teacher easily holds the room under control by a mere look or a mere word.

In the system of schools of St. Louis, after the adoption of the Boston style of building, corporal punishment decreased in ten years from an average of 500 cases per week for 700 pupils to 3 cases for that number. The benefit to the schools of the central plain of the United States from this architectural innovation of Boston may be estimated by this. But another benefit of almost equal magnitude arose from the close grading of classes which the new system produced. I think that Mr. Philbrick alone deserves the credit for most of this latter improvement. The large school was graded into classes from the lowest to the highest, so as to bring together in each room only those of the same grade of advancement in their studies. According to the ungraded system, such as exists in small country schools now, each teacher had pupils of all grades, from those just beginning to read up to those studying algebra and perhaps Latin. Twenty-five pupils in the country school admit of classification into divisions of 2 or 3 pupils at most, and the result is forty recitations for the day's work and five or ten minutes to each recitation. It is obvious that no thorough work can be done on this plan; no searching analysis of the recitation, no discussion of the thought, no experiments to illustrate it-nothing but mere committing to memory and repeating the words by rote-no explanation of the process of an arithmetical problem, but only a memorizing of the rule and an inspection of the figures in which the answer is stated. The ungraded school in which this method of procedure did not prevail was a rare phenomenon.

In the graded school each teacher has two classes. One recites while the other learns its lesson. The recitation is as long as the attention of the pupil can be held without overstrain-twenty to twenty-five minutes in the lower grades and thirty to forty minutes in the highest classes of the grammar school. Time is given for review of the previous lesson, for investigation of the lesson for the day, for discussion of authorities, for illustrations, for hints as to methods of study. Each pupil prepares himself by study of the text book, and in the recitation sees the subject through the perspective of the minds of his fellow-pupils and teacher, thus widening his own narrow views of the subject by seeing what different aspects it takes on in the minds of his fellow-pupils. He acquires critical alertness by this process and goes to his next lesson with his mind full of new inquiry and reflection, thus reenforcing his own power of attention by what he has learned from the whole class and the teacher. A good teacher can and does use the recitation as an instrumentality for reenforcing each individual mind by all the minds. of the whole class.

The constant influence, therefore, of the graded school system of Boston has been to change the memoriter system of recitation into a system of critical investigation. Such a system is not possible in an ungraded

school, even with a good teacher. Although bad methods are possible with poor teachers, even in a graded system, yet they are no longer necessary, and experience tends to eradicate them altogether.

CITY SCHOOL SUPERVISION.

The functions of the office of the superintendent of public schools. have become better defined from year to year. They included at first functions as widely diverse as janitor work and the formulation of a course of study. One after another have been eliminated-the mechanical elements of curatorship, purchasing supplies, keeping records, supervising the construction of buildings. Finally the superintendent has arrived at the work of the educational expert and confines himself more and more to directing the course of study, teaching methods of instruction, inspiring the teachers with the spirit of self-culture, acting as counselor and advisor of the school board or school committee, and fashioning or shaping the educational thought of the community. But still the work of the superintendent must include at least a directive oversight in those mechanical spheres, and a mere theoretic superintendent who confines himself exclusively to examining pupils and discussing methods of instruction and discipline would prove a failure. He may reasonably be relieved of the mechanical drudgery, but he should retain the supervisory control over its performance. Heating, ventilating, sewerage, lighting, cleaning-all these things must be under his control in the last resort, although their routine may be managed by an independent officer of the board. The construction of school buildings requires at every step the advice of an expert in educational methods.

The superintendent, too, must prescribe what statistics are to be kept, for he is the one to know what is essential to indicate the character of the management and the needs and necessities of reform or change. Of course, too, the financial concerns of the schools, the grades of salaries, the cost of apparatus and incidental supplies should have the superintendent's consideration, no matter how efficient the school board committee may be; for the excellence of the school is conditioned largely by teacher's wages and by the apparatus of the school

room.

These mechanical and financial essentials being once provided for, the superintendent in the capacity of educational expert has to do with teachers, pupils, parents, the school board, and with the community at large.

The average school board (or "school committee," as called in some of the Atlantic States) may be said to have three classes of men represented in its composition: First, the business man, chosen from the class of merchants, teachers, manufacturers, or professionals who have no personal ends to serve and no special cause to foster or protect other than the general efficiency and business management of the schools.

Second, there are the men representing the element of reform or change, and who have some pet scheme that they wish to introduce. These men are honest and well-meaning, but their enthusiasm is prone to unbalance their judgment regarding educational values. They become so much impressed with the importance of their pet schemes that they can not see the true significance of the studies already in the course. A third class of men that gets represented on a school board is the selfseeking or ambitious men who have political ends to accomplish, for which they are willing to sacrifice to some degree the efficiency of the schools. This element usually enters the board as a result of partisan politics and varies in its amount according to the influence of politics in the government of the schools. There may be in this third quota of the board some who seek higher political offices, a seat in the town council, the State legislature or Congress, and who will aim at notoriety by their actions in the school board; others, a few, will perhaps seek profitable contracts for their friends.

Now the superintendent will find the first class, the conservative business men, his best support in his administration. He will find the third element untrustworthy for his support in any measure for the public good. It is the second element of the board, composed of honest but unbalanced men, that he must study carefully and endeavor by all upright means to educate into broader views. He must labor to unite the first and second quotas of his board, the business men with the men of reform. There is in every board a natural antipathy between the honest business man and the honest reformer. The business man is apt to regard the latter as a visionary. But the balance of power in the board is quite often in the hands of the latter class. It is sure to be the case sooner or later in the vicissitudes of municipal politics.

The discontented, the critical, the opinionated in matters of school management have to be approached often by the superintendent and their statements heard with patience, their arguments turned over and over with fai mindedness. If there is to be any progress in the school system it is to come in by their proposed reforms. The superintendent therefore must learn to see what elements of the proposed measures he can adopt after freeing them from all features of danger to the schools' best interest. He must study to make a synthesis of many of these points severally proposed by the reformers on the board. He must above all endeavor to make the members of the second quota of the board conscious of the educational value and bearing of what already belongs to the course of study. He can in some cases show that the main object sought by the proposed reform is already met by the course of study as it is.

The superintendent in his endeavor to educate the one-sided school directors will educate himself into all-sidedness if he is always careful to be true and honest in his dealings with these men. If he yields to

the temptation to play the demagogue with them, his course will prove fatal to himself and disastrous to his cause, no matter how good it is nor how great his temporary victory.

Hence in this dangerous and difficult part of his duties the superintendent must go no faster than he can see his way with perfect frankness and honesty. He must espouse sincerely so much of the proposed reform as he finds salutary to the school system under his charge. This policy will lead to a slow and beneficial change in the educational system and to the addition of features which will prove permanent elements of strength and perfection.

It is difficult to lift this policy of the superintendent on to a plane so high as to exclude all taint of demagoguery, and it should not be attempted by one who can not hospitably entertain ideas radically dif ferent from his own, and turn them over and over earnestly seeking their good sides.

The superintendent who is not disposed to make any further progress, nor to admit any changes into the school system under his charge, will side with the conservative business men on his board and allow the reformers and discontented members to go without his sympathy or attention. The ultimate consequence of this will be a combination of the second and third quotas of the board-the reformers and the selfseekers. If the well-balanced conservative members do not keep in their party the honest but discontented members, the latter will get under the power of the less scrupulous members, and the consequence. will be revolution instead of reform, for the third quota of members of the board are willing to yield to the reformers anything in the line of theoretical doctrine or educational practice provided they can get for themselves political consequence.

The highest type of superintendent is therefore the one who has genuine political skill-the skill to correct and persuade mistaken men and combine them harmoniously with the honest business men in behalf of good and wise measures. If his skill is not sufficient to perform this without deceit and demagoguery, it is not genuine political skill but a piece of political corruption not to be justified by any temporary success in defending a good cause.

The superintendent of the most advanced type, in his relations with his teachers, aims to organize them into a body of investigators of the history and practice of education. He should do one kind of work with his principals and another kind of work with the teachers at large, meeting them in classes or in assemblies for this purpose. He should discuss with the principals such questions as those relating to the proper selection of the branches of the course of study; exactly what each branch contributes to the intellectual development; how each should be taught; what should be the manner, form, and spirit of the discipline; what new experiments in teaching have been recently proposed in the city or elsewhere, and what their merits.

The superintendent will perhaps do a still more valuable work by inspiring his teachers to form literary societies for the study of the great world poets-Dante, Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, and the lesser lights. There is no field more important for the teacher to enter than the field of aesthetic culture-the study of the great works of art in sculpture, architecture, painting, and music, as well as in poesy.

The teacher is exposed to a certain paralyzing influence arising from the necessity of his vocation which places him in a position wherein he must keep a constant pull against the arbitrariness and caprice of the child. This produces what has somewhere been called the "pedagogical cramp." There is no cure for this equal to the study of literature and art. Hence the importance which the good superintendent will give to the encouragement, by precept and example, of such studies on the part of his teachers. The superintendent should be fertile in devices which work silently and gradually toward improving the method of instruction or the method of discipline. Take for example a device. having the twofold effect of rendering the discipline in the schoolroom mild and free from petulance while at the same time correcting the pupil's waywardness or negligence, and, besides these good effects, superadding a wholesome influence on the parent. This device is the suspension of the pupil for repeated and inexcusable absence or tardiness, or for persistent and willful violation of the order of the school. The suspended pupil can not return without a permit from the superintendent, and to obtain this the parent must visit him at his office hour. This affords occasion for a friendly comparison of views between the superintendent and the parent regarding the whole case. If the parent cherishes ill-feeling toward the teacher, the superintendent suggests a transfer of the pupil to another teacher out of the district. A transfer usually works a complete cure of these cases of brittle temper or blameworthy negligence. About two in a hundred will need another transfer to complete the cure. The teacher, it was quite possible, had not shown sufficient patience and had done something to justify the parent's illfeeling. The transfer contains in it sometimes a gentle suggestion to the teacher to correct his or her own petulance; frequent transfers are sure to be understood clearly in this light.

There collect in many school districts discontented critics of the school management who object strongly to the rigid district system; but this system of transfers is the best means of removing the cause of this unpopularity of the schools.

Another device very effectual in strengthening the novitiate teacher in her power of governing a school is the practice of placing teachers weak in discipline on the "substitute" list and letting them fill vacancies here and there as they occur through the temporary absence of the regular teacher. Teachers who had become chronic failures in discipline have been entirely reformed by a few weeks of such experience. The first-class superintendent is a sort of pilot for the whole system,