VII

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF

AMERICAN TEACHING (II) 1

1

When the traveler returns from a long journey, his resting hours take him in memory to the places and persons he has met. He reviews his associations, the delights once enjoyed are renewed, even tho the participants have gone to the beyond; so with me tonight. Places are not so vividly by, as are persons. My gratification is in the companionship of the men with whom I administered schools, by whose counsel much of what I have accomplished was attained.

The office of superintendent of schools is comparatively a new one. About sixty years ago, Providence, R. I., appointed the first. Nathan Bishop and S. S. Greene were the pioneers. The former early undertook the Boston field. As a pupil in those schools, I remember him as he was seen occasionally on trips of inspection. What he accomplished is not a matter of record.

The propriety of such a supervising and consulting officer soon became apparent, and rapidly other cities in the country installed a superintendent of schools, with varying powers and duties. The names on the permanent roll are those of noble men and patriots.

In view of the careers of these officers, one must conclude that no sordid or low motives lead men to enter upon the work. Only the highest and most lovely character can impel the cultured man of the present to embark upon a voyage that promises little material return. Financial remuneration is inadequate; a scholarly life is impossible; the probability of occupying a transient domicile faces him who enters upon the undertaking.

The administration of a public-school system demands every hour in the working day in the execution of duties which are 'The first paper in this series appeared in the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW for September, 1909.

not directly related to literary or scientific pursuits. Those superintendents who have compiled textbooks have done so at the expense of force that rightfully should have been expended in a more loyal direction. If authorship be sought, the superintendent should retire from office while writing. When a man accepts the position, it is with the understanding that all of him is at the service of his employer; that he can not morally enter upon any other field during his incumbency. His time and talent are under contract.

First among the precious friends and notable superintendents whose name rushes promptly to me is that of Dr. W. T. Harris, now happily preserved with us, and in whose company, at his home in Providence, R. I., one is still permitted to drink from the great fountain of wisdom.1

In the sixties, the superintendent of St. Louis was putting forth those incomparable school reports which so aroused the superintendent world. We joined our enthusiasm to his wisdom. We journeyed to him, and he, with that genial heartfulness which has ever been a chief part of him, frequently came to us. We had meetings of counsel at neighboring cities. We met at Indianapolis, Chicago, and journeyed to St. Louis to spend a few hours on Saturdays in his company. He was the greatest of us all; words inadequately tell what the educational world has profited in the forty years since, thru his pen and brain. The ordinary man is a pigmy in his presence. Europe has crowned him as the great educational philosopher, while we are vain in being acknowledged as his pupils.

It was about these times that a group of us, Pickard, Powell, Lane, and others, gathered in class to sit at the feet of Elizabeth Peabody, Horace Mann's sister-in-law, the advance apostle and instructor in the kindergarten school. She was old and learned and bright. Our first authoritative view of Froebel and his philosophy was gained that week. Years after, while a guest in Berlin, of Frau Schrader, Froebel's niece, a persistent kindergarten promoter, I failed to receive like inspiration to that which Miss Peabody's teaching accomplished. 'Since the above was written Dr. Harris has died.

Berlin kindergartens in 1891 were a disappointment. With the failure to obtain assistance from the public treasury, and the coolness in the work maintained by the school circles, Frau Schrader had not the assistance that the work deserved. But she persisted in promoting the instruction and made remarkable showing with contributions from the private purses of herself and friends. The widow of Froebel was then living at Hamburg, but she had little interest in the great work commenced by her husband.

The kindergarten is effective principally in the United States, and even here the many attempts under that name are not encouraging to the intelligent student of Froebel's philosophy.

John D. Philbrick left Dartmouth College for the teacher's platform, and in due time was made the Superintendent of Boston. He was vigorous, learned, and ambitious. Among other advances, he caused to be constructed the first modern. graded schoolhouse, the old Brimmer. Suddenly, at the end of twenty-five years' service taken from the very pith of his strong manhood, he was dropt from the roll, cast out to look for the where-with-all for daily bread.

In a few years, with a brilliant, short directorate of American education at the Paris Exposition, after writing an exhaustive report on the city schools of the country under the auspices of the National Commissioner of Education, he died all too soon. Who shall say the cause of his hastened death? On my last visit to him at his farm home in Danvers, Mass., the delights in listening to his advances and conquests for Boston schools were side by side with the sadness caused by his grief at the treatment received from his associates on the Boston Board.

A. J. Rickoff, the banner superintendent of Cleveland, was not retained after having gained for that city the Paris award for the best system in the United States. Those of us who were with him during his last years know that he was broken in heart and spirit.

One of the dearest and sweetest characters, Stevenson of Columbus, Ohio, awoke one morning, after twenty-five years' commended administration, to find his successor elected, no

intimation of which movement had been given him. He soon died after futile efforts to recover himself.

Similarly, Jones of Erie, Pa., at the end of more than thirty years, was dropt, when, broken and disheartened, he retired from notice, and almost from acquaintance, to die in a little hamlet in the Far West.

W. B. Powell was killed by the ordinary machinations of that element of American society that viciously participates in attacks made from ignorant and improper motives. The attack on Powell was led by men who had position, therefore power. The Senate Document on the schools of Washington, D. C., put forth by its committee in charge of Senator Stewart of Nevada, presents one of the most disgraceful and ignorant misrepresentations of the schools of a city ever printed. I know of but one other book in the English language that equals it in ignorance, but not in wickedness: The life of Lord Timothy Dexter of Newburyport, written by himself, a few copies of which still exist. This report of the Stewart committee has probably been retired by the Senate Committee on Disposition of useless papers. One copy, embalmed I trust, remains in the family of each of the men who signed the report.

Powell, retired, tried to interest himself in active work, traveled a little, and, like the others, died broken in heart and spirit, a comparatively young man. I knew him intimately; I worked with him when both were young and ambitious. His single thought was the betterment of the common school. He was the peer of any; he received the recompense often obtained by the city superintendent.

Bright among the spirits about me is that of Colonel Francis W. Parker. Everybody knew and loved him; to me especially, our antecedents as boys in New Hampshire being nearly identical, and our army life, from '61 to '65, being similar, he was very near. What a genial, jolly temperament was his, and how wildly possest with a divine impulse of child-life and power. His presence was a contribution to the highest emotions; his reason, sometimes, was supplanted by a fervor possest and demonstrated by no other in our ranks. His lectures were so interwoven with his personal magnetism as to carry

his audience with him to ecstatic heights. I have forgotten all my trifling objections to his hyperbolic illustrations and over-colored pictures in the realization of his great, warm heart, and his genial conversation. A few hours' social converse with Frank Parker was ample remuneration for a journey to his side.

The Quincy plan marks quite a spot in our educational career. Colonel Parker fell into company with an eminent man, Charles Francis Adams, who, awakened from the school lethargy of a New England community, believed, under Colonel Parker's inspiration, that a new era had arrived in commonschool management. Mr. Adams exploited the discovery. In common with the rest, I was profoundly interested. Quincy was far from my home. Among inquiries made, one was to the venerable Danial Hagar, Principal of the Salem Normal School. Dr. Hagar, who had my life long been an adviser in his visits to Denver, in interviews at conventions and at his home, wrote that he would spend the day at Quincy and write me about it. When his letter came, I learned that he had spent an interested day at Quincy. I learned that, while he had found nothing new, he had found new combinations and old methods applied under new relations; that the visit was well worth making, but that appropriation or imitation of the work doing there could not be transplanted, except the presiding genius and administrator, Colonel Parker, were taken along; that without his personal presence the term Quincy method I could not obtain.

Dr. W. T. Harris wrote me," The Quincy Plan is the highest pedagogical joke of our day and generation." The accuracy of the judgment of the writers has been verified.

Associated with Dr. Harris early in St. Louis was Frank A. Fitzpatrick, principal of a ward school, and one of the group of philosophers gathered in that city. Among them were Davidson, Morgan, and Soldan, who with others since famous were students with the great leader in speculative philosophy. The work did not phase Fitzpatrick's tendency to avoid psychological recluseness, and while he appropriated the benefit of counsels, he was not disposed permanently to travel in the