Most people think of school matters from the pupil’s point of view. When they learned arithmetic and grammar, or later when they studied algebra and Latin, each course was presented to them as though it were a perfect system. The teacher did not confide in them that arithmetic probably ought to be revised by the omission of many of its topics, that formal grammar is a very doubtful subject, and that both algebra and Latin are on the point of losing their places as required subjects. The pupil sees the front of the school scenery; the machinery behind is known only to those who conduct the performance.
It would be possible to multiply indefinitely examples which show that the pupil’s view of the school is very limited. What pupil understands the duties of the principal or the superintendent, or of the still more remote and mysterious board of education? Where does the daily program come from? Who decides about textbooks? Why are school buildings commonly planned with large study-rooms? Most of these questions are never thought of by pupils. Everything in school life seems to have a kind of inevitableness which raises it above question or even consideration.
Conservatism in the Community as a Natural Consequence
The narrowness of the pupil’s view would have less serious consequences if it were not for the fact that the pupil becomes in mature life a member of a board of education or adopts teaching as his profession. Then trouble results, because there is machinery which must be kept running if schools are to be efficient, and this machinery suffers if intrusted to the hands of those who do not understand its complexities.
One school superintendent, who encountered vigorous opposition to the introduction of changes in the course of study, wrote as follows:
The average American citizen whose schooling was limited to the primary and grammar grades looks with reverence upon the subjects there taught, and refuses to concur in a change of the course of study for the elementary school. Associated with the average citizen is a heavy percentage of the teaching faculty of both elementary and high schools throughout the country.[1]
Another superintendent, who was more successful in bringing about reforms, makes this statement:
People are more conservative in their attitude towards educational innovations than toward new adjustments to meet the demands of changing modern life in any other field of activity. Each adult is inclined to overvalue the particular type of training he received and to regard with suspicion any change which will tend to discredit this sort of training received at such an expenditure of time and money. The schools are, therefore, the last institution to respond to the changing demands of modern life.[2]
Demand for a Broad Scientific Study
If schools are to be progressive and efficient, they must be studied very much more broadly and comprehensively than they can be from the pupil’s point of view. The suggestion naturally arises that this broader study is a part of the professional duty of the teacher. So it is; but it will not be enough merely to exhibit the intricacies of education to teachers. The whole community must be shown by scientific methods that the school is a complex social institution, and that its conduct, like the conduct of every other social institution, requires constant study and expert supervision. In this movement of opening the eyes of the community to the needs and nature of education, the school officers must be leaders; but their methods must be impersonal and exact.