PAGE Alphabetical List of Authors-Subjects of their Papers and Discussion before the Association, 1857-1891 Classified List of Topics, and Volume in which Paper may be Found, 67246 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. ITS ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS. BY HON. WM. T. HARRIS, COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION, U. S. [READ BEFORE THE MEETING OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE, AT PHILADELPHIA, PA., FEBRUARY, 1891.] THIRTY-THREE years ago last August there met in the city of Philadelphia a handful of men to organize a National Teachers' Association. The movement started in New York and Massachusetts. A call had been issued and widely circulated the year before (1856), inviting "all practical teachers in the North, the South, the East, the West, who are willing," these are its significant words," who are willing to unite in a general effort to promote the general welfare of our country by concentrating the wisdom and power of numerous minds and by distributing among all the accumulated experiences of all; who are ready to devote their energies and their means to advance the dignity, respectability, and usefulness of their calling." A constitution was drafted and adopted, and officers were elected for the following year. The directory of the newly formed Association voted to meet in Cincinnati in August, 1858. The noteworthy feature in the constitution adopted is the government of the Association by a board. of directors elected at the annual meeting. This board was to consist of a large number of counsellors, one from each State, district, or Territory, together with the president, secretary, treasurer, and twelve vice-presidents. It also became the practice, even from this early meeting, to appoint a large nominating committee,-one member from each State represented in the convention. Inasmuch as it has frequently happened that only a single delegate was present from a State, the nominating committee has been obliged to fill out its extensive list of officers by naming its own members. The first president of the Association, as well as seven of the vicepresidents and two of the counsellors, ten in all, were members of the nominating committee that reported their names. While this strikes us at first as bad form, or even as dangerous to the usefulness of the Association, a moment's reflection convinces us that the danger is imaginary, and affects the form rather than the substance of the thing. If an entire assembly appoint itself on a nominating body, and then names all of its members to one office or another, it amounts to the same as a committee of the whole for the nomination of officers and a distribution of offices to all. In later years, since the Association has grown to gigantic proportions, it is true that this large committee has dwindled in comparison to the size of the body it represents. But the fact that the rule requires that all the States, districts, and Territories shall be represented on the board of directors, secures a variety of interests in that board, which prevents the possibility of clannishness or misrule. Should, however, it be deemed desirable to provide even a wider participation of the rank and file of the Association in the election of its directory, this could be easily effected by a constitutional provision permitting each State delegation to select its member of the nominating committee, leaving the president to select, as heretofore, for those States that decline or neglect to act. Practically, this would be a safeguard against any possible influence that might come from partisanship or political management, but it is quite difficult to conceive any circumstances wherein danger is to be apprehended from such source. All will agree, however, that the highest usefulness of the Association depends on the complete subordination of the political partisan element. We may here properly inquire what the legitimate results are for which we should look to come from this annual gathering of teachers from the length and breadth of the land. The main answer to this is provided for us in the words of the original call issued in 1856. In the language already quoted, the Association should "concentrate the wisdom and power of numerous minds, and distribute among all the experiences of all." This call was written by Dr. Daniel B. Hagar, then president of the Massachusetts Teachers' Association. It was stated at the Philadelphia meeting in 1857 that there were already in existence twenty-three State Teachers' Associations, besides larger and smaller associations not bounded by State lines, such, for example, as the American Institute of Instruction in New England, and the American Association for the Advancement of Education, which had been formed in Philadelphia. These associations had demonstrated the value of general conferences in which educational topics were discussed. The wisdom and power of many minds concentrated on the difficult problems of the profession brought light such as none had seen before. The accumulated experience of all was thus distributed to each. The individual teacher, in his uneven development, strong in some points, and weak in others, found complementary strength in the experience of his fellow-teachers, strong where he was weak, and perhaps weak where he was strong. The divine principle of vicariousness that prevails in the spiritual world, rendering it possible for each man, woman, and child to participate profitably in the experience of another human being,-so that the spectacle of a deed and its consequences renders it entirely unnecessary to perform the deed itself in order to get what of good comes from doing it as a life experience, this divine principle of vicariousness in the life of human souls at once explains for us the true function of teachers' associations, and also the function of education itself in its entirety. What, indeed, is all edu |