We have seen that the teacher of our forefathers was a man of doubtful attainments and uncertain character, and while there were golden exceptions to any general criticism, yet it is beyond question that as a class the teachership was not well esteemed. As a rule, there was no stable salary,—the teachers “boarded around” at the homes of their pupils or received payment in produce from the farmers. At the school he was janitor as well as educator. Outside of New England, there was little intelligent supervision of his efforts, and, on the whole, very little effective home coöperation. Within the century, however, there has been a marked increase in the esteem in which the teacher is held, and in the popular appreciation of his work. Moreover, to-day, the teacher better deserves esteem and respect. While the profession still contains a vast floating element who look forward to a future in other lines of work, yet on the whole its members possess a keen interest in their work and a desire for professional improvement. A most powerful means toward this end has been found in the various teachers’ organizations. The Institute, with its annual assembly of all teachers within a given district, who for two or three days discuss school questions and listen to lectures upon educational topics, has been introduced throughout the whole country with great success. The teachers in the various States have organized State associations, and there are innumerable voluntary organizations, whose meetings give each teacher an opportunity for that free contact with others of his own kind that is so helpful and so suggestive.
DR. CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
(Courtesy of The School Journal, New York.)
The oldest educational association in America, maybe in the world, is the American Institute of Instruction, organized in 1830. During its nearly seventy years of life it has been a vast inspiration to thousands of teachers. It has drawn its support chiefly from the New England States and recently from Canada, but its influence is widespread. Annual meetings have been held regularly. Among its leading spirits, it has numbered such men as W. E. Sheldon, Francis Wayland, Henry Barnard, etc. Out of the success of the various State associations, and perhaps suggested by the necessity for more general action, grew the National Educational Association, founded in 1857, with the objects “to elevate the character and advance the interest of the profession of teaching and to promote the cause of popular education in the United States.” Its first president was Zalmon Richards, and his successors have been the foremost educators of the country, including James P. Wickersham, Emerson E. White, William T. Harris, Albert G. Lane, Nicholas Murray Butler, Charles R. Skinner, etc. Its membership has grown from 80 in 1857 to 10,654 (1898), and it has been estimated that some of its conventions have brought twenty-five thousand people in their train. In spirit it is thoroughly national, meeting in every section of the country in turn, so helping to promote uniformity in school ideas. As the Association grew larger, and its work became more complicated, its organization became involved. To-day it consists of seventeen departments, each of which devotes itself to one phase of education, usually reporting at the annual meeting.
Since 1892 the National Educational Association (N. E. A., as it is popularly called) has appointed three committees to investigate special lines of work in separate departments of the school system. The Committee of Ten, whose chairman, Charles W. Eliot, was the distinguished President of Harvard University, submitted a most useful report in 1893 on Secondary School Studies. In 1895 the Committee of Fifteen, of which Superintendent Wm. H. Maxwell was chairman, then of Brooklyn but since chosen to be the first Superintendent of Schools of “Greater New York,” made a valuable report on elementary education, including reports of sub-committees on the Training of Teachers, Correlation of Studies, and the Organization of City School Systems. In 1897 came the report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools, Superintendent Henry Sabin, of Iowa, as chairman. These documents have been epoch-making; they have accumulated a mass of trustworthy information; they have procured opinion upon a wide variety of topics, and their influence upon the general systematization of the school system has been enormous. Their additional value lies in the fact that they have been prepared by teachers who thoroughly understood the topics which were being considered, and they have furnished to educators generally that consensus of professional opinion which has been so badly needed in America.
In this work of gathering and disseminating information, a most potent part has been played by the national government. The limitations of the Constitution left education as a State interest, to be worked out by each commonwealth as it should think best. There had always been a general desire among teachers for some national organization, and at last, after the Civil War, Congress established a department, and then later made a Bureau of Education in the Department of the Interior. In 1867 Hon. Henry Barnard was appointed the first United States Commissioner of Education. A wiser choice could not have been made. Dr. Barnard’s career in education covers a period from 1830, when he was appointed Secretary of the Board of School Commissioners in Connecticut, down to the present. Beyond question, his greatest work has been the organization of the National Bureau of Education, which to-day is a grand educational clearing-house, sending forth in its excellent reports an account of ideas and work of each State to the others. Its high efficiency has been due, in a large measure, to the character of its commissioners: Henry Barnard, from 1867 to 1870; John Eaton, 1870–1886; Nathaniel H. R. Dawson, 1886–1889; William T. Harris, 1889 to date. The present incumbent has had the satisfaction of the knowledge that his position has been removed from the list of partisan appointments. By his tactful prudence and genuine scholarship, Dr. Harris has brought his office into touch with every good educational work for a decade, and has made his name a synonym for genial wisdom throughout the whole country.
The teacher has been aided in his work by his professional associations. It is, moreover, true that to-day the teacher enters upon his work better equipped for his duties. The normal-school system has spread over the whole country, and every year thousands of young men and women are sent forth with a preparation that fifty years ago was not even dreamed of. Since the teacher better deserves respect, he has commanded it the more readily. Gradually the barbarisms of the schoolroom have disappeared. As the sympathy with education increased, the necessity for excessive flogging passed away. To-day there is a wide variety in opinion as to the efficiency of this mode of discipline. In one State, New Jersey, corporal punishment in schools is forbidden by law; but in most of the others it is permitted in special cases, as a general part of the teacher’s power when in loco parentis. The teacher is now paid a regular salary, but unfortunately it is the lowest paid in any profession for which formal preparation is required. In 1896–97 the average monthly wages of teachers was, for males, $44.62, and for females, $38.38. In comparison with the standard of life throughout the country, this is poor pay. Superintendent N. C. Schaeffer, of Pennsylvania, in a recent annual report, states that “one superintendent found that there were teachers in his county teaching for four dollars less per year than it cost the county on an average to keep one pauper.” This is an exceptional case, but it illustrates the general truth.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS.