EDUCATION INHERENTLY ETHICAL In conclusion, the ethical element of education is intrinsic; it develops power, and while some of it goes to the bad, the most of it goes to the good. The tendency at least is always upward. To one who points out the failures of Christianity there is the one sufficient reply that Christianity has never been tried. So to the critics of educational failures it may truly be said that education has never been tested. It is amazing that some people talk of the experiment of negro education as having failed, as if forsooth the little done in that direction was an adequate trial of the experiment. Macaulay said: "The only cure for the evils of liberty is more liberty;" and the same is true of education. President Washington of Tuskegee is able to say that no graduate of his institution has added to the heavy percentage of negro criminality. The ethical element is inherent in education, for humility and reverence are its products. The human mind, as it faces the universe, asks three questions? "What?" "How?" and "Why?" Science answers the first and the second; it does not even attempt to answer the last. The more it shows of the what by analysis, the more it finds of evolution as the method: or the how, the more mysterious becomes the why. Science modestly, and one might say reverently, passes over that question to metaphysics—and metaphysics surrenders it to religion. The ethical element in education is permanent because of the nature of the teacher's work. That work is a self-bestowal. No teacher does his work without feeling that "virtue has gone out of him"-it has gone at the cost of his vitality into the souls of his pupils. No teacher would ever say of his calling: "Great is Diana of the Ephesians, for by this craft we have our living." There are some professions and some businesses in which a man works for the money there is in the job, and keeps the job. A teacher who worked just for the money in his job could not possibly keep it, even if he so desired; he would be a manifest failure and fraud. There is this inherent nobility in a teacher's work that, while it is performed in part for himself, it is performed chiefly for others. It is not too much to say that the faithful teacher imitates in a humble, and yet not far-off, way that transcendent example of service and sacrifice that has forever fixed the wonder and the love of men. ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 1. THE SUPERINTENDENT AS A MAN OF AFFAIRS WILLIAM H. MAXWELL, CITY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, NEW YORK, N. Y. The primary objects of school administration are, first, to take the measures necessary to secure for every child his natural and constitutional right to an education that shall equalize for all, as far as education may, the oppor tunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; second, to provide properly qualified teachers for our children; and third, to create those conditions under which each teacher may do his best work. The chief instrument in accomplishing these objects is, or ought to be, the school superintendent. Frequently we hear it said that the administrative rules which govern the work of a superintendent in a large city do not apply, because of changed conditions, to a superintendent in a small city; and that the methods of work in a small city or village must necessarily be very different from those used in a large city. Such statements are only partially correct. True, the superintendent in a large city is compelled to devote his time chiefly to administration, and sees comparatively little of the work in the schools; the superintendent in a small city has much greater opportunities of coming in contact with teachers and pupils. And yet, the difference is but a difference in detail. The superintendent in a large city should be both a schoolman and an administrator; so should the superintendent in a small city. Each, if he is to be instrumental in carrying out ideals of school administration, should be both a schoolman and a man of affairs. The only difference is that in the small city or village the superintendent performs the work himself, by his own personal exertions; in the large city the superintendent acts thru agents. The objects of public education are the same in a Rocky Mountain village as they are in The City of New York; in a hamlet of Mississippi as in the city of Chicago. And these objects are to bring the young of America, whether home-born or foreign-born, into harmony with American civilization, to put them into possession of their intellectual inheritance, to inculcate high ideals of life and of conduct, to develop power and skill, and to cultivate those virtues of reverence, courage, and devotion to duty, without which the citizen cannot succeed and the republic cannot endure. These are the chief objects for which public schools have been established. The superintendent and the whole administrative machinery exist only for the purpose of accomplishing these ends; and the three great services which the superintendent can render toward their accomplishment are, first, to aid in securing education for all children; second, to provide properly qualified teachers; and third, to create those conditions under which each teacher may do his best work. In order to secure education for all children, to the end that all may have equal opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, legislation is necessary to require all children to go to school, to prevent children from being set to work while they ought to be playing and learning, and to curb and punish the greed of parents and the greed of corporations, that would coin money out of the flesh and blood of these little ones. In order to secure properly qualified teachers, the first essential condition is to establish a high standard of scholarship and of professional training for entrance to the teaching profession. When, in 1895, the law was enacted by the legislature of the state of New York that no one should be licensed or appointed as a teacher in the public schools of any city or village of the state who had not as a minimum qualification a high-school course of three years and a professional course of one year, the most important step ever made in this country to raise the standard for entrance to the teaching profession was taken. Already in that state, thru the co-operation of the city and village superintendents with the state superintendent, this minimum has been raised to four years of high-school work and two years of professional training. But we are still far from ideal conditions. Our teachers have not, even with these qualifications, that breadth of culture, that familiarity with our intellectual inheritances, that insight into human affairs, which are necessary to enable them to discharge in the most stimulating and economical manner their duties as teachers. The next step forward should be to require at least two years of purely college work above and beyond the ordinary high-school course. It may be said that many of our colleges and universities, thru their chairs and departments of education, are already providing such teachers. But, in the first place, it may be observed that there is no immediate prospect that the colleges and universities will be able to supply anything like the number of teachers required. In the second place, experience does not pronounce an unqualifiedly favorable judgment on the elementary-school work of the college graduate. When he enters on actual work, he is a pure theorist. He knows little or nothing about practice. He is like the physician who should commence to practice medicine after listening to courses of lectures and reading a few text-books, without having attended a clinic or tried his nerve and his skill in a hospital. What is needed is not college men who have taken pedagogical courses as part of their work for the A.B. degree, but college men and women who have laid broad and deep their foundations of culture, and then devoted all their energies for not less than two years to learning, thru study, observation, and practice, how to teach. The second condition for obtaining properly qualified teachers is some method of appointment and promotion under which the teacher's self-respect shall be maintained, and under which no influence-not social influence, not religious, not political-except that of merit, shall prevail. How can we expect to attract to the teaching profession ladies and gentlemen of culture and refinement, if, in order to obtain an opportunity for the exercise of their talents, they are compelled to beg the favor of politicians or humble themselves in the dust before a little brief authority? How can we expect teachers to inculcate by precept and example the duties of reverence, courage, and devotion to duty, if they are constrained to despise themselves for the methods. by which they obtained their appointments? In some places, and with great success, an attempt has been made to root out this great evil by placing all power of appointment and promotion in the hands of the superintendent. The objection is that too much depends on the personal equation. In the hands of an able and fearless superintendent, the plan works well in a city of moderate size. If, however, this power falls into the hands of a politician, or even of a feeble man or a timorous, the last state of that city is worse than the first. My own view is that the best plan yet devised is that in use in Greater New York- appointment and promotion by competitive examination. This plan, however, is open to the objections of being somewhat mechanical, and of being too often vulnerable, as the civil-service laws are vulnerable, when unscrupulous teachers take advantage of legal technicalities that are sustained by the courts. Upon the whole, however, it has worked well, and has generated an enormous enthusiasm for self-improvement among the New York teachers. It will doubtless continue until a better plan is devised. Suppose an adequate supply of properly qualified teachers, what conditions shall the superintendent seek to establish to the end that each teacher may be enabled to do his best work? They may be classified under four heads: (1) proper school accommodations; (2) adequate remuneration for teachers; (3) the assignment of each teacher to that work which he can do best; (4) the development of a code of professional ethics that shall be binding on all members of the teaching and supervising force. A few words upon each of these topics. I. PROPER SCHOOL ACCOMMODATIONS a) Schoolhouses should be sufficiently large and sufficiently numerous to provide accommodations for all of the children of the community, distributed in classes of moderate size. Our aim should be to reduce the number of pupils to a teacher until a point is reached at which no teacher shall be required to teach more than thirty pupils at one time. Those who know the conditions in New York and Boston and Chicago may regard this as a counsel of perfection. It is, however, a perfectly feasible aim, and will be attained in a few years if the superintendents of the country unite in demanding it. b) Schoolhouses should be so distributed thruout the community as to afford convenient opportunity to all the children of the neighborhood to go to school. The importunities of real estate speculators, and the opposition of rich and socially exclusive communities, are as much to be dreaded and as much to be opposed in the location of schoolhouses as is the interference of politicians in the conduct of the schools. While the superintendent should have no direct voice in purchasing a school site, his judgment should be potential in its selection. There is no extravagance or waste in school-building comparable to that caused by the erection of buildings in unsuitable places. c) Schoolhouses should be not only properly heated, lighted, and ventilated, but properly furnished and equipped. Much progress has been made in these respects. Good high schools are now better equipped with laboratories than the colleges were twenty years ago. The old school benches have given way to the separate seat and desk; which in the near future will, I trust, disappear in favor of furniture better adapted to the needs of modern education. I venture to say that ten years from now we shall be surprised that we ever allowed furniture to remain in our elementary schools, which is simply an obstacle in the way of every school activity except reading and writing. The school furniture of the future will subserve many different purposes scientific experiment and observation, carpentry, drawing, modeling, and the other forms of manual training that have found their place as essentials in the elementary curriculum, alongside of work in the ordinary branches. Here again, in every respect except the making of contracts, the superintendent's voice should make itself felt. II. ADEQUATE REMUNERATION FOR TEACHERS The last report of the Commissioner of Education shows that the average salary of men teachers in the United States is $49.05 a month and of women teachers $39.77 a month, while nearly one-half the teachers in the country change their positions every year, owing to the widely prevalent plan of appointing teachers for but a single year. Are these the conditions under which a teacher can do his best work? Can he always be cheerful and gentle when chill penury freezes the genial current of his soul and prevents his undertaking any sustained measures of self-improvement? I submit that it is one of the first duties of a superintendent to secure adequate remuneration for the teachers under his supervision. Under this term I include a living wage increasing with years of experience, permanent tenure of office after a probationary term and during efficiency, and a pension when old age or infirmities render the teacher no longer fit for active service. I am not pleading for luxury or wealth for the teacher. Luxury and wealth have no place among his ambitions. The teacher's way of life should always be frugal; but it should be the way of life of the cultured lady or gentleman. If he is to fulfil his mission, he must travel, he must study, he must mingle in refined society; and these things he cannot do on forty dollars a month. III. ASSIGNMENT OF EACH TEACHER TO THAT WORK WHICH HE CAN DO BEST As there is no source of economic weakness so great as setting men to work for which they have no fitness, so there is no more fruitful cause of waste in the schoolroom than setting teachers to work for which they have no adaptability; as, for instance, requiring a teacher whose taste runs to language and literature to teach mathematics; or a teacher who has no ear for music to teach singing. The assignment to duty should, therefore, always be made by an expert-an expert not merely in school-work, but in human nature. To do this work, or to see that it is done right, is one of the chief duties of a superintendent. IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CODE OF ETHICS THAT SHALL BE BINDING ON Such a code will transcend legal enactments and school-board ordinances. It will be binding upon all teachers solely by reason of their own sense of honor. Such a code will forbid the teacher's appeal to any social, religious, |