A basket ball team for the girls
A brass band for the young men
ACTIVITIES OF THE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL
Needed in Rural Schools.—The country partakes of the same isolation in regard to its schools as it does in regard to life in general. This isolation is accentuated where there is little or no supervision. Without it, the necessary stimulus seldom or never touches the life of the teacher or the school. There is little uplift; the school runs along in its ordinary, humdrum fashion, and never measures itself with other schools, and is seldom measured by a supervisor. A poor teacher may be in the chair one term and a good teacher another. The terms are short and the service somewhat disconnected. The whole situation gives the impression to people, pupils, and teacher that education is not of very great value.
No Supervision in Some States.—In some states there is but little supervision. There may be, it is true, a district board, but these are laymen, much better acquainted with the principles of farming than with those of teaching. They have no standards for judging a school and seldom visit one. The selection known as the "Deestrict Skule" illustrates fairly well the ability of the old-time school board to pass judgment upon the professional merits of the teacher.
Nominal Supervision.—In other states there is a county superintendent on part time who has a kind of general but attenuated supervision over all the schools of a county. He is usually engaged in some other line of work—in business, in medicine, in law, in preaching—and can give only a small portion of his time to the work of superintendence. Indeed, this means only an occasional visit to the school, probably once every one or two years, and such simple and necessary reports as are demanded by the state superintendent or State Board of Education. Such supervision, however honestly performed, accomplishes but little. The superintendent may visit the teacher to-day, but when he returns a year hence, he is likely to find another teacher in charge. Under such circumstances, what can he do? He has seen the teacher at work for half an hour or an hour; he offers a suggestion, or makes some complimentary remark, and goes his way. No one realizes better than he how little he has been able to accomplish. And yet, under existing circumstances he has done all that could be expected.
Some Supervision.—There are, elsewhere, county superintendents who devote their whole time to the work, but who are chosen for short terms and in a political campaign. Very frequently these men are elected for political reasons quite as much as for educational fitness. If a superintendent so elected is politically minded—and I regret to say that sometimes this is the case—he will probably devote much time, energy, and thought to paving the way for reëlection. Expecting to be a candidate for a second term, he will use his best efforts to impress the public mind in his favor. This sometimes results in greater attention to the duties of his office and the consequent betterment of the schools; but, too often, it works in the opposite direction. Being elected for only two years, he has not the time to carry out any educational policy no matter how excellent his plans may be. Of course many persons chosen in this way make excellent and efficient officers, but the plan is bad. The good superintendent frequently loses out soonest.
An Impossible Task.—Superintendents sometimes have under their jurisdiction from one hundred to two hundred, or even more, schools separated by long distances. The law usually prescribes that the county superintendent shall visit each school at least once a year. This means that practically he will do no more; indeed it is often impossible to do more. It means that his visits must of necessity be a mere perfunctory call of an hour or two's duration with no opportunity to see the same teacher again at work to determine whether or not she is making progress, and whether she is carrying out his instructions. Such so-called supervision, or superintendence, is not supervision at all—how can it be? The superintendent is only a clerical officer who does the work required by law, and makes incidentally an annual social visit to the schools.