy the current demands of progressive educational leaders. Any paper on the topic during our present transitional period can do little

more than suggest the constructive program on the basis of which the facts may be accumulated which will permit the writing of such a practical handbook some years hence.

In making suggestions for a constructive, forward-looking program, it is necessary to assume that we are at present in a stage of incomplete development. While all, or at least most, of the elements of educational progress probably look squarely in the right direction, yet we have to admit that in the case of some of them the amount of progress yet made is not considerable. When we have occasion at times to mention this incompleteness of development as the basis on which further building is to be done, it is not intended as uncharitable or unsympathetic criticism of present-day conditions. It is only to point out incompleteness. To say of a new building that is in process of construction that only the foundation has been laid is not a criticism of the building. It is only to point out the stage of construction in which it happens for the moment to be.

Such a building is to be judged not from the visible portion but from the architect's plans. Any particular educational system is likewise not to be judged from the incomplete beginnings actually visible, but by the architectural plans which have been drawn up by those in charge of the work, and which show the ends of which the present elements are but the beginning. In the building world, although the plans of the architect picture nothing that actually exists, yet these forwardlooking plans constitute the practical and indispensable basis of all constructive work that is to be done.

In the building of a great educational structure, such as the one upon which we are now engaged, it appears that such forward-looking plans are equally practical and indispensable bases for work. They show something definite toward which to strive and on the basis of which all effort can be organized and co-ordinated. I am unable to conceive of any more practical labor that could be undertaken by the educational world than the definite drawing-up of systematic forward-looking plans on which our constructive labors might be based. The chief purpose of the following suggestions is to make clear this need. The work itself must be a co-operative task on a large scale.