RURAL SCHOOL SUPERVISION

Important.—Supervision is fully as important as teaching. The supervisor must be, to even a higher degree than the teacher, a strong personality, and this too implies a high standard and an attractive salary. The supervisor or superintendent must be somewhat of an expert in the methods of teaching all the common school subjects. Not only must he understand school discipline and organization in its details, but he must possess the ability to "turn in" and exemplify his qualifications at any time. It will be seen everywhere that the supervisor or superintendent is the expensive person; for, having the elements of leadership, he is in demand in educational positions as well as in outside callings. Consequently it is only by a good financial inducement, as a rule, that a competent supervisor can be retained in the profession.

Supervision Standardizes.—Without the superintendent or supervisor, no common standard can be attained or maintained. It is he who keeps the force up to the line; without him each teacher is a law unto himself and there will be as many standards as there are teachers. Human nature is innately slothful and negligent, and needs the spirit of supervision to keep it toned up to the necessary pitch. Supervision over a large force of workers of any kind is absolutely necessary to secure efficiency, and to keep service up to a high standard.

Supervision Can Be Overdone.—The necessity for supervision is clearly felt in the city systems. There they have a general superintendent, principals of buildings, and supervisors in various special lines. A system of schools in the city without supervision would simply go to pieces. It would soon cease to be a system, and would become chaotic. It may be, it is true, that in some cities there is too much supervision; it may become acute and pass the line of true efficiency. Indeed, in some cities the red tape may become so complicated and systematized that it becomes an end, and schools and pupils seem to exist for supervisors and systems instead of vice versa. It is probably true that the constant presence of a supervisor who is adversely critical may do injury to the efficiency of a good teacher. No one can teach as well under disapprobation as he can where he feels that his hands are free; and so in some places supervision may act as a wet blanket. It may suppress spontaneity, initiative, and real life in the school. But this is only an abuse of a good thing, and probably does not occur frequently. In any event, the exception would only prove the rule. Supervision is as necessary in a system of schools as it is in a railroad or in large industries.

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.

The Problem Not Tackled.—Such a situation is another evidence that the states which tolerate the foregoing conditions have not, in any real and earnest manner, attempted to solve the problem of rural school supervision. They have merely let things drift along as they would, not fully realizing the problem or else trusting to time to come to their aid. Micawber-like, they are waiting for "something to turn up." But such problems will not solve themselves.

City Supervision.—Compare the supervision described above with that which is usually found in cities. There we usually find a general superintendent and assistant superintendents; there are high school principals and a principal at the head of every grade building; there is also a supervisor of manual training, of domestic science, of music, of drawing, and possibly of other subjects. When we consider, too, that the teachers in the city are all close at hand and that the supervisor or superintendent may drop into any room at any time with scarcely a minute's notice, we see the difference between city supervision and country supervision. Add to this the fact that cities attract the strong teachers—the professionally trained teachers, the output of the professional schools—and we can see again how effective supervision becomes in the city as compared with that in the country. In the country we find only one superintendent for a county often as large as some of the older states, and the possibility of visiting each school only about once a year. Here also are the teachers who are not professionalized, as a rule, and who, therefore, need supervision most.

The Purpose of Supervision.—The main purpose of supervision is to bring teachers up to a required standard of excellence in their work and to keep them there. It is always the easiest plan to dismiss a teacher who is found deficient, but this is cutting the knot rather than untying it. Efficient and intelligent supervision proceeds along the line of building such a teacher up, of making her strong where she is weak, of giving her initiative where she lacks it, of inculcating good methods where she is pursuing poor ones, of inducing her to come out of her shell where she is backward and diffident. In other words, the great work of the supervisor is to elicit from teachers their most active and hearty response in all positive directions. It should be understood by teachers—and they should know that the superintendent or supervisor indorses the idea—that it is always better to go ahead and blunder than to stand still for fear of blundering; and so, in the presence of a good supervisor, the teacher is not afraid to let herself out. In the conference, later, between herself and her supervisor, mistakes may be pointed out; but, better than this, the best traits of the teacher should be brought to her mind and the weak ones but lightly referred to.

What Is Needed.—What is needed in the rural situation is a county superintendent chosen because of his professional fitness by a county board whose members have been elected at large. This board should be elected on a nonpartisan ticket and so far as possible on a basis of qualification and of good judgment in educational matters. It should hold office for a period of years, some members retiring from the board annually so that there shall not be, at any time, an entirely new board. This would insure continuity. Another plan for a county board would be to have the presidents of the district boards act as a county board of education. Such a board should be authorized—and indeed this tradition should be established—to select a county superintendent from applicants from outside as well as inside the county. They should be empowered to go anywhere in the country for a superintendent with a reputation in the teaching profession. This is the present plan in cities, and it should be true also in the selection of a county superintendent.

The Term.—The term of office of the county superintendent should be at the discretion of the county board. It should be not less than three or four years—of sufficient length to enable a man to carry out a line of policy in educational administration. The status of the county superintendency should be similar to that of the city superintendency.

Assistants.—The county board should be empowered to provide assistants for the county superintendent. There should be one such assistant for about thirty or thirty-five schools. It is almost impossible for a supervisor to do efficient and effective work if he has more than this number of schools, located, as they are, some distance apart. Provision for such assistants, who should, like the superintendent himself, be experts, is based upon the assumption that supervision is worth while, and in fact necessary in any system if success is to be attained. If the supervision of thirty-five schools is an important piece of work it should be well done, and a person well qualified for that work should be selected. He should be a person of sympathetic attitude, of high qualifications, and of experience in the field of elementary education. The assistants should be carefully selected by the board on the recommendation of the county superintendent. Poor supervision is little better than none.

The Schools Examined.—The county superintendent and his assistants should give, periodically, oral and written examinations in each school, thus testing the work of both the teacher and the pupils. These examinations should not conform in any perfunctory or red-tape manner to a literally construed course of study. The course of study is a means and not an end, and should be, at all points and times, elastic and adaptable. To make pupils fit the course of study instead of making the course of study fit the pupils is the old method of the Procrustean bed—if the person is not long enough for it he is stretched; if too long, a piece is cut off. Any examination or tests which would wake up mind and stimulate education in the neighborhood may be resorted to; but it should be remembered that examinations are likewise a means and not an end.

Some years ago when I was a county superintendent I tried the plan of giving such tests in any subject to classes that had completed a definite portion of that subject and arrived at a good stopping place. If, for example, the teacher announced that his class had acquired a thorough knowledge of the multiplication table, I gave a searching test upon that subject and issued a simple little certificate to the effect that the pupil had completed it. These little certificates acted like stakes put down along the way, to give incentive, direction, and definiteness to the educative processes, and to stimulate a reasonable class spirit or individual rivalry. I meet these pupils occasionally now—they are to-day grown men and women—and they retain in their possession these little colored certificates which they still highly prize.

One portion of my county was populated almost entirely by Scandinavians, and here a list of fifty to a hundred words was selected which Scandinavian children always find it difficult to pronounce. At the first trial many or most of the children mispronounced a large percentage of them. I then announced that, the next time I visited the school, I would test the pupils again on these words and others like them, and issue "certificates of correct pronunciation" to all who were entitled to them. I found, on the next visit, that nearly all the children could secure these certificates. These tests created a great impetus in the direction of correct pronunciation and language. Some teachers, from mistaken kindness, had been accustomed to refrain from correcting the children on such words, but as superintendent I found that both the parents and the children wished drill in pronunciation and were gratified at their success. This is only a sample. I would advocate the giving of tests, or examinations, on any subject in the school likely to lead to good results and to stimulate the minds of the pupils in the right direction. The county superintendent and his assistants might agree to lay the accent or the emphasis on different subjects, or lines of work, in different years.

Keep Down Red Tape.—In all the work of supervision, the formal part—the accounting and reporting part—should be kept simple; the tendency in administrative offices is too often in the direction of complexity and red tape. Wherever there is form merely for the sake of form, it is well worth while to sound a note of warning against it.

Help the Social Centers.—The county superintendent and his assistants can be of inestimable value in all the work of the social centers. They should advise with school boards in regard to consolidation and other problems agitating the community. They should lend a helping hand to programs that are being carried out in any part of the county. They should give lectures themselves at such social centers and, if asked, should help the local communities and local committees in every way within their power.

Conclusion.—The problem, then, of superintendence is, we conclude, one of the large and important problems awaiting solution in rural life and in rural schools. It is the binding force that will help to unify all the educational activities of the county. It is one of the chief stimulating and uplifting influences in rural education. As in the case of most other school problems, the constant surprise is that the people have not awakened sooner to the realization of its importance and to an honest and earnest attempt at its solution.