Where the work of the inspector is guided by a clear insight, emphasis has been laid upon the training of teachers and their distribution through the schools. This has led to the development of strong departments for the training of teachers.

The example of the State universities in this respect has prompted all colleges to take up very generally the organization of departments of education. In some cases this imitation has been of a rather remote and ineffective type. Courses are sometimes announced for teachers which differ only in their announcement from the conventional course offered to other students. Thus one finds that a course in algebra for teachers is nothing but an ordinary course in higher algebra. A course in history for teachers includes no mention of any principles of method. It is a course in that period of history with which the school courses deal. Perhaps the efforts of colleges to meet the demand that they train secondary teachers ought not to be criticized in spite of the superficial way in which the work is sometimes done. It is a new undertaking, and as such is sure to show some marks of immaturity.

One great defect in most institutions which aim to train secondary teachers is the complete lack of facilities for giving the student any practice teaching. The German system provides for a long period of instruction in the duties of classroom management as an essential part of the training of every secondary teacher. There are very few institutions in this country equipped even to afford adequate opportunities for observation to those who are preparing to become highschool teachers. In this matter there must undoubtedly be general improvement. The institutions which train elementary teachers have always recognized the imperative necessity of practical contact with the classroom as a part of the equipment of every teacher in training. Colleges will have to recognize the same fact if they are to give adequate preparation to high-school teachers.

NORMAL-SCHOOL TRAINING FOR SECONDARY TEACHERS.

In this connection it is important to discuss the fact that a number of normal schools in different parts of the country have taken up the problem of training high-school teachers as a part of their work. There is indeed no agreement among the principals and the teachers of normal schools in this matter. There are strong partisans of the view that it is the sole business of the normal schools to train elementary teachers. Probably the majority of the officers of normal schools hold to this view in more or less pronounced degrees. On the other hand, there are partisans, some of them most emphatic in their expressions, of the view that only the normal school can give satisfactory training to secondary teachers. Those who hold to this

latter position point to the fact that the normal school is historically the only institution in the country which has aimed to deal with the teaching problem. They point to the fact that through all the generations the secondary schools have been manned by teachers untrained in the practical side of their work, and finally they point to the present training given in departments of education in colleges and universities and criticize this kind of training as purely theoretical, unaccompanied by practice teaching or criticism.

It should perhaps be added that practical school superintendents emphasize the importance of training received in the classroom as more desirable than the theoretical training given in educational lectures. Where normal-school graduates have been brought into comparison with graduates of colleges in high schools which appoint both on their faculties, the advantage has sometimes been reported to be with the normal-school graduates. The normal schools have thus gained in some quarters the support of school superintendents in the contention that these schools can prepare teachers quite as well as colleges, if not better.

There is no immediate prospect that the normal schools will be able to take up in any general way the work of training high-school teachers. If there were no other consideration in the way of the normal schools in this field of operations, the fact that there are at the present time no adequate facilities in any of the States for the training of elementary teachers would settle the matter. The example of the few normal schools which do train secondary teachers will in the meantime serve as a stimulating example to the college departments, which have up to this time unquestionably been open to the just criticism that they are too abstract and theoretical.

A final matter which has been brought out in recent reports is the matter of the distribution of a trained teacher's energy over a great variety of unrelated subjects. The extreme phase of the evil which is suggested by this statement is the case of the teacher who is trained to teach one or two subjects and is drafted off when he begins his work into subjects for which he has no training. It is not uncommon for the teachers of physics and of Latin to be assigned for their unoccupied time to teach classes in history or English. In the small schools such a mixing of subjects is inevitable. The secondary assignments ought to be made, however, with due regard to efficiency.

On the other side, teachers ought to be trained with the facts fully in view. In this matter many college departments have a lesson to learn. The college department which requires two-thirds of a student's time for a given specialty fails to prepare that student for the real position which he will find open to him when he begins to teach. The high schools are very seldom as highly specialized as the

colleges and not even remotely like the universities in this respect. Departments in universities can with advantage study the actual demands made upon their students after graduation. The professor of mathematics or physics or Latin will then realize that he is making a very inefficient teacher by encouraging too high a degree of specialization.

A NEW ERA OF PROFESSIONAL ADMINISTRATION.

It remains to comment briefly on the fact that in secondary schools, as in other branches of the educational system, there is a clear recognition of the new profession of administration. Formerly a school was supposed to run itself, if only the classes were held. From time to time some matter of discipline might so disrupt the work of the school as to call for special attention, and then there was an emergency officer who could be called in. The second stage of evolution. was reached when, in the complex organization of the school, some one had to be appointed to settle all matters not settled in the separate classrooms. This central officer usually found that the purchase of supplies and the conciliation of parents are the chief matters not attended to in the classroom. Often a community has suffered because a competent teacher has been taken away from his professional work of instruction to carry on the clerical work of an office. Even in this second period there were administrators who found time for the study of students, of teachers, of courses of study, of other school systems, and of like stimulating subjects. Such true administrators found themselves limited, however, because the information which they needed was not easy to get and the methods which they had at hand were altogether inadequate as methods of administrative study. A new era of administration is at hand. The best example to select for purpose of illustration is, perhaps, the example of school grades. The time was-and now is in many quarters-when a school grade was almost impossible of interpretation except to the initiated. A certain instructor gave a student the mark 90. No one could understand this mark unless he knew whether the teacher was a "hard" marker or an "easy" marker. To-day the progressive high-school principal has in the simple method of distribution tables a means of objectively checking up each teacher's practice. Furthermore, each school has the possibility of comparing its methods with those of other schools, including the colleges to which some of its graduates go. Some administrators are adopting an analytical method of dealing with the grades of students. Instead of a formal percentage mark, they are filing a report from each teacher which describes such matters as the student's devotion, or lack of devotion, to the preparation of his work, the student's willingness to receive and profit

by criticism, his readiness of reproduction of what he has learned. This effort to analyze the psychology of the individual student may be recognized as the administrative side of the general movement, described in an earlier paragraph, toward more careful supervision of class study. When the high-school world is supplied with a body of empirical results, based upon a careful study of the best methods of recording students' work, the position of the professional administrator will be fully justified.

To be sure, there is some hesitation on the part of the school boards to invest very much public money in what they often regard as useless research. But studies of elimination, of relative grades, of the standings of graduates in college, of the effects of vocational guidance, of the influence on attendance of new curricula, will soon produce a body of objective, standardized knowledge regarding secondary schools which will convince the most skeptical. The creation of this type of knowledge in high-school offices is no less significant a development than the general expansion of the secondary schools and the enlargement and organization of their curricula.

CHAPTER VI.

PROGRESS IN CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS.

By JAMES H. VAN SICKLE,

Superintendent of Schools, Springfield, Mass.

CONTENTS.-I. Administration. II. Measuring the school's efficiency. III. Departments of educational research and efficiency bureaus. IV. Professional investigations. V. Scope and character of surveys already made. VI. The consulting psychologist. VII. The visiting teacher. VIII. The health of school children. IX. Instruction in hygiene. X. The course of study. XI. Vocational guidance. XII. Classification and promotion. XIII. Departmental teaching in the grades. XIV. Conditions affecting the work of teachers.

I. ADMINISTRATION.

The tendency toward centralization in school administration, noted in previous reports, shows no signs of abatement. Reduction in size of school boards, appointment or election at large, instead of by wards, the employment of business experts, and the extension of professional control on the educational side are policies that are commanding increased attention and gradually but surely gaining recognition as fundamental in education.

Recently in Chicago the superintendent of schools tendered her resignation on account of committee interference in professional matters for which the community has come to expect the superintendent to be responsible. An aroused public opinion was followed by the filling of vacancies in the board by members favorable to the superintendent's initiative in all educational policies and the board thus constituted refused to accept the superintendent's resignation. Thus was the modern principle of professional control in educational matters validated in our second largest city.

The board of education of Jackson, Mich., has this year withdrawn all salaries from its own members and officers. These salaries have heretofore amounted to from $1,500 to $3,000 per year, depending upon the amount of work required of certain committees. The board has now adopted the policy of having all work possible done by paid employees who are not board members. By cutting off all Inuneration from its membership the board is free to legislate on all matters without the possibility of anyone charging any member with being influenced by selfish considerations or personal interests.