Fourth.—Administration should be separated into two great independent departments, one of which manages the business interests and the other of which supervises the instruction. Each of these should be wholly directed by a single official, who is vested with ample authority and charged with full responsibility for sound administration.
Fifth.—The chief executive officer on the business side should be charged with the care of all property, and with the duty of keeping it in suitable condition; he should provide all necessary furnishings and appliances; he should make all agreements and see that they are properly performed; he should appoint all assistants, janitors, and workmen. In a word, he should do all that the law contemplates, and all that the board authorizes, concerning the business affairs of the school system, and when anything goes wrong, he should answer for it. He may be appointed by the board, but we think it preferable that he be chosen in the same way the members of the board are chosen, and be given a veto upon the acts of the board.
Sixth.—The chief executive officer of the department of instruction should be given a long term, and may be appointed by the board. If the board is constituted of two branches, he should be nominated by the business executive and confirmed by the legislative branch. Once appointed, he should be independent. He should appoint all authorized assistants and teachers from an eligible list, to be constituted as provided by law. He should assign to duties and discontinue services for cause at his discretion. He should determine all matters relating to instruction. He should be charged with the responsibility of developing a professional and enthusiastic teaching force and of making all the teaching scientific and forceful. He must perfect the organization of his department, and make and carry out plans to accomplish this. If he cannot do this in a reasonable time, he should be superseded by one who can.
The government of a vast city school system comes to have an autonomy which is largely its own, and almost independent of direction or restraint. The volume of business which this government transacts is represented only by millions of dollars; it calls not only for the highest sagacity and the ripest experience, but also for much special information relating to school property and school affairs. Even more important than this is the fact that this government controls and determines the educational policy of the city and carries on the instruction of tens or hundreds of thousands of children, and this instruction is of little value, and perhaps vicious, unless it is professional and scientific. This government is representative. All citizens are compelled to support it, and all have large interests which it is bound to promote. Every parent has rights which it is the duty of this school government to protect and enforce. When government exacts our support of public education, when it comes into our homes and takes our children into its custody and instructs them according to its will, we acquire a right which is as exalted as any right of property, or of person, or of conscience can be, and that is the right to know that the environment is healthful, that the management is kindly and ennobling, and that the instruction is rational and scientific. It is needless to say to what extent these interests are impeded or blocked, or how commonly these rights of citizenship and of parentage are denied or defied, or how helpless the individual is who seeks their enforcement, under the system of school government which has heretofore obtained in some of the great cities of the country. This is not surprising. It is only the logical result of the rapid growth of cities, of a marvelous advance in knowledge of what is needed in the schools, of the antagonism of selfish interests, by which all public administration, and particularly school administration, is encompassed, and of the lack of plan and system, the confusion of powers, the absence of individual responsibility, in the government of a system of schools. By the census of 1890 there are seven cities in the United States each with a population greater than any one of sixteen states. The aggregate population of twelve cities exceeds the aggregate population of twenty states. Government for education certainly requires as strong and responsible an organization as government for any other purpose. These great centres of population, with their vast and complex educational problems, have passed the stage when government by the time-honored commission will suffice. No popular government ever determined the policy and administered the affairs of such large bodies of people successfully, ever transacted such a vast volume of business satisfactorily, ever promoted high and beneficent ends, ever afforded protection to the rights of each individual of the great multitude, unless in its plan of organization there was an organic separation of executive, legislative, and judicial functions and powers. All the circumstances of the case and the uniform experience of the world forbid our expecting any substantial solution of the problem we are considering until it is well settled in the sentiments of the people that the school systems of the greatest cities are only a part of the school systems of the states of which these cities form a part, and are subject to the legislative authority thereof; until there is a plan of school government in each city which differentiates executive acts from legislative functions; which emancipates the legislative branch of that government from the influence of pelf-seekers; which fixes upon individuals the responsibility for executive acts, either performed or omitted; which gives to the intelligence of the community the power to influence legislation and exact perfect and complete execution; which gives every citizen whose interests are ignored, or whose rights are invaded, a place for complaint and redress; and which puts the business interests upon a business footing, the teaching upon an expert basis, and gives to the instruction that protection and encouragement which is vital to the development of all professional and scientific work.
On the Training of Teachers.
BY SUPERINTENDENT H. S. TARBELL, PROVIDENCE.
[Report of the Fifteen. Read at the Cleveland meeting of the Department of Superintendence, February 19, 1895.]
This report treats of the training of elementary and secondary teachers, considering first that training which should precede teaching in elementary schools. By elementary schools are meant the primary and grammar departments of graded schools, and ungraded or rural schools.
That teachers are “born, not made,” has been so fully the world’s thought until the present century that a study of subjects, without any study of principles or methods of teaching, has been deemed quite sufficient. Modern educational thought and modern practice, in all sections where excellent schools are found, confirm the belief that there is a profound philosophy on which educational methods are based, and that careful study of this philosophy and its application under expert guidance are essential to making fit the man born to teach.
Conditions for professional training—age and attainments.
It is a widely prevalent doctrine, to which the customs of our best schools conform, that teachers of elementary schools should have a secondary or high school education, and that teachers of high schools should have a collegiate education. Your committee believe that these are the minimum acquirements that can generally be accepted, that the scholarship, culture, and power gained by four years of study in advance of the pupils are not too much to be rightfully demanded, and that as a rule no one ought to become a teacher who has not the age and attainments presupposed in the possessor of a high-school diploma. There are differences in high schools, it is true, and a high-school diploma is not a fixed standard of attainment; but in these United States it is one of the most definite and uniform standards that we possess, and varies less than college degrees vary or than elementary schools and local standards of culture vary.