II. DISTRICT SUPERVISION WEST VIRGINIA AND OREGON AS EXAMPLES L. J. HANIFAN State Supervisor of Rural Schools, Charleston, W.Va. District, or township supervision has for its object the close and effective supervision of the rural elementary schools. When a state, or a community, provides for such rural supervision it but tardily recognizes and adopts those principles of administration that have been found most effective in all forms of successful organized effort. We need only to look about us to see these principles in operation. Note, for examples, the administration of a great railroad system, the organization of a political party, or the handling of large military forces. Everybody is made responsible to and is directed by somebody else higher up. Even the churches are effectively organized and the clergy more or less closely supervised. Every large university has its president, its deans, and its heads of departments. Every city or large town has its superintendent, its district supervisors, its supervisors of special subjects, its principals of buildings, even its head janitors. But as the rural schools have been the last of all the varieties of schools to undertake any kind of improvement, so have they been the last to adopt these well-known principles of administration. That the rural schools have accomplished what they have and continued as an institution can be explained only by the fact that our rural teachers have, for the most part, been men and women of unusual devotion to their work, and that the funds for the support of these schools have come from an inexhaustible public treasury. But the time has come when the deplorable condition of country life in general and of the country schools in particular cannot longer continue so without seriously endangering the whole fabric of our national life. The people are, for the first time, becoming aroused to this fact, and conscious efforts are being made now to build up such a rural civilization as will be in keeping with the growth and prosperity of our nation as a whole. Once this work of developing a rural civilization was begun seriously and consciously, it was discovered that squarely in front of all progress in rural life betterment stood the neglected rural school. The problem came to be, How to improve this rural institution, and through it to improve country life. For it has been found by experiment that reforms of whatever sort must come through the growing, not the adult, members of the population. The lamented Dr. W. S. Knapp demonstrated the truth of this principle by his experiences in his great work toward improving agricultural conditions in the South. In our attempts thus far to improve the rural schools, we have tried a great many different plans. Some of these plans have succeeded, others have failed at least partially so. The success of the best of them has been limited to rather narrow areas and peculiar conditions. To the administrative factor of the problem some very definite contributions have been made, though the adaptation of these contributions has been varied and rather limited. It was Horace Mann's idea to train individual teachers for the work of the rural schools. For this purpose, he opened the first normal school in this country, at Lexington, Mass. This idea of Mann's spread rapidly, until today we have normal, or teachers' training schools scattered all over the land. No one would discount the excellent work these schools have done and are doing today. And yet it must be admitted that most of the direct benefits derived from these schools have been reaped by the city schools, which, owing to the larger salaries they could offer, could outbid the country schools for these trained teachers. A little later came the plan of establishing graded schools in the country by means of consolidating small rural schools into central graded schools, transporting the pupils by wagons. This movement has spread through favored sections of a great many states, and with singular success where conditions were favorable to this plan of rural school improvement. But good as the plan is, where feasible, it can never help conditions in the large majority of the rural schools. The extension of the movement is necessarily limited by bad roads, by mountains and rivers, and by sparsity of population. This is particularly true in the mountainous sections of our country. It is safe to say that, for by far the greatest number of our country boys and girls, the one-teacher school will for many years yet continue to be the best. The question is then, what can be done to reach and thus improve this large number of one-teacher schools? As a means of reaching effectively all the rural schools, and especially the one-teacher schools, district (township) supervision has, within recent years, come more and more into favor with many students of rural school administration. For more than a score of years Massachusetts has had this plan in successful operation. Connecticut and some of the other New England states have adopted plans similar in character to that of Massachusetts. West Virginia has had optional supervision since July 1, 1908. New York inaugurated a system of compulsory supervision of all her rural schools May, 1910, and Oregon in May, 1911. Kentucky and Alabama have adopted district supervision within the last twelve months. This departure in rural school administration has been made in recognition of keenly felt needs. In some of the states the ineffectiveness of the office of county superintendent has emphasized the need of some more effective plan of supervising the rural schools. This statement is made not as a reflection upon the holders of this office, for most of our county superintendents have labored faithfully to meet the heavy demands upon them. The increased number of schools, the ever-growing clerical demands, and the enlarged conception of the professional nature of the work of school superintendent, all have contributed toward making the office bigger than any one man. Those who advocate district supervision recognize this changed situation and merely seek to give the county superintendent relief from some of this vast amount of work by employing, as his assistants, as many expert supervisors as are necessary to insure thorough and systematic supervision of all the schools in his county. The aim of district supervision is in general outline fourfold: 1. To improve the administration of the business affairs of the rural school. The average board of education is composed of men who know very little about schools. They do not grasp the school situation well enough to know how most economically and effectively to spend the school funds at their disposal. They are men busy with their own affairs and could scarcely be expected to spend as much time with school affairs as would be necessary to supervise the construction of buildings, the making of repairs, the buying of supplies, the furnishing of fuel, and a large number of other things. A general manager, the district supervisor, is needed to look after all these matters, always under the direction of the board. It is safe to say, if observation is worth much, that without expert supervision of the business affairs of these boards, twenty-five per cent of the building and supply funds is wasted. 2. To help the teacher in her work. If we can picture to ourselves a girl yet in her teens, with no experience, with but little more than an elementary education, with no professional training, going out into an isolated rural district to teach a school of from twenty to fifty boys and girls, many of them larger and some older than herself, having against her the prejudices of the community and bad conditions generally, this girl doomed to stay in this community from the beginning of the term to its close, with little social life, with no one to give a word of encouragement or advice, such a picture will be fairly representative of the situation in a very large number of rural schools at this time. This teacher needs, even craves, sympathy and help. In very many such cases the supervisor turns the tide from failure to success. 3. To train the teachers while they teach.-The number of rural teachers who have had normal training is relatively very small. It would be folly to ask these teachers to quit teaching and go to a normal school. They must be trained while they teach in their schools. District supervision proposes to train one man for each group and send him out into the district to train these teachers for more effective work. This plan provides a training school in each district as it were, taking this training to the teachers instead of sending the teachers away to the training. The plan has at least the advantage of associating the practice with the theory of teaching. 4. To provide for effective community leadership.—Leadership in the rural districts is sadly lacking. There is no logical leader of the whole community. The minister is the leader only of his own church. The country doctor seldom assumes the leadership which his superior training and experience fit him for. The farmer does not have sufficient motive to cause him to assume community leadership. But the district superintendent of schools, by virtue of his office, is a logical leader of all the people of his district. He comes in contact in one way or another with every family. He knows neither class nor creed. He assumes leadership in all efforts for the betterment of his people. Without such leadership it is a difficult matter to carry through any project looking toward social, educational, or moral uplift. WEST VIRGINIA AND OREGON AS EXAMPLES It may be worth while to note very briefly how each of these states came to provide for district supervision. In West Virginia the board of education in one district felt so keenly the need of someone to look after the interests of the rural schools that they appointed, in 1901, an experienced teacher for this work. There was no law for such action at the time, and to avoid complications, this teacher was appointed as a truant officer, which office the law provided for. This experiment led to the passage of a law in 1908 making the appointment of district superintendents optional with boards. The law went into effect July I, 1908. In Oregon it was observed that many farmers were moving to town to educate their children, while others were sending their children to the towns to be educated. A committee was appointed in 1910 to investigate this situation and discover, if possible, the causes. The committee reported that the rural schools were really inferior to the town and city schools and that it was their opinion that this inferiority was due to the fact that the city schools were well supervised, while the country schools had almost no supervision. The state superintendent submitted this report to the legislature in 1911, with his recommendation that a law be passed establishing district supervision. The law was accordingly passed and became effective May, 1911. LAWS GOVERNING DISTRICT SUPERVISION IN WEST VIRGINIA AND OREGON The West Virginia law makes district supervision optional with boards of education, except that a petition in writing of a majority of the taxpayers may compel a board to appoint a superintendent. When it has been decided that any district shall have supervision, it becomes the duty of the board to appoint a superintendent, fix his salary, and issue such rules and regulations as seem necessary. The only qualification specified by law is that the appointee shall hold a first-grade state teacher's certificate. The powers and duties of the superintendent are defined by law as those which "are usually conferred upon city superintendents." These superintendents are required "to make such reports as may be required by the state superintendent of free schools." It is further provided that a board of education may employ the principal of any graded school in the district as superintendent "provided he shall devote at least half his time to supervision." Furthermore, by decision of the |