mere inspection, to recognize a given piece of work while it is in progress, as a necessary and co-ordinated part of the general purpose.

That "every superintendent is able to formulate to his own satisfaction, and on grounds that he can justify, the purposes to be realized in the teaching of any of the subjects in the course of study," is, when confined (as it is by the paper) to those here present, a very genial assumption, but, if made too general, it would become a violent As an ideal, however, it may not be too much to require of the supervisor that he, at least, should be a skilled workman.

one.

But how about the grade teacher? Under all the circumstances as they are, and are quite likely to remain far into the future, is not the demand so high as to be out of proportion?

Aristotle and Lincoln-the wisest of the ancients and the most " 'practical" of the moderns - both estimated education as the most difficult of all problems. Lord Bacon admitted that "the art of well delivering the knowledge we possess is among the secrets left to be discovered by future generations." We have not yet found it. Such progress as has been made we owe to the continuous efforts of a long line of philosophical thinkers. The problem is not yet so far solved that we can even agree upon a statement of the things to be taught, and the general method. The paper itself opens with a confession that the separation of essentials from nonessentials, urgently demanded, is a problem too large for any one man.

Does it not, then, ask too much of the working teacher? Can we hope, very long before the distant pre-millennial days at least, to realize on such a demand?

The average life of a teacher is probably about five years. Twenty to 25 per cent. are recruits every year. Probably less than 10 per cent. begin their service with such training as the normal schools-themselves, the best of them, confessedly in a nascent condition, while some are but little better than the average high school - can supply. That the average term of service will be greatly lengthened is not a reasonable expectation, as long as nearly all of the working teachers in the graded schools are women. It ought not to be. Even supposing the ratio of normal-school-trained teachers to increase, until, in time, none shall be allowed to begin service without such training - some study of the things to be taught from the point of view of the teaching process, and some practice under skilled direction and oversight-even then the degree of insight into the problem of education demanded by the paper seems more than a reasonable expectation.

Let any superintendent, over forty-five years of age, who thinks he has it in this degree, test himself in the matter of time. How long did it take? How much sooner could it have been acquired, had the problem of the paper been distinctly stated to him that Friday night, at the end of his first week, when he went home, limp and discouraged, half tempted to turn back, even after he had put his hand to the plow?

Is not the degree and breadth of insight demanded by the paper more than a reasonable expectation of the average teacher? If, continuing in the service, after many years of experience, she attain it, and, at the same time, retain a modicum of the hopeful enthusiasm which she brought from the high school, or the training school, is not that a great deal? During these growing years she is at least living, in obedience to the Froebelian injunction, with the children-growing with them, as she finds, under the guidance of the broader vision of her supervisor, their powers and interests, and ministers day by day to the need of the hour.

From the teachers' point of view, then, the difficulty is a doudle-headed one. One head is a condition, inherent in the fact that the great majority of the working teachers must be at all times, under our system, immature, and that they will not remain in the work long enough to reach the point of efficiency demanded by the paper. The other head is a theory - the theory of pedagogical freedom. We must eliminate the nonessentials, and we must agree upon the essentials, says the paper - after declaring that the

problem is too large for any one man, and not forgetting, doubtless, that fifteen good men and true tried it once with but measurable success.

Chicago, it has been alleged, is considering the advisability of putting analysis and parsing in the limbo of the nonessentials of grammar, but permitting those teachers who demur to the classification, and consider those exercises to be, not only good, but "more valuable than any other instruction which could properly be given at the same time, under existing conditions," to continue to use them. But Chicago is sui generis. Most superintendents, it is to be feared, would say: "Let us conform to the course of study agreed upon."

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A superintendent says to a primary teacher: "These children seem to like noise, bright colors, and striking costumes. The military instinct seems to be exerting itself. Let us drop Hiawatha now, and utilize the story of Darius. Let them study Persian civilization. Temper their self-assertion thru and by the lesson that the power to obey precedes fitness to command. Teach them that truthfulness is the soldier's virtue, and that the soldierly quality of courage can be brought to bear upon their daily tasks — and all that sort of thing." But the teacher says: "I think the next step should be Kablu, or Cleon, or Horatius;" and gives not being on compulsion"—some of the reasons which are as plenty as blackberries in August. Who shall decide around which center best to group the instruction which must be "more valuable than any other instruction which could properly be given at that time, under existing conditions"- the teacher who is "next to" the children, or the supervisor of primary grades; the one who knows the whole plan and purpose better, or the other who knows better the existing conditions? In brief, the difficulty of this phase of the problem is but an aspect of the old clergyman's difficulty — it lies entirely in "the application of it."

The paper, then, as I read it, presents an ideal none too high for the supervisor; but which, as a working hypothesis for the grade teacher, is subject to some limitations.

I submit, as a corollary: No man (or woman) should be permitted to undertake the supervision of education who has not had considerable practice in the art, been liberally instructed in its theory, and obtained some insight into its philosophy.

THE TRAIL OF THE CITY SUPERINTENDENT

AARON GOVE, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, DISTRICT NO. ONE, Denver,

COLO.

To follow the trail of the city superintendent of schools tramping backward is not difficult, but the traces are faint when one reaches the beginning, sixty years ago. A little path had its origin about 1839 at Providence, R. I., upon which traveled Nathan Bishop. Another path that helped to mark the road more plainly started with Professor S. S. Greene, at Springfield, Mass., in 1840. Later, in 1847, the main trail was joined by one from Columbus, O., where Dr. A. D. Lord was made the first city superintendent of schools in that state. The same year Rickoff, at Portsmouth, and Leggett, at Akron, joined the party. As the school committee-the name of the body elected to take the direct oversight of common schools in New England-was changed in character, because the people seemed to demand business-men as well as

ministers for counsel and direction, the duties of the committee became quite too heavy for active business-men to perform; besides, the fact that amateurs, chronic reformers, and men of leisure lacked efficiency was apparent then as now. Out of this came the demand for expert supervisors.

The duties of the office were evidently dimly defined in the minds of the people of the time, but the main thought obtained, viz., that able men, willing to give counsel and exercise veto power upon proposed measures, would accept such responsibility and serve on directory boards only when the execution could be placed in an office created for that purpose. Once established, the office of the city superintendent became helpful, and very soon necessary.

The trail of the superintendent, formed by the little paths in New England and Ohio flowing into one, as the brooks join to make the main stream, has become broad and solid, but not straight. Windings, curves, crooked places, right-angles, and numerous turnings back upon itself are seen in looking over the road traveled. The embryo germ-thought planted in the heads and hearts of Greene, Philbrick, Wells, Mann, Rickoff, Stephenson, Jones, Hagar, and Newell has led these men thru devious ways, against tremendous obstacles, and over the trail, by the sacrifice of almost infinite trial with vigorous opposition, in contest and in conflict to the end. One and another languished, fell, died, and are buried by the side of the road. Each traveled his own gait, with rations and blanket only, never knowing, altho caring much, where each year's tramping would end.

The deaths of great men in national and political history are commemorated by song, story, and memorial days. Only in secluded family circles, and midst the personal friends, are the works and lives of heroic schoolmasters recorded and remembered.

The trail of the city superintendent has been followed persistently during the sixty years by very few pilgrims; of the hundreds that have. struck it most have left it for another prospect. The roll of names is short. Various callings have contributed to the gang on the trail; commercial, mercantile, professional, and industrial vocations each has sent representatives to join the tramping throng.

The causes for striking the trail and the reasons for leaving it are well in sight. Inadequate preparation has been potent in forcing desertion. Neither scholarship nor executive ability alone has been found ample for permanent occupation. The requisite power and wisdom of the city. superintendent is identical with that of the competent man in industrial, commercial, or diplomatic life, with that common necessary attribute in each and all-adequate special preparation. A college senior is poor material for an executive of schools as well as for industrial or mercantile establishments.

Men in middle age, of ability to measure themselves, enter with hesitation and lack of confidence upon an undertaking with which they have not in early manhood been familiar. Superintendents of schools. are not born, but made-made exactly as are men in other lines of life, by training, discipline, and experience.

Schools of philosophy and pedagogy cannot be seen along the earlier trail. Their establishment and conduct is one of the later improvements upon which we congratulate ourselves. The chairs of pedagogy which the colleges have hastened to endow are occupied by such talent as has never before entered the work of training teachers. The value of the product can scarcely be overrated, and yet we are compelled to recognize that some material is sent to that factory out of which supervisors can never be made. More than experimentation in a pedagogical college is required. One of our eminent philosophers, Professor James, has written: "A knowledge of such psychology as this can no more make a good teacher than a knowledge of the laws of perspective can make a landscape painter of effective skill." It is an added truth to that other one so hesitatingly learned, that graduation from a normal school is no earnest of a teacher.

Among the 625 city superintendents today on the trail, from cities of eight thousand or more people, are men and women of all ages and colors, and of such varied antecedents as to preclude a reference to them as a profession. The practices, expenditures, customs, and environments of the respective cities that they represent compel as varied and various administrations.

But the trail has become broad, even if crooked. Its sidelines are becoming more and more evident. The bureau of education, embarrassed by its limited appropriation and its humble official position as an adjunct of the Department of the Interior, has been, thru its reports, one great factor in unifying the differences in the work of city superintendents. The hindrances imposed upon the bureau have been overcome to almost a superhuman extent by the one and, as I believe, the only man competent for this great work. When the work of Commissioner Harris shall be comprehended in all its fullness, we shall wonder that we lived during his time without a complete realization of the power of this great man.

A second factor, great in another way, has been and is the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association. The annual three-days' meeting, if, according to its traditions, it can be held to business, not picnicking, will accomplish the unifying of the methods and procedure of city superintendents. The trail is to become less and less crooked, the pilgrims are to tramp more regularly, and the forward movement is to be more even. Looking backward, the halts and windings have been many, and while the intense, over-ardent reformers have for a day threatened an upset, this department has contributed largely to prevent serious overthrows.

From the writing school in the forenoon and the reading school of the afternoon in old Boston, with its imported Lancastrian system, has come what we have in this the sixtieth year.

We have fought, bled, and died with the no-recess plan; the formal teaching of moral science in all grades; grammatical diagramming; the monitorial system; departmental instruction (which has lately been lifted from the grave and its ghost rehabilitated); teaching patriotism perfunctorily; self-government (also recently resurrected); concert recitation, and teaching geography by singing (how the latter raged like a roaring whirlwind, while from hundreds of schoolrooms came the doggerel song !); counting in penmanship; individual instruction (which has ever been. the chief work of the competent teacher); counting one for a comma, two for a semicolon, three for a colon, four for a period, etc.

In teaching reading, the battle has been on with the Pollard system, the phonetic system, and large editions of books printed for a great city with Leigh's phonetic type; script before print; the word, sentence, leaflet, and analytic method (the latter taking about six weeks for each page of the reading book).

In arithmetic we have passed thru the Grübe method; the ratio method by charts (introduced and discarded by Pestalozzi in the last century); the ratio method by scales of weight and yard-sticks; a later ratio method by blocks; the lightning method by Webb, and others.

In music we have had the tonic-sol-fa method, involving a changed system of writing music; and we have lately introduced the "primary trot," being a mechanical running by primary pupils about the schoolroom; and also object-teaching.

May I indulge in a digression here to call attention to that incomparable report to the National Educational Association read at Harrisburg in 1865 ? We are fond of our modern committees of five, of ten, of fifteen, because the character of the membership makes their reports so valuable. Let me read the names of that committee of seven, whose report, drawn up by S. S. Greene, together with the remarks of Principal E. A. Sheldon (he who was the apostle of object-teaching), puts into the shadow much of the nature-study and field-work instruction of today. They were: Barnas Sears, S. S. Greene, Josiah L. Pickard, J. D. Philbrick, David N. Camp, Richard Edwards, Calvin S. Pennell.

We have had Mr. Charles F. Adams with his Quincy discovery. Some of us were active in those days. those days. And when that old hero, Daniel B. Hagar, wrote to me that he would go from Salem to Quincy and write me all about it, I waited for the report of his visit. Like all of our correspondence, this was helpful and comforting to an ambitious superintendent. He said: "I found nothing new, but I found new combinations, and a genius for work and enthusiasm in the superintendent that was helpful and inspiring." He urged me to go and see, even if I was two thousand