Supervision
The next stage of representative control was reached when the community came to a recognition of the necessity of some kind of intelligent supervision of teachers. Visiting committees were appointed, usually including the clergyman of the town, to look into the work of the classes and report to the town meeting.
So long as communities were small and fairly homogeneous in their social and intellectual characteristics it remained possible to get on with direct town-meeting control of the schools in all except the details of teaching classes and the supervision of teachers. One reads, to be sure, of disagreements at times between the town meeting and the teacher. The visiting committee and the teacher sometimes had a clash, and the supporters of each presented their views with vigor before the whole community. Problems of organization and administration were not lacking even in those simpler days, but the machinery of school management was fairly direct and simple.