STIMULATION OF TEACHERS TO FOLLOW RIGHT IDEALS

The superintendent's task of stimulating each individual to do his best in teaching, in managing, and in carrying out plans for private practice or public policy is one that tests training and common-sense. The superintendent who, thru a laudable desire to secure the greatest efficiency, insists that his plans in the minutest details shall be the only guide for individual faith and practice, soon finds himself rated as an educational czar. There is danger that such a man, no matter how great an educator he may be, will kill off by the "starvation plan" individual initiative and hearty support which are always needed to give tone and public confidence.

On the other hand, the "good fellow," who makes it his chief business to "stand in " everywhere in the course of time, is looked upon as a person without educational charac

ter.

Such a superintendent is often made the tool of designing egotists with their factional organizations. He becomes unable to enlist effort to improve, because he lacks the power or courage to recognize individual merit by directing attention to personal worth or by promoting deserving persons when opportunity arises.

The superintendent needs, thru contact with teachers and thru observation of their class-room work, where he may estimate the intellectual and moral development of pupils, to have an intimate knowledge of the working power, scholarship, educational philosophy, habits, and abilities of the teachers, that he may encourage them to keep on doing well the things that are done well and to change ideals and practices regarding the duties that are done poorly. Monthly teachers' institutes and grade teachers' meetings at stated intervals, if planned to establish clearer notions of teaching or managing and led by inspiring persons who because of acknowledged success or skill stand for ideas, will give zest and purpose to the system. The best interests of the schools will come from a carefully articulated course which starts with conditions as found and leads to consistent and persistent effort to avoid waste and to move in a straight rather than a broken line of progress.

Schools and teachers, because of standing on the solid ground of right adjustment of matter and method to the pupils, should be pointed out so that they may be studied and the sources of superior merit discovered by less forceful workers. When teachers are busy trying to reach safest methods in guiding activity of pupils so as to result in power and character, they are constructive and positive; they lose no time in tearing down good things.

The superintendent should be secure and steadfast, not easily turned aside by the petty worries and sordid cares of the daily turmoil. Some work may be done by the superintendent whose views are narrow and whose ideals are low, but the best work is done only by the man of large heart, broad views, and habitual singleness of purpose. The great superintendent, who realizes that education is a constant force that operates wherever ideas for good or for evil are alive, lives in the minds of associates as an exemplar of honesty, justice, courage, and courtesy. He should have a personality and stand for something in the educational world and out of it. The elements of leadership will enable him to

"Allure to brighter worlds
And lead the way."

TOPIC 11: MODERNIZING THE Course of STUDY

W. A. HESTER, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, EVANSVILLE, IND.

In his efforts to modernize the course of study, to what extent should the superintendent be governed by: (1) the crack of the college professor's whip? (2) the nervous woman writer's tirade on the "crowded curriculum"? (3) the conclusions of

the notoriety-seeking schoolroom experimenter? (4) the demands of the old-school men that all be eliminated from the course of study excepting the "three R's"?

I have a bright young school friend whom I shall call, for the sake of convenience, Charles Merrill. Mr. Merrill is college-bred, thoughtful, sober, sensitive, and almost painfully conscientious. He voluntarily entered the profession of teaching when quite a young man, and, because of his superior intelligence, close study of his work, tactfulness, and devotion to duty, he was rapidly and deservedly promoted, his last position, and the one which he now holds and has held for nearly six years, being the superintendency of a system of schools in a prosperous western town of about thirty thousand people. As a superintendent he has had what may be termed a rich experience. He related much of it to me during last Christmas holiday week, and it was to me so interesting, so suggestive, and is, withal, so similar to that of many other young superintendents, that I venture to present a portion of it for our discussion here today.

He stated that before he took charge of the schools his board told him that their schools were not up to the standard of certain other schools which they named, and that they would expect him to bring them to such standard as soon as it could be done. Having given the superintendency of schools but little attention, said he, I began at once a careful reading of everything bearing on school management that I could find, and wrote to a number of the writers of articles that had impressed me most deeply for fuller statements of their views.

Several of them replied promptly and elaborately, and their letters have been of great help to me many times since their receipt; but others made assertions and expressed opinions that I could not but regard as being dangerously heterodox, they were so diametrically opposed to what I had been taught to believe was good pedagogy. I, therefore, laid their communications aside, determined to allow the writers to prove the pedagogical worth of their theories themselves, rather than risk testing them myself or allowing them to be tested in the schools for the success of which I should be held personally responsible.

The first and most important duty which the new position brought to me was the revision and improvement of the course of study. The old course, as I found it, provided for work in what we usually term the "eight common-school branches," none of the so-called "fads" finding a place in it.

About the first thing which I did, therefore, was to recommend the introduction of a system of drawing, to which I held with a blind faith in the efficacy of the system, tho I knew little of its real educational value, notwithstanding the fun that was poked at our "mud-pie making," our "scissor-cutting nonsense," and our "failure to turn out artists." A proficient and popular supervisor soon quieted the spirit of unrest, however, and things have gone serenely on in that department of our schools ever since.

The necessity for a complete course of nature work for the grades was also urged upon me, and what appeared to me to be a carefully worked out scheme of nature study was presented to the board, which readily adopted it, and then to the teachers, who sighed, but acquiesced and went faithfully to work to master the new subject as it applied to their respective grades.

Of course, time had to be set apart for the two new subjects of drawing and nature work, and it had to be taken from the time formerly devoted to instruction in the other branches.

Right here the college professor offered his assistance. He commended me for what I had done in "shortening and enriching" the course of study, but said that my work had not gone far enough. He insisted that further eliminations and contraction should be effected in the old-time subjects, and that a full eight year course in history should be given to the pupils of the grades; that Latin should be begun in the seventh, and that elementary algebra and geometry should be made a part of the eighth-year assignment.

I was persuaded that all this must be done if we would be "up with the times;"

and, as my board had said this must be our condition as soon as practicable, and as our advisors made it so emphatic that all the changes enumerated were essential in any attempt to modernize a course of study, the new subjects were introduced as rapidly as could be done without creating a panic and general strike among the teachers.

In the process of elimination and contraction of the old course much of the technical part of the grammar was sacrificed. This, of course, created dissatisfaction among the advocates of parsing and analyzing, and much complaint was heard from high-school teachers of English, German, and Latin when the pupils began to enter their classes.

Besides this, many of the topics in arithmetic previously dwelt upon by teachers and labored with by pupils were stricken from the assignment and the course in that branch shortened a full year. The criticisms which this elicited from a number of our pioneer, but substantial and highly respected citizens, products of the old school, were such as I do not care to repeat. It is sufficient to say that no argument presented to them was strong enough to convince them that the new was a great improvement over the old. They held tenaciously to their demand that the "new-fangled notions" be dropped and the "three R's" be emphasized.

The course of study in geography was next abbreviated by substituting a one-book course for the two-book course then in use. One year's work in geography was thus saved and the time given to the new subjects.

But this was not the end. The vertical-writing wave reached us, and in its mighty roll threatened to submerge us and thus to consign us to oblivion; but we mounted its crest with the other progressives, and the change from the more rapidly written but now condemned slant to the slower but popular vertical was soon effected. Altho the penmanship of the older pupils was for a time almost illegible, all ere long were writing the so-called vertical script, which in most instances was a plain backhand.

These changes, together with the addition of two oral lessons per week in scientific temperance, made necessary by a recently enacted law in response to a demand of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union; two oral lessons per week in patriotism, as requested by the Grand Army of the Republic and the Daughters of the American Revolution; two five-minute exercises each day in calisthenics; and one ten- or twenty-minute period each day given to vocal music, afford some idea of the evolution thru which those schools passed during the first three years of my superintendency.

Much of the time during the next two years I spent in defending the schools against what I felt were unjust attacks from evil-disposed persons. But these did not disturb me quite so much, nor have they been so difficult for me to meet, as the criticisms of persons who I have had every reason to believe were friends of the schools.

Intelligent and ambitious parents claimed that their children, their daughters particularly, were being unduly burdened with work. As gentle reminders, some of them sent to me marked copies of magazines and pamphlets that contained long and scathing criticisms on the public-school system in general because of its "death-dealing work with the youth of the country."

On investigation I learned that many, tho not all, of our girls who were reported to be slowly breaking down were naturally delicate or very nervous in temperament and incapable of sustained effort; or were members of society, whose demands on their time and strength consumed the better part of their vitality, and their school work, too often a secondary consideration, was a consequent sufferer. Many of the boys, yet not all of them either, who were reported as not being able to keep up with their classes were found to be cigarette fiends, a condition which seemed to have rendered them almost wholly incapable of steady and continuous mental application; while others realized as keenly as did the girls the demands of the social circle on them, and they felt constrained to respond to this demand even to the detriment of their school work.

To meet these difficulties and to allay them, if possible, by affording the patrons of the schools a fuller knowledge of the policy of the schools in their changed conditions, and

thereby bringing the patrons into closer touch and sympathy with the schools, mothers' meetings were held in various parts of the city. While some of these meetings were deemed successful and profitable, many of them were dominated by persons of strong personality and good following who criticised in such severe and convincing terms much of the really good work of the schools, which they could not understand nor appreciate, that harm to the schools rather than good resulted from them. We have not tried fathers' meetings, said he. We fear it would not be wise.

During the third year of my term of service, one of the members of my board learned that written examinations had been tabooed in several schools that he was told were thoroly "up to date," and he insisted on their being abandoned, as an experiment at least, in our schools. He was so enthusiastic, yet so kind, in the expression of his wishes in this respect, that the experiment was tried, and now nothing but written tests are known in the schools; and, tho there are now two or three times as many written tests as there were formerly written examinations and tests together (a condition which seems to prevail also in the schools to which he referred), he is pleased and claims credit for the change, and is congratulated by certain patrons who called his attention to the "desirable improvement."

As tho this were not enough, a movement, the strength of which I have not yet been able to determine, has lately been started by the mothers' clubs of our city, having for its purpose the breaking up of gradation in the schools and the substitution of individual instruction. It is claimed that this system of instruction is in successful operation in a number of good schools; that it is now no longer an experiment; and that it is certain to supersede the graded system or class teaching. Their immediate presentation to our board of the superior claims of individualism is prevented, I understand, by the difficulty which the ladies are experiencing in determining which of the several "best individual systems" is the best for our schools. As soon as they reach a mutually satisfactory conclusion in this respect, we shall doubtless hear from them.

While the ladies have been busying themselves about this "great cure all" for the ills of the schools, I have been endeavoring to find our true bearings and to determine, if possible, whither we are drifting. I have questioned myself with all the sincerity of an honest questioner, and have been trying to answer the questions just as honestly: Have we really improved on the old as much as we have tried to convince ourselves and our friends that we have? Does our present course provide for solidly progressive work? Is it a pedagogical unity? Is the work as now outlined well articulated and wisely purposeful, or does it encourage and almost compel scrappy and superficial work?

To be candid with you, I am not satisfied with present conditions, and, tho I am ready to acknowledge having made mistakes, if I can be satisfied that such is the case, and I am willing to rectify where defects occur, still I am more or less uncertain where to begin or just what to do.

In the first place, I am becoming more and more strongly of the impression that there is truth in the statement that the majority of our school children have too much to do. Both they and the teachers, I fear, are overburdened. Nor do I feel that we can prune the old course any more than we have by way of relief. I am not certain but that some of the old citizens are about right in their statements that we have already crossed the danger line in our eliminations. I am now sorely tempted to undo some of the things which we have done in the name of progressiveness and modernization.

To be specific: While I see some virtue in the work done by the pupils of the eighth grade in concrete geometry as a help to them in mensuration, I have little faith in the value of the smattering of algebra which they get, and less faith in the educational worth of the Latin which the seventh-years learn in a year's time. I am persuaded, too, that we ought, in the interest of a more thoro grounding of the children in the essentials of an elementary education, attempt to do less in history below the seventh grade and less in nature work above the third, and concentrate our efforts on the other subjects. The use

of nature work as a basis for the development of the power of expression in the first three primary grades, its formal and regular teaching in those grades, render it so valuable as to make it really indispensable there, and it should be retained. Above the third grade all that is of especial value in nature study, it seems to me, can be taught incidentally in connection with the teaching and illustration of the other subjects and in correlation with those subjects.

Almost the same thing may be said of history, with the exception that its regular and formal teaching be begun in the seventh-year grade, but that in every grade below the seventh the reading assignment be so made as to give large attention to biographical and historical sketches and nature stories. I would retain the course in drawing, but cause it to take two distinct lines, one looking to industrial training work and the other to the development of the artistic sense. I do not expect to worry about the work in penmanship. It will take care of itself, and sooner or later the natural slant will take the place of either a forced vertical or a prescribed slant.

These eliminations and combinations call it retrogression, if you will will greatly lighten our work and will give two or three periods each day for manual-training work in the grades, the kind of education that, in my judgment, is well worth planning and sacrificing for; for I believe that the good accruing to the boys and girls from such training is by no means equaled by that which they can realize from the effort and time which they must give to the subjects I am proposing to eliminate, and which have heretofore stood in the way of manual-training work.

What think you, said he in a most appealing way, of my conclusions? Do you not think that the interests of my boys and girls demand such action on my part?

TOPIC III: HOW TO MEET THE PEOPLE

LOUIS P. NASH, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, HOLYOKE, MASS.

I say nothing here of one's private friendships or social relations. The superintendent will meet the people, if he is inclined to do so, by appearing at various public and semi-public occasions, before associations, etc. It is well to respond to such calls. The superintendent has to exercise leadership in the community, and there is economy in getting hold of a group of people perhaps representative of a class in the community. They may be a set of people that he would never come to know at all in any other way. Of course, one will not take up these things so as to use too much time or to admit the impression that the superintendent likes to pose before the public.

Then there are the interviews with people at the office. I suppose we all have a great many of these interviews, and some that are mere waste of time. Yet it is my opinion that we should encourage the people to come. If there is friction or dissatisfaction anywhere in the system, it is great good fortune if the people affected will come straight to headquarters and give an early opportunity to set matters right. Every such interview gives the superintendent a chance to find out the exact feeling toward the schools of some individual, and he may represent a great many more. It also gives a chance to show that person the right course to take, and, if possible, to secure his support.

The superintendent of schools ought to be the most accessible man in the city. That does not mean that one must be on call all the time. We should keep definite office hours; but we must have time for study. We are false to our own selves and to the higher needs of our schools if we do not take definite times for our own study in professional lines, and in philosophical or literary lines as well. But by being accessible I mean especially the attribute that welcomes approach by the people. We have to teach