of leading. Numerous teachers can be found in every system who have initiative, scholarship, teaching skill, personality, social aptitude, health, and surplus vitality to develop and carry forward the important lines of present-day school activities. It is the business of the superintendent to find and use these valuable individuals.

A superintendent in a western city needed a teacher for an open-air school. A year prior to opening he suggested to a certain teacher that she begin preparation in this particular field. Another helper was needed to take charge of atypical children, and a grade teacher who had not been especially trained, but who had the elements of leadership, was discovered for this department.

The successful superintendent must also be able to detect leadership in the light of the curriculum in those who are about to enter the force of the city over which he presides. This ability must be analyzed and located in the school or territory most needed. The reorganization of schools, junior high schools, departmental teaching, the platoon system, make it easy to utilize special ability; these plans, for instance, permit the entire time of the strong teacher in English to be used in teaching her specialty instead of requiring her, as under the old system, to teach all subjects with the probability of the teaching in the other subjects being poorly done. The curriculum should be so organized that the teacher may have periods for relaxation. More and more we are learning the importance of conserving the physical strength of the teachers. It requires more than ordinary effort on the part of the teacher to keep to the maximum mental capacity when working with children. Eight hours of work are by no means equal to seven hours of work plus one hour of play. Someone has said that the spiritual fails when the physical and mental begin to ebb. Leadership is weak indeed if it in any manner overlooks the first; it must ever be humble, bearing in mind that sympathy may not be in the printed outline, nor love always written into the teacher's contract.

Some years ago a superintendent who had just been elected in a wellknown city announst in the first plank of his platform that he had purchast an automobile and proposed to visit every school in the city. There is value in such visits, but the average city needs definite standards of teaching and study more than schoolroom visits from the head of the school system. There must be a rather clear notion of why geography is worth while and the method used. What should the children do in penmanship in the sixth grade? How much progress should they make in any particular grade?

Measurement is a most vital link in the chain used to interpret instruction; therefore measurement and standards must be clearly understood, not only by the pupils and the teachers, but by the public as well. If Latin, modern languages, and algebra have a value for the average boy or girl in the high-school grades, the public has a right to understand that value in reasonably definite terms and applications.

A democracy is secure only so long as the children have access to free schools whose function has been correctly understood. It is then very important for every good citizen in the democracy to know the purpose of the public schools.

In the beginning of our educational history in this country the scheme provided for a triumvirate. The home was to train the child in the industries, the church was to care for the spiritual training, and the school for the mental training. Long since have we realized that this classification is an impossibility, and more and more is the work of the home, and to some extent of the church, being turned over to the schools. It is impossible exactly to define the field of each, but all three institutions, each using the same positive constructive method, must be utilized if the child is ever to have the chance to which he is fully entitled.

The public must be instructed, and the very best way is thru semipublic organizations, such as the chamber of commerce, the press, mothers' councils, trades assemblies, rotary clubs, improvement leagues, and any other avenue thru which the superintendent may speak of the school plans. In all of these there are leaders who must be reacht and trained largely by the heads of the educational system. There is a leader who will be invaluable in the Italian group. There is another in the locality where the Greeks live. Mothers' councils, misguided, are a greater abomination to the superintendent and the school system than the war-charged church choir is to the preacher; but properly directed, given something to do, they are the most potent factor of the day in interpreting the programs of the American public schools. Thru any or all of these organizations and institutions the superintendent may plead for intermediate schools, more open-air schools, more opportunity rooms, added rooms for the deaf, relief for the crippled children, new high-school buildings, additional equipment, better salaries, higher taxes, or any other items needed in the system.

Some pedagogical cynic, or an overcritical layman, who thinks of the modern school superintendent in the light of the old-time schoolmaster with his long hair and extended coat tail, who knew everything that was not worth knowing and could do nothing worth while but teach children, · might not agree that some of these undertakings are within the proper field of the superintendent. Some may charge that I have outlined a program for a politician. I am not concerned much about that, but firmly believe that we need educational statesmanship in our schools if the teachers are to be led in the training of leaders thru a proper understanding of the school program.

DISCUSSION

FRED M. HUNTER, superintendent of schools, Oakland, Calif.-School superintendency is coming to stand out as a profession. As an administrator the superintendent's function is large and responsible. He must be a business man, a man of affairs, able to

take his place along with other men who do things in his community. But this function is not distinctive. He does not differ in this respect from the executive officers of dozens of large business institutions each carrying on a business differing widely from that of the other and from the work of the superintendent.

The superintendent is professional in his supervisory relationship; that is, it is in his supervision of the fundamental activities of the school rather than in his efforts as general manager to surround the work of the schools with proper conditions for development that the professional character of the superintendent of schools lies. I do not mean that the superintendent must make his major function the supervision of classroom instruction by direct personal contact, but I do mean that he must be something more than a mere manager and diplomat, that he has a greater service to perform than merely to surround actual school work with proper conditions, and that is, to shape the development of this thing we call the curriculum by leading the forces which actually make it, and to interpret it to at least three groups of people-to the teachers, to the board of education, and to the public.

This conception of the superintendent as a professional leader and as an interpreter of the curriculum makes him a student of curriculum-making; not the kind of curriculummaking which consists in conforming to tradition, but rather of the type which seeks (1) the great national purposes in education, (2) the defects of our present school organization and the machinery in obtaining them, and (3) the assistance of the whole teaching force in the active work of scientific investigation and experimentation.

The multitude of activities introduced into the schools as war measures has increast almost beyond conception this responsibility of the superintendent. These activities have emphasized in bold terms the national ideals. Every superintendent has seen in flaming letters against the black storm of Prussianism the national motto, "The Nation for the Individual," and he has read with almost equal clearness the secondary lines, "Individual Service and Responsibility to the Nation." As a curriculum-maker he is constrained by his own professional ideals and by the pressure of national necessity to reconstruct machinery, content, and method until these great national, yes international, purposes shape every activity and inspire the work of every classroom.

No less plainly has our great national crisis shown us the defects in our system of education as it has brought us into realization of the tremendously responsible relation between public education and nationality. Everybody knows that we have no thorogoing machinery for Americanization. The patriotic spirit of every community has revolted at the un-American sentiment that has been evident whenever patriotic pressure has become intense. The terrible danger that lurks in our large unamalgamated elements is no longer apparent only to students of sociology. It is now a part of the public consciousness. That 13 per cent of our population are foreign born or children of the first generation of foreign parentage, and that 30 per cent of these are illiterate is not conducive to smug satisfaction either on the part of the public or on the part of those responsible for our educational machinery. So the first great defect in the work of our schools and its relation to national life is shown by the lack of a well-developt system for Americanization.

The second great defect is the failure of our schools to cover thoroly their field, that is, their failure to provide for all American youth up to an age nearing maturity a fairly adequate training for citizenship. The experiments made in the states that have begun a system of industrial education have brought us the conclusion that such training should extend to the age of eighteen for all youth in our land. The Massachusetts registration of minors, the Wisconsin continuation law, and similar steps taken by various cities and communities place the legislative stamp of approval upon this conception. Yet how lamentable is the situation when we view the record of the high schools of the country. A recent survey of the elimination from the high schools of the country by Frank G. Pickell and B. F. Mickelblech shows that the high schools of the various sections of the

United States are able to retain to the Senior year the following percentages of those entering as Freshmen:

The superintendent then, as a leader in curriculum-making, must himself see clearly, first, the great national purposes and their demands upon public school activities, and secondly, the great shortcomings of which our school system in the past has been guilty. He is called upon to be a keen discriminator in values and to select and organize the demands to which he and his followers shall accede.

The first demand growing out of our recognition of national purposes and school defects is this: The curriculum shall be an organized series of practices and activities rather than a body of knowledge based upon the principle that action alone is educative. The government has been remaking our curriculum for us before our very eyes. It has been forcing into our classrooms activities which have done more in the past six months in training for real citizenship than all our laboriously devised schedules of social studies have done in the past five years.

The second principle involved in the new demands is that of variation. This principle of variation as opposed to uniformity will guide the curriculum-making of the future upon two different planes: first, curriculums will vary in accordance with the individual needs, or, in more practical terms, with the group needs of boys and girls as determined by social inheritance, economic environment, and natural tendencies; secondly, curriculums will vary in the organizational units in which these organizations are located, and the respective needs of these communities.

The third principle in curriculum-making under the new demands will be this: Curriculums will be made by two groups of people: first, by classroom teachers, or their respective committees, who are studying the needs of children by first-hand contact; and, secondly, by special groups of experimenters employed by communities to study individual and group differences in children and to survey community needs.

The fourth principle under our new demands is the principle of extension. Classroom and laboratory practices must not cease abruptly with the graduation of the pupil or his elimination from school. The superintendent as a maker and interpreter of the curriculum must have a conception of the development of such courses as will extend the usefulness of the schools far past the present idea of school age and far out of the geographical limits of our school plants.

To the board of education the superintendent should be a leader in establishing an attitude of professional-mindedness. Upon the superintendent, to a large degree, falls the responsibility of so handling his relationship with the board of education and so organizing the avenues thru which professional information may be kept constantly before them that the temptation to play politics is lessened and the main purposes of the schools are always held before them. His method of attack should lead to the point of view that the greatest service which boards of education can perform is thru their leadership of

public opinion in forming sound educational policies, and thru a conception of their function as being legislative rather than executive and administrative. The superintendent should lead in bringing about an organization of his board upon a broad policy-making basis rather than along the lines of administrative detail.

Because the attitude of boards toward education and the sentiment which the public in general has regarding education are retroactive upon each other the superintendent cannot neglect any means of direct appeal to the public itself. The superintendent's office should use the public press, the rostrum of organizations affiliated with the public schools, such as parent-teacher associations, civic-center organizations, women's clubs, and improvement clubs, and in fact every legitimate avenue of approach to the public to build in the mind of the public the foundations of sound educational doctrine.

The superintendent's leadership in interpreting the purposes of the curriculum to his teachers and in making the accomplishment of those purposes a fact is dependent upon his ability to lead his board of education to a proper conception of its responsibility and largest functions, and his hold upon public sentiment is dependent upon his ability to control the avenues of public information on school development and school policies. He is authoritatively a leader of his professional co-workers, but he must make himself a leader of those who have political authority over him and of the public which maintains the institution in which he works. In this sense, he is without question the most significant public servant in his community. He should regard his responsibility with a spirit of service and devotion and should make it his life-purpose to capitalize his time and knowledge, his professional training, and missionary zeal in the largest way possible.

II. IN PRINCIPALS AND SUPERVISORS

R. O. STOOPS, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, JOLIET, ILL. The wording of this subject at once suggests to me the personality of the supervisor of classroom instruction and the high type of professional service which he should render to the teachers under his immediate direction.

The historical development of the position of principal or supervisor came from the discovery and recognition of those personal traits of leadership which made one teacher in a building or group stand out as the "head teacher." In like manner, when buildings multiplied as the village grew into a city, the principal who had shown markt initiative and administrative ability became general director of the work in a number of buildings and the position of supervisor was developt. In both cases the position was a recognition of the qualities of personal leadership. It is understood that the term "supervisor" in this discussion refers to the supervisory principal, or general supervisor, of a definite group of teachers.

He

The personality of a supervisor contributes largely to his success. must be a man among men, a kindred spirit of the men who do things in the community. A woman supervisor should be identified with the agressive women's organizations and her cooperation should be sought in all lines of social service. The human element in education demands that the supervisor identify himself with the lay interests of the community so that from personal touch he may interpret community needs in terms of educational activity. In no other way can he hope to relate his work to the