but simply commend as strongly as he can, truthfully, the work of efficient teachers. This is a mode of criticism that accomplishes a number of points:

(1) In the first place, it is a matter of justice to good teachers, encourages them, and makes them loyal.

(2) In the second place, it secures the good will of their friends.

(3) In the third place, it serves to arouse poor teachers, if they are worth arousing at all.

(4) In the fourth place, it makes them absolutely helpless. They cannot, with any grace, complain because they receive no praise. The worst charge they and their friends can bring against the superintendent is that he lets them alone.

(5) And in the fifth place, when he finally asks the board to dismiss them, it cannot be made to appear that he does so from any prejudice he may entertain against them.

'It follows from all this, that the superintendent of schools must be a practical teacher himself. He ought to have had considerable experience, some time in his life, in teaching all the grades found in public schools. The man who has never taught school himself is wholly out of place in the position of superintendent; and the occasional appointment of such men by school boards through political wire-pulling is a sin which will be forgiven the present generation by that which is to come only through that charity, apparently innate in the human heart, which cov ers with a mantle the sins of the fathers, and refuses to say anything but good of the dead.

The superintendent ought to be the counsellor of the board on all educational questions, and in regard to the grading and organization of the schools, the construction of the course of study, and the methods of teaching to be employed. A board of education should no more feel free to ignore his counsel than they would feel free to ignore the advice of an attorney on a legal question pertaining to their official acts.

The superintendent ought, furthermore, to be recognized as the au thority on educational questions in the community. He ought to demand such recognition, not, however, so much by his words as by his works. He ought to fashion the educational thought of the community and direct it into right channels..

It is needless to say that the superintendent must be a scholar, a thinker, and, above all, a student. The highest service he can render his teachers is to arouse their thinking, to direct it, and to stimulate them to do their work with enthusiasm. In short, he must stimulate their intellectual and professional growth. Unless he has scholarly habits himself, thinks clearly, and works with enthusiasm, he can not accomplish this. Physicists tell us that a body at rest is not very apt to make other bodies move. The superintendent can not afford to allow anything to interfere with his reading and study, especially as far as educational problems are concerned. The busiest superintendent

has as much opportunity, if not leisure, for study and keeping in the current of human thought as far as his own profession is concerned, as the physician or the lawyer. There is no valid reason why he should not live a life of as intense intellectual interest and activity as thinking men in other professions. The moment he ceases to study with enthusiasm, he ceases to grow and loses the power of stimulating and inspiring others. The dead may possibly be able to bury the dead; they can not restore them to life.

I may remark, in conclusion, that in what I have said I have had in mind the superintendent of the smaller cities and towns-those not exceeding 100,000 in population.

But what is true of small cities is equally true of our larger cities. Here, instead of doing all the supervising alone, with possibly the help of two or three special teachers, he must have a large number of assistants. It is absolutely necessary that teachers come in personal contact frequently with some competent supervising officer who will train them, as I have indicated, in the science and art of teaching. Each of these assistant supervising officers should be assigned a certain section of the city and be required not only to inspect the schools and report to the superintendent the condition in which he finds them, but he should be required to hold teachers' meetings, train the teachers, and make the condition of the schools what it should be.

Such a system of supervision is the only substitute, I suspect, we shall ever find for the complex machinery of the school systems of our large cities. The supposed need of a rigid course of study and frequent examinations, grows out of the feeling that there must be unity and continuity in the work of the various schools; but instead of securing unity, this system develops uniformity, and is fatal to genuine educational work.

Unity must come from within. It is a matter of growth. The only way to secure it is to train all teachers to understand and apply to their work the principles of teaching. As soon as they will all think alike on all essential questions pertaining to their work, there will be harmony and unity in the entire system of schools. There can be no clashing or friction between the various lines of work, because all are pervaded by the "unity of the spirit" and are therefore held together "in the bonds of peace."

DISCUSSION.

MR. BLAIR: I regret exceedingly that my friend, Superintendent Moses, of the Raleigh school, is not here; and I also regret that I am not prepared to go into the discussion of the question. But after such a full paper as we have had upon this subject, it seems to me it needs but little discussion. I don't know what is left for me to say. There are two points I wish to emphasize; one of those was the fact that the superintendent can not do the work in a school room; and the other is, that in working with the teacher, the teachers' meeting must be the centre. The power must go forth from that teachers' meeting. We find that a teacher in any subject is a better teacher if she is working along some particular line. And so the superintendent must keep in advance of the teacher all along the lines of his thought. We have heard of the great things the manual training schools are going to do for us; then the superintendents ought to take a course in the manual training school.

DR. HARRIS: I have nothing to say of the paper (Balliet's) except that it was a most excellent paper. One point I was most pleased withand wish to emphasize it-and that is, that the superintendent should get his teachers together and have a kind of normal institute meeting once a week to discuss theoretic and practical questions; but I would say that the meeting of the whole body of teachers of a large city is impossible; but perhaps in a city of from forty to sixty thousand it is possible to get all the teachers together and hold profitable discussions. The first duty of the superintendent is to make the school strong in the community; therefore he should look out for the newspapers, because they have their opinions about things, and if they set the current against his good things it is not easy to counteract it. The next great point is, are his schools popular with the people? He ought to so present the work of the schools to the people that it will carry them in favor of it, that they may feel large interest in it and be proud of it. He should see his school board once a week, if he can, and see the members that have opinions of their own and are worth convincing. He should in this way carry the working majority always. And this is his work with the school board. Now let us take the school board in American politics. There will be always some persons elevated to the school board to use it as a stepping stone for the legislature or city council. Again, there will be some persons elected simply because they are always harping on the one idea. In the next place, the superintendent must influence his teachers. But that was very fully dwelt upon in the paper. The relation of the superintendent to the pupils is not an immediate one; his relation is, first, to public opinion; secondly, to the people whom he reaches through publications, his school report, and in various ways reaching the families of the citizens represented in his schools; third, with the school board; and fourth, with the teachers. If

the superintendent is strong with them, he can carry his schools on his back.

DR. WINSHIP: While we are all agreed with the spirit and largely with the details of this paper, there is one phase of it I think very unjust to the reader of the paper. We know there is no more charitable man in the world than he; yet the impression that paper has made upon me is, that whoever did not meet this ideal was not a success in teaching or as superintendent. It has been my privilege to see as many superintendents in their work during the last year as any one here, and I can not call up to-day a single superintendent, except Dr. Balliet, who preaches the idea he sets before us this afternoon. I do not believe there is one in this country that preaches that idea. I think this one thing ought to be stated at the close of the discussion here, that there is no one way and no one standard which is superior to every other way and every other standard. Success may come with different personalities, with different methods. There are superintendents in this country who are as successful as any other superintendents, who never have taught school to amount to anything in their life. I believe in the spirit and ideal of much of this paper; but I know some of the best superintendents in this country whose success is such as to command admiration of their work, who would not, if they could, teach psychology to their teachers. I have more than once gone to hear Dr. Balliet when he teaches his teachers, for it is better than any normal school training that I ever received in my life. But that does not say that others are not as successful in their way as he is in his. We want to go out feeling that this is not the only ideal of success for a superintendent.

MR. GREENWOOD: Mr. President, just one point presented by the essayist, and that is in regard to the teachers' meeting. It occurs to me, sir, that in a city with a population of not more than sixty thousand or even a hundred thousand, teachers' meetings can be held and the superintendents reach the teachers in those meetings successfully and effectively. To get the best results with the teaching force, meetings must be held, the teachers must be reached, inspiration must be generated, and I know of no way in which these influences can be brought to bear so successfully as in the teachers' meeting. I know the superintendent can work in these meetings and here study the higher form of these great educational questions; but I am fully aware of the fact that when he goes down to those just below and even down to the teachers who are just engaged in the very lowest work, there the work of the superintendent should be felt and should direct and control the work. The question may come up, how will you do this? Organize your teachers into sections; have your meetings each month; the teachers will come; the very ablest of the thinking corps called in, and those that come in presenting the exercises upon the theory upon the one hand and the practice on the other; and investigating those questions in this way, all can be reached, and the work of the teachers can be brought to

gether, and with the influence of the superintendent bearing upon these teachers, you get the very best work. I hold, then, that the most effi cient work the superintendent can do, is that in which this influence goes down and permeates the whole force. I agree perfectly with Dr. Balliet, that the superintendent ought also be a teacher, not only a teacher of teachers, but, if he can, take hold from the very lowest grade to the highest. The doctor knows there is something wrong, but does not know what to administer. How can we get over this unless the person in charge can show this lady or gentleman how the work is to be done. There are many points in the work, but the strongest is with the sup erintendent.

PROFESSOR PARR: I want to say a word in emphasis of what Mr. Greenwood has said, and call attention to what the gentleman called an error of distribution, by arguing that the superintendent may not be a teacher, and that some superintendents who have never been teachers have been successful, whereas others who have been teachers have been unsuccessful. In that he takes up one isolated case and puts it over against another; but the gentleman in the paper was discussing a type and not individual cases; but what he says would not apply, because it does not apply to the type; it certainly must hold that, other things being equal, he who has the ability and experience, will make a better supervisor than he who has not been a teacher, but possesses the other elements.

THE CHAIR: This is a very important subject. It represents an ideal superintendent, and I hope the others will not be discouraged if they feel that they do not meet the requirements; because if you ever find a superintendent like the one described, running round loose, examine him closely, and you will find wings; you will find him sitting alone; modern degeneracy has not reached him. But the ideal is a good one to have before us. The paper is presented in good shape, but I think the ideal presented there unquestionable.

MR. HANCOCK: I have heard a vast deal of teaching of psychology, and I realize the importance of having had experience. All teaching must have a root in philosophic principles. But I want to ask Dr. Balliet whether he has done much in the way of directing teachers' reading of the best literature and thus improving their general culture. I think he must have done so, else he would not be the ideal superintendent Dr. Winship has declared him to be. Has he given much attention to the culture side of the teacher's work, or the culture side of what is supposed to be a part of the superintendent's work? I suppose we shall come to the question, What is the culture value of the teacher? Now, if I could have the choice, if one or the other should have to be omitted, I should choose the man or woman of culture, and use them in the instruction of the little children. I have not heard anything of that phase of the subject in this meeting.

882-No. 2--13