The course of study has grown complex. The work of the classroom is absorbing, and yet its success depends on equipment and organization that need to be studied and intelligently arranged. The work of one school must be correlated with the work of the schools in neighboring communities. The public must have authoritative information about the fiscal needs of the school and about the outcome of the public investments in education. The demand has arisen for a new type of school officer—the supervisor. This officer is not a teacher but a manager. His duty is one of organization and central adjustment.
The Principal
The new demand here referred to can be described by means of an example which exhibits one of the greatest weaknesses of our present school system. Schools of all grades which have grown large enough to employ three or more teachers commonly have an officer who is known as the principal.
In the small school the principal spends most of his or her time in teaching. In larger schools the principal does no classroom work. In both cases the principal is universally selected for a special position in the school because of his or her success in teaching. The work of the principal is thought of as that of a head teacher. The fact is, however, entirely at variance with this idea; the work of the principal is not that of teaching. Principals ought to be managers and central organizers. They ought to know the system as a whole and ought to devote time and thought to problems of a managerial type. The weakness of our present school system is that most principals are in no sense equipped for this central managing task. They do not know how to use profitably the release from classroom work which attaches to their office and title. The result is that they drift, often with the full cognizance of the board of education, into the habit of spending time on trifling clerical tasks which are wholly unworthy of the special position which they are supposed to occupy in the system. It is a deficiency of our educational system that while there are institutions for the training of teachers there are only a few general courses for administrative officers.
There certainly can be no objection to experience as a teacher in the classroom as preliminary training for the person who is to occupy a school principalship. But the moment the experienced teacher leaves the ranks and takes up the office of principal, a wholly new set of central problems should come within his view. He should recognize the fact that from this time on his task is one of a broader type, and the successful execution of that task will require a kind of study which is demanded at most in very minor degree of the teacher.
Other Supervisory Officers
What has been said of the principal is true also of assistant superintendents and of the superintendent of the school system. It is true also of departmental supervisors who have general oversight of certain subdivisions of the work. All these officers ought to become expert in a type of study and a type of management which are not expected of the individual teacher.
Lack of Public Appreciation of Central Problems
In general, it is evident from a study of American school systems that emphasis has not been laid on central organization. Cities have employed a superintendent when they had a population of five thousand inhabitants and have expected a single officer to continue to perform all the duties of that office when the population has increased to one hundred thousand. A principal is put in charge of a high school of two hundred students and continues to have full responsibility for the school when it increases to eight hundred students. Boards of education have refused to give supervisory officers clerical assistance, and have thus required a principal or superintendent receiving the highest salary of any person in the system to do work which a clerk could do more economically and quite as efficiently, thus interfering with the performance of important central duties for which no time is left.