CHAPTER VII.

CENTRALIZING TENDENCIES.-(Continued.)

SCHOOL SUPERVISION.

THE development in this country of systems of school supervision was inevitable. It is the normal result of public interest in the child. Division of labor in education, as in other human industry, works out its own economy. And the authoritative management of schools is justified, not alone because the training of mind is of overmastering importance, but on the plain business principle that the economical use of resources is the first step to success.

It has been said there are three stages in the development of school systems as known in the United States: 1. The conviction made general, that every child should receive a fair share of education. 2. The later but equally fundamental idea, that the property of the State should be responsible for that education. 3. That of school unity and system as secured by supervision. How, slow has been the progress along these lines is evident at a glance. The enforced patronage of the schools is a phase of the first not yet generally accepted. Under the second is the-to many-doubtful question of free, secondary, and professional education; while with an abundance of supervision, the public is not wholly convinced of the importance of wise direction.

Bishop Fraser, visiting this country (1865), was constrained to say, "The great desideratum of the common-school system, both in Massachusetts and the States generally, was adequate, thorough, impartial, independent inspection of schools"; and more than twenty years afterward, an editorial in the "New England Journal of Education" declared, “The most important question of the hour in matters of education is that of supervision."

In the earlier years, when there were few schools, and

scattered, control was chiefly local, and exercised, in New England especially, by the selectmen of the towns; later, and until late in this century, by committees and local schoolboards. Each individual school was a law unto itself; uniformity was out of the question. Schools were efficient or neglected according to the local management. To a greater or less extent this must always be true, even in cities. It is the personal and localized effort that brings success. But the extension of the powers of the committee (or board) to administer a system of schools, or the fixing of a general control in a specialist, while minor and executive interests are left to the community, has great advantages. A close organic connection of the stronger schools with the weaker may advantage the one while offering no hindrance to the other. This is the function of a well-ordered supervision. The co-operation of all gives efficiency to each.

Again, the early supervision, if it may be so called, was chiefly prudential and economical. It regarded the expenditure of moneys and the erection of houses; the levying of taxes, making repairs, fixing the school terms and salaries; and, in general, had to do with the administration, the business, as opposed to the professional side of education. It was the infancy of control, necessary but incidental to the real work of the school. It was a care for the scaffolding rather than the structure. The oversight of methods and courses of study; of teachers and their selection; of individuals, and grades and classes; of discipline and sanitation, is a matter of half a century's growth. While, in a more comprehensive view of the office, there must be added to these its function in respect to the school's broader economic relations as a social institution, a factor in civilization, its ethical bearings. This is the philosophical side of education, and belongs appropriately to the office of general inspection. It has been said by Dr. Hall, "If teaching is to become a profession, it is superintendents, supervisors, etc., who must first make it so, by becoming, as their high position demands, strictly professional themselves in their work."

In tracing the rise and development of this systematic supervision, it will be convenient, after a notice of the "district system," the extreme of decentralization, to consider it in its three forms* as: 1. State supervision which was the occasion of, and has developed into, State systems. County supervision, occasionally appearing as township control. 3. City supervision.

1. The District System.

2.

The district system of school management took its rise in the colonial period of New England, and implies the setting off of towns and townships into smaller bodies, and the erection of these into independent corporations. They were possessed of legal powers of holding property, levying taxes, etc., and filled a large place in the life of the time. The town, in New England, was the unit in all civil affairs. The recognition of its functions gave character to the only two school systems formed before the Revolution. The substitution of the district, in educational matters, and the rise of "school societies," + form an interesting piece of history.

First introduced into Connecticut (1701) and half a century later into Rhode Island, the principle was incorporated into the revised Code of Massachusetts in the year 1789. It was the provision of this act, concerning “school districts," which Mr. Mann pronounced the most disastrous feature in the whole history of educational legislation in Massachusetts. Vermont seven years before, and New Hampshire in 1805, made like changes.

In Rhode Island these minor districts were called "squadrons," and were given the entire management of their school-houses and lands, leasing out the latter, and employing schoolmasters as was most agreeable to them." Massa

* The supervision of the General Government will be found considered elsewhere. See, in index, Bureau of Education, Indians, Alaska, etc.

+ For a history of these school societies, see "Educational Documents of Connecticut, for 1853," p. 141.

chusetts soon (1800) authorized district taxation—a measure from whose mischievous implications the State did not free itself for seventy years. New York, with Ohio, Illinois, and other Western States, passed similar enactments. Throughout New England at the opening of the century the district had become the educational unit, while outside of New England (excluding the South), in a single generation, it predominated in half the States. The system represents the extreme of self-government. A study of its development in Connecticut will perhaps best reveal its character and influ

ence.

An act of the General Assembly of Connecticut (1701) provided that "the inhabitants of each town in the colony shall pay annually forty shillings in every thousand pounds in their respective lists toward the maintenance of a schoolmaster." Some of the towns were large and contained parishes or ecclesiastical bodies-churches; and eleven years later it was ordered that, "for the bringing up of their children and the maintenance of a school," they (the churches) should receive the money collected among them. The ecclesiastical body thus became a civil organization holding an official relation to the management of schools sustained by public funds.

Originally, in New England, the parish was coextensive with the town; the two were coincident indeed. The citizens in the one were members in the other. The same in constituency, the same in territorial limits, and co-ordinate in functions, there was no more occasion for friction, or difference of opinion, than among the members of either. The interests of one were the interests of both. But, with the growth of towns, religious care led to their division into distinct parishes; with diversity of religious belief came the affiliation of those of like sentiments, without regard to geographical limits. The parish had lost its fixed existence, while maintaining its functions and organization. It was under these conditions that the Connecticut law was enacted. The step was a new one, and away from the common-school

idea of New England-amounting practically to the establishment of school districts within towns. Authority was divided, and the direction of education put into the hands of a class. It pointed to a delegation of authority that is ruinous. The parish was as yet, however, only a district, deriving all its power, as did other districts, from the civil body. It could initiate nothing; it levied no taxes; it changed no law. Forty years after, it was enacted that, when a town consisted of but one ecclesiastical society, the selectmen of the town should manage the schools; but that, when it included more than one, a committee from each society should be empowered to manage lands and funds. By 1767 these parishes were allowed each a separate treasurer; and, before the close of the century, towns had been authorized, by the new State Legislature, to incorporate themselves into "school societies." In the revision and codification of laws, 1799, it was ordered that they should have full power" to grant rates for building and repairing; to appoint their own committees; to provide teachers; and to manage the prudentials of their schools." This seems the extreme of deterioration. So wide-spread was the influence, that few States in the Union escaped it.

Growing out of these applications of the principle of decentralization were two evils that were vicious in every way, and call for special mention.

The first, though an incident of the system in Connecticut, and not found in most States, was the farming out of school revenues to religious bodies.* It was subversive of civil and social unity. It was yet one more encroachment of the ecclesiastical upon the civil and personal life, because of which Puritan and Huguenot had left their European homes. So disastrous have been felt to be its implications, by the newer States and in recent years, that

*The claims, on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, for participation in the control of school revenues, suggest that the question has a present significance also.