SUPERVISION THAT IRRITATES

BY CHARLES A. WAGNER, PH. D.
Chester, Pa.

Even a rage for dignified nomenclature cannot conceal the fact that much so-called supervision is not effective in creating inspiration but instead generates irritation. Putting labels on things is not the same as producing the thing, as a certain state long ago discovered when it tried to palm off wooden imitations of nutmegs. Many forms of perversion of supervision exist. The one to be considered here is that which masquerades under the form of school visitation, ceremony, and show of authority and assumption of superiority, but which leaves the teacher disheartened, depressed, or even irritated. Teachers reveal such experiences by all kinds of remarks to each other, but the unmistakable proof of irritation from supervision is such a remark as, "The idea of calling that supervision! Why, he never proposed anything better in place of the things he condemns.'

There are three infallible marks of the right kind of supervision: Commendation of the good, condemnation of the unsatisfactory, suggestion of the better. The supervisor who cannot see something to commend in a schoolroom is suffering from something mental or physical unassimilated -dyspepsia-most likely mental, or is visiting an unqualified failure as a teacher, whose presence in the corps should, of course, not continue possible, and who may be there now because of earlier oversight or omission of plain duty. If so, the fault is the supervisor's, although the suffering is unfortunately the children's. There must be the will to commend, not merely the possible or the accidental condescension. What is commended must be recognized as deserving of commendation, or the teacher at once loses respect for the supervisor's judgment or for his sincerity. Mere flattery will not serve. An infallible discernment of the best quality, an unfailing recognition of the best ends of effort, an extended acquaintance with the best methods, these three are needed to give the skill and finesse in commendation of teaching procedure which will win the teacher's respect and

esteem.

To fail in commendation of the right thing at the right time is fatal to the supervisor. Like the supervisor, the teacher is human and can stand a little praise, a little commendation. Not to receive it when deserved marks the observer as unperceiving, undiscerning, or unappreciative. Any one of these conceptions of the supervisor, and surely all three of them, remove the slightest possible chance that the teacher may hold a high opinion or a lofty esteem for the supervisor. Then the encouragement and heartening which come

from the commendation are an immeasurable dynamic addition to the force of the teaching.

Attention must also be directed to unsatisfactory procedures or results. Inherently unpleasant, this task may become very pleasant. If the better way be stated and the teacher asked, "Have you ever tried this way?" for instance, at once the thought is taken up in a comparison and contrast of the suggestion with the method or procedure. This comparison keeps the mind from perceiving or feeling the implied condemnation of the plan used, in an effort to find its merits as compared with the proposed innovation. The latter two characteristics of supervision are combined in this way, and the disagreeable effects of the criticism reduced to a minimum.

In these ways supervision can be handled so that it will be received with pleasure and with true graciousness, can be made reciprocally helpful, and can become a well-spring of inspiration rather than a fount of irritation.

APLLIED LATIN

BY R. R. DODGE

H. H. Rogers High School, Fairhaven, Mass. Among the various uses of applied Latin co-ordination stands high; among the various chances for co-ordination in the high school curriculum one of the best, it seems to me, is between Latin and French.

In many schools a large percentage of pupils, particularly those taking a preparatory course, commence the study of Latin the freshman year, following it by French the sophomore year.

Of course, the study of formal grammar which they get (often for the first time) in Latin helps these students very materially in French, but of this help they are largely unconscious. Would it not both increase the interest in French and show one very practical use of Latin if the student could be made consciously to use the one in acquiring the other?

In these days when Latin teachers everywhere are emphasizing vocabulary, using perception cards, "quick change" bulletins or other similar devices, the average pupil in most high schools knows thoroughly at least 500 words at the close of his freshman year; therefore, it seems to me we have in vocabulary the best chance for conscious co-ordination.

There is no doubt that this co-ordination means some extra work for both Latin and French teacher, but it is work well repaid to both, for if the pupil can be taught to apply his Latin as well as his English vocabulary in determining the mean

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EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY*

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Dr. Snedden is doing his part toward supplanting educational psychology with educational sociology, toward promoting the community trail through the public school.

There is no nobler mission for an educational leader at this time than to transfer the zeal for intensive schoolroom puttering and expert sputtering to the ennobling of all the people in all ways by an expanding of dreams of little minds into the vision of great minds through the mission of education in school and out.

Nowhere has it been made clearer than here that educative forces are actively at work in the

training of every child to take his part in life wisely and efficiently.

"What are the results to society?" is Dr. Snedden's great query from the kindergarten to the medical school. It is his message which has never been so fully visioned or so vividly stated and demonstrated before.

The intensionist has always had as his slogan, "the future good of the individual," while the extensionist says the improved individual must be an asset to society. It is society's need that finally decides the specific purpose and character of forms of education seeking formal public approval.

Educational sociology is the education which educates one to play well his part in the group relations and group activities of men and women. Every paragraph in these two wonderfully in

*Educational Sociology": A Digest and Syllabus. Snedden, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia By David University. Part I: Introduction; price, 55 cents. Part II: Applications to Curricula and Studies; price, 80 cents. Published by Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City.

spiring pamphlets is a volume in itself. Take the following as a suggestive sentence: "The objectives of a public school economy are to be realized largely through control of the conditions which make of children men and women capable, as far as practicable, of realizing the known and approved standards of a wholesome and progressive society."

MISTAKES

"He who makes no mistakes does nothing. He who makes many loses his job."-Booker T. Washington.

A Boston paper recently printed a communication from a literary critic complaining of President Wilson's recent letter to the Pope because of its "slovenly English." Many scholarly people read that wonderful letter which won the admiration of the diplomats of the world without seeing, at least without criticising, its slovenly English. Several persons have criticised the "slovenly English" of the critic of the President.

A critic has recently pointed out several bad blunders in the English of Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard.”

The researchers of the day have found no master of written English who has not violated several of the schoolmaster's rules of grammar. No man from Chaucer to Wilson has been able to es

cape mistakes.

This is a comfort to men who write much and from a distance, so that they never see the proof.

But there is a kind of criticism that putters, flutters, and sputters even more absurdly than critics of "slovenly English."

Two years ago a Russian lad in a slum district school started something which between September, 1916, and May, 1917, brought opportunities to 2,300 practically helpless and hopeless people in commercial, social, and intellectual condition, that city which greatly improved their industrial, making unskilled laborers skilled workers, day laborers foremen, and his teacher in the grades for cipalship of a Girls' High School in another city eight years was in eleven months offered the prin

school boy in the grades to start anything quite as

at $3,000. We have never chanced to know a

eventful as that.

of the situation.

ILLITERATE SOLDIERS

When the United States entered the World War the regular army condition of "no illiterate soldiers" was suspended for the present war service. In case of draft it had to be, in justice to various sections of the country.

This was a signal to Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart, who had led the way to literacy for many thousand native adult illiterates, to extend the work of the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission, of which she is president, to provide at once. for the teaching of all illiterate soldiers to read and write, first in Kentucky camps, and later the country over.

Kentucky, which has the great honor of leading the United States and the World in teaching native adult illiterates, also has the honor of being first to have her illiterate soldiers reading and writing. She is first to prepare a "Soldier's First Book," which has all the genius of Mrs. Stewart's Country Life Readers for those learning to read and write. This new book has each sentence adapted to camp life, adapted to benefit the soldier boys. in ways other than learning to read. The lessons and sentences are short. One-half the book is devoted to patriotic songs. Thousands of soldiers will write home from the seat of war who would not have done so but for the campaign started by Cora Wilson Stewart.

LAFAYETTE ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNITY EXPRESSION OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT

The University of North Carolina has entered upon a most intense method of extending information, awakening the intelligence and inspiring patriotic devotion through the schools.

The Lafayette Association is a plan for realizing the infinite power of the public school as the centre of the community life of the nation in the essential task of nourishing, developing and crystallizing, through expression, the spirit of present and future America. President Wilson in a letter to the Com

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missioner of Education has spoken of the great need for doing this, and of the opportunity and the obligation of the schools in bringing it about.

The Lafayette Association is an organization designed along the simplest and most natural lines for the purpose of co-ordinating the life of each community with the life of the nation, and through it with the life of the world. Its general purpose is to meet a need that is deeply and intensely felt throughout the nation. Its plan of organization is sufficiently flexible to permit a wide variety of methods of approach.

Its central thought is to have the people, under the quickening impulse of the present crisis, to come through recreative community gatherings to a fuller and clearer understanding of what it means to be an American in 1917 and after.

President Edward K. Graham says: "For democracy to be safe from destruction in war, and growingly productive in peace, a homely understanding of this precious heritage is the great essential. Out of such an understanding of democracy will come the vision of the way to the more abundant life for which the whole world is seeking."

HEART-HUNGER*

Dr. Gulick is a dynamic force informationally, intellectually, and inspirationally, and in this book he speaks frankly, scientifically, wholesomely, of heart-hunger, hunger for a friend, hunger for woman, hunger for children, and hunger for God. The book is as fascinating as it is significant. It is heroic and idealistic. It is a far look, but one of confidence.

He insists that desires are of two major classes, those that seek some benefit for one's self, or hunger, and those that seek some benefit for others, or love. The former have their satisfaction in personal well-being and involve such a range of activities and enjoyments as eating, hunting, fishing, earning a living, sleeping, enjoyment of health, vigor of body or mind, personal success, advancement, scholarship, honors, solid financial condition, owning of property, power over people, etc. The latter have their satisfaction in the well-being of other people, and involve such a range of activities and enjoyas the longing for and realization of friendship, comradeship, parenthood, romantic and marital love, the service of the community, one's school, college, country, and also the longing for, search after, and love of God.

ments

This book is equally for young people, their parents, teachers and pastors. It is a brilliant effort to throw light on the heart-hungers of young people-what they are, whence they come, how they are best developed, to what dangers they are exposed.

In this book, as always, Dr. Gulick is constructive, considers positive ways in which hearthungers may be treated so as to produce the most

worth-while results.

"The Dynamic of Manhood." By Luther H. Gulick, M. D. Published by Association Press. 124 East 28th Street, New York City.

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HENRY M. LEIPZIGER

A consistent and energetic advocate of the enlarged use of school buildings was Dr. Henry Marcus Leipziger, who recently passed away in New York, at the age of sixty-three.

Dr. Leipziger was a trained man with a vision, whose contribution to public education was real and lasting. Born in Manchester, England, he came to New York as a lad just at the close of the Civil War, graduating from Columbia University, and being admitted to the New York bar in 1875.

He

Education claimed him from the first. taught in New York public schools for about eight years, and then spent several years traveling, studying and investigating industrial education, preliminary to the organization of the Hebrew Technical Institute, of which he

made director. In 1891 he became an assistant superintendent of public schools in New York City, serving five years.

His most notable contribution to education was through his supervision of public school lectures, a work which he inaugurated in 1890 (and has ably conducted ever since), and which has been widely emulated throughout the country.

QUALITY OF TEACHING SERVICE Superintendents far and wide have elaborate schemes for judging the quality of teaching service. The most elaborate plan by far which we have seen is that of Dr. A. N. Farmer, superintendent, Evanston, Illinois.

Dr. William H. Holmes, superintendent, Mount Vernon, New York, has simpler standards-only about sixty scales to measure. He plans to have teachers rated on six main points: School housekeeping, control of class, spirit of class, teaching ability, professional and social spirit, personal equipment.

A few sample suggestions are characteristic of the plan:

"Are the blackboards kept clean and made attractive through neat writing and good decoration? "Does the teacher seem to give thought to making the schoolroom attractive through the proper use of pictures, plants, pupils' work and other decorations? Are the displays of pupils' work changed frequently?

"Does the teacher assume that the majority of the class wish to do right and treat them accordingly, thus making them feel their responsibility for the success of the school?

"Does the teacher lead the pupils to see that misbehavior is against the good of the class, thus creating public opinion for good school government?

"Does the teacher realize that a dignified selfcontrol is the strongest asset of a teacher in governing a class, and that nagging, scolding and threatening show lack of this quality, as does also the use of ridicule and sarcasm?

"Does the teacher realize that the object of all school discipline is to cultivate habits of self-control on the part of the pupils and to secure condi

JUNIOR HIGH CONTINUATION SCHOOL

Superintendent Charles S. Foos has great success with a Junior High Continuation School in which there are more than 1,200 enrolled, about equally divided between boys and girls-only eleven more boys than girls. There are 682 doing seventh grade work; 338, eighth grade; 164, ninth grade, and nineteen tenth grade work. Each of these 1,200 students attends the school two half-days each week. These pupils work thirty-nine hours a week, and study eight hours.

The pupils were enrolled in the following classes: English, civics, hygiene for the worker, physical culture, music, manual training, domestic science, sewing, drawing (mechanical), drawing (decorative), commercial geography, arithmetic, algebra, physics, physiography, bookkeeping, typing, Latin, French, German, stenography.

Washington, Detroit, Omaha, Denver, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Butte, Spokane, Tacoma, Seattle, the Portlands, Los Angeles, Richmond, Wheeling, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Savannah, Birmingham, Mobile, Nashville and Memphis make a star group of saloonless cities.

Apparently the United States needed this war for home consumption. House-cleaning is necessary, but discomforting.

Department of Superintendence, National Education Association, Atlantic City, February 25 to March 2.

Fighting for the privilege of being disloyal is poor business for an educator pacifist.

National Education Association June 30 to July 6, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

January 28, Child Labor Day in Schools.
January 27, Child Labor Sunday.

AN APPALLING CATASTROPHE, The greatest single tragedy of the war was the complete wrecking of a considerable part of the city of Halifax by the explosion of munitions last Thursday morning. The munition ship Mont Blanc, loaded with high explosives, was rammed by the Belgian relief ship Ioma as she was passing out of the narrows into the harbor proper, and her port sides pierced almost to the engine room, and, in the fire that followed, the munitions exploded with a shock which completely wrecked the water front, leveled all buildings to the ground over an area of two square miles, and caused the death-it is estimated-of four thousand men, women and children. So appalling a catastrophe, from such a cause, would have been almost unbelievable if it had not actually occurred. The explosion was followed by fires at various points over the stricken area, in which many who had escaped death in the shock perished in the flames. The total loss of life will never be definitely known, for many of the victims were burned to ashes. The property loss is estimated at from thirty to fifty million dollars. A singular circumstance is that the crews of both of the colliding vessels escaped unhurt.

THE AFTERMATH OF HORROR. The city authorities and the remaining population acted promptly in doing all that could be done to extricate the persons who were partly buried in the ruins, to carry away the dead and to help the injured; but the task was a staggering one. Before the flames were fairly extinguished, there set in a great blizzard, which filled the streets with snow, and blocked the relief trains which were hastening to the city. The problem of taking care of twenty thousand homeless persons, shivering in the streets in insufficient clothing, and providing them with food and shelter, was one of the utmost difficulty, but it was efficiently met; and the condition of the stricken city made so strong an appeal for outside help that relief trains from Boston and elsewhere were on their way to Halifax within twenty-four hours, carrying blankets and supplies, and relief units of doctors and nurses.

THE PRESIDENT'S TERMS OF PEACE.

There is no vagueness in the terms of peace defined by President Wilson in his address to Congress. The war will be won, he declared, when the German people say, through properly accredited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based on justice and reparation of the wrongs which their rulers have done. The terms of peace for which this country stands, he said, do not include dismemberment, robbery or punishment of the enemy, but are based on justice, including freedom of nations and their peoples from autocratic domination, reparation to Belgium, relinquishment of German power over the peoples of Austria, Turkey, the free Balkan states, as well as evacuation of Prussian territorial conquests in Belgium and northern France. The writing of whatever territorial and other adjustments may be made. in a treaty of peace will hardly be so simple a

matter as this compact summary indicates; but at least the President's outline shows how far the aims of the United States are from any selfish purposes or any desire for territorial aggrandizement. AUSTRIA, OUR ENEMY.

Up to a few days before the assembling of Congress, doubt was expressed whether the President would recommend a declaration of war against Austria, but there seems to have been no doubt in the President's mind, for his recommendation on that point was as clear and definite as anything in his address. Indeed, it would be a farce, and a costly farce, to continue to pretend that we are at peace with Austria. From the beginning, Austria has played the part of an enemy, and has been Germany's willing tool in hostile machinations in this country. The Austrian Ambassador, Dumba, was sent home because of his activity in instigating strikes in American manufacturing plants; the Austrian diplomatic code and the Austrian consuls were freely used by Germany long before Dumba was recalled; Austrian submarines have been sinking American ships, and Austrian spies have been busy for months, inciting strikes, 'burning munition plants, and placing bombs on American ships. It is absolutely necessary to extend to the one million or more Austrian subjects in this country the same alien-enemy restrictions already enforced against Germans, if we are to protect ourselves from the enemy within our gates.

A LONG SESSION AHEAD.

It is predicted that the session of Congress will last until near the time for the elections of November, 1918. The President's address calls for a strengthening of the enemy-alien act, for the stiffening of its penalties, and the inclusion of women as well as men in its provisions; for greater authority to be given the Government to fix prices and eliminate profiteering; for legislation to give the Government control of the water resources of the country; for permission for combinations for foreign trade; for the prevention of extravagance and scandal by causing all appropriations to originate with the Appropriations Committee; and for legislation to effect efficient operation and co-operation of the railways. These are only a few of the measures which will demand the consideration of Congress.

GERMAN AIMS AND HOPES.

During the past week the new Imperial German Chancellor, Count Von Hertling, addressing the Reichstag, and Dr. von Kuehlmann, addressing the Reichstag main committee, have professed to explain German aims, but with the usual vagueness. The Chancellor declared that Germany was ready to enter into peace negotiations with Russia, as soon as the Russian Government sent to Berlin representatives having full powers. The Chancellor asserted that German arms had been uniformly successful, and that the submarine warfare will reach. the aim intended for it. Political reforms, he promised, would be carried out, "but the funda mental principles of the Imperial Constitution canContinued on page 612.