Milford, Lionel Sumner. Haileybury college, past and present. Lon don, T. F. Unwin, 1909. 336p. 8° Includes, The Beginnings of New Haileybury and some reminiscences of Norwood, Cyril, and Hope, Arthur H. The higher education of boys in England. London, J. Murray, 1909. 568p. 8°. is not haphazard "The plan of the book Paddelford, Fred L. Short addresses on Industrial training, The American boy (Handle with_care); Thanksgiving; Industry the golden pass key. Golden, Colorado, [1909], [The Industrial school press] [72p.] 24°. Prince, John Tilden. Report on school organization and supervision, Kindergartens, sub-primary classes, primary and grammar schools, powers and duties of school superintendents, conveyance of children to school, mentally defective children, blind and deaf children, delinquent children. [Boston, 1909] 20p. 8°. Reprinted from the seventy-second Report of the Massachusetts Board of education. Sharp, Frank Chapman. Success; a course in moral instruction for the high school. Madison, The University, 1909. 118p. 12°. (Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, no. 303. High school series no. 7.) "This manual is intended to supply material for a year's course in Moral Warren, Julius E. Industrial education in the public schools. ton, 1909] 9p. 8°. [Bos Reprinted from the seventy-second Report of the Massachusetts Board of education. VIII DISCUSSIONS WHERE ARE THE LEADERS? The EDUCATIONAL REVIEW for September, in Notes and News, says of the National Education Association: "Those who are coming forward to fill their place (referring to the leaders) are not, it must be admitted, very promising material. Not a few of them are quite incompetent to make any contributions to educational thought, or to details of educational policy." This remark has burdened my mind ever since I read it. I have not questioned its truth, for that is obvious to any man who has followed American education for twenty years or more closely. What I have been questioning is to what extent it is true, and why it is true, not merely of the National Education Association, but of all our educational situation. Twenty years ago we were enthusiastic regarding the extension of the powers and responsibilities of educators in the superintendency, regarding the progress that was already coming thru normal schools, and that was hoped for from new colleges of education, and new departments of education in universities, and regarding the transformation of educational practise thru manual training, pedagogy, and psychology. The twenty years have seen the amount of money annually spent upon education doubled, and the number of high schools more than doubled, the development of several new or then small universities into their present greatness, and several cities educationally reformed, among them New York and St. Louis. There is always the illusion of the present as compared with the past. We never quite see the present. But I confess that there was an inspiration about education in the late eighties and the early nineties that I do not feel now at all. It is quite true that I have seen a deal of life since then, as has indeed every other survivor from that period. But it is not true that I am yet so old as to be loath to believe good of the present. Matters have not workt out quite as planned. To illustrate: Twenty years ago, there was hope that the educational lines of school direction would be turned over to professional experts, leaving to laymen the financial matters. The very proposition has in many instances embittered the lives and defeated the efforts of school superintendents by arousing the jealousy of the laymen upon governing boards. Some states have actually retrogressed in consequence. Το Those who have not given careful and candid thought to this matter, and very few have done so even among teachers, are unaware of the nature of the bulwarks against the direction of education by educators raised by the boards of control. be specific: Wisconsin has 23,000 board members, and but 13,000 teachers, a ratio that precludes expert local educational direction. In Connecticut the three years' report of the State Board of Education for 1906-7-8 has just appeared. In it there is a list of school officers, which gives the names of all the 1,350 school visitors of the 175 towns of the state, including certain special districts. Of the eighty-five towns electing school superintendents, many choose laymen for that office. One town of 30,000 population has no superintendent, lay or professional. Last year, the Legislature of the state had before it eighty-eight reform bills dealing with education, and did almost nothing, primarily because of the resistance of the same school officers. When one investigates, one discovers that in Connecticut school visitors and school committees have but little financial control. In consequence, they are but little more, tho sometimes something worse, than surplusage. With nothing of importance financial to do, they must deal with educational matters in order to justify their existence. But the unwise efforts of enthusiasts who have tried to take courses of study and similar matters out of the hands of these laymen without giving them something else to do, have but accentuated their interest in these educational matters by arousing their jealousy. It is not my present purpose to raise for its own sake this question of who shall direct education, but to show its bearing upon the reduction in quality of the men in nominal charge of school affairs. Many boards are careful not to secure experts lest their own occupations be taken away. With some notable exceptions, the men who are being promoted now in the lines of the school superintendency are not of the quality of their predecessors, but they resemble more and more the members of their own boards, being "business men." The same tendency seems everywhere to characterize the recent selections of principals of state normal schools, chosen by state boards,-likewise with notable exceptions. But from a fairly extended knowledge of the country, after visiting forty-one states, I have come to the opinion that in personnel all other lines of educational endeavor are moving upward. Our professors of education in colleges and universities, our city normal and high school principals, and our teachers generally, are growing more efficient, and the entrants into the ranks are being chosen with more and more care. It is a highly significant thing that the school superintendents and normal school principals chosen by city and state boards try to get as subordinates the best persons available at the salaries, and often try to get better salaries. The reason is that the superintendents, and not the boards of control, or the still higher boards that manage the money affairs, are held responsible by the public for the educational conditions, and many a head, himself improperly chosen, rejects for subordinate positions persons of his own type and equipment. He acts, in short, for the public good as he best knows how, because not to act in the best interests of the school would endanger his own usually already precarious position. Even their own subordinates hold the principals and superintendents responsible, as do usually their fellow-teachers elsewhere. This came home to me in a highly humorous way last summer. I had just completed a lecture in a Southern city when a high school principal of long experience arose and said that he liked it well enough, but that he thought it strange that the lecturer, "when superintendent of schools in the Dis trict of Columbia, had not removed the negroes from the board of education." I am not of the interesting condition of mind which supposes that leaders are supprest. There is not much to be said for the idea of “looking for leaders." But at the same time, it does seems to me that for the National Education Association, the true future course is to encourage the presence upon the programs of university professors of education, and of principals of city high and normal schools. These are the men who may think of theirs as a life-work, and seriously discuss its principles. The city superintendency and the state superintendency are not now and for many years will probably not be life-positions. They are temporary prizes. Few men serve in either of these offices more than three years. Men who have held two different superintendencies are few. Of men who have held four different superintendencies, one or more of them being of importance, I can count but four in this country. If any man is now in his fifth superintendency, I have not heard of him in that way. Taking a superintendency seems to me to be opening a hall door out into the common economic life; most men who lose or resign a superintendency go into "business." Few superintendents die in office; few retire because of old age. There is at least one other reason why the National Education Association is now losing in number and quality of leaders. There have been recently too many transcontinental trips, taking too much time and costing too much money. Dividing the country into four regions, the Atlantic, the Mississippi Valley, the Rockies, and the Coast, we might well move regularly across the center of population, which is in Indiana, in such a way as this,-Cleveland, Denver, Boston, Milwaukee, Atlantic City, Minneapolis, Baltimore or Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Buffalo, St. Louis, then Cleveland again. Only regular attendants can be leaders. SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS SOUTH NORWALK, CONN. WILLIAM E. CHANCELLOR |