New Ideals in Rural Schools Part 6

This is all very different from the problem of supervision met by the town or city superintendent. For the town or city district is of small area, and the schools few and close together. If the number of teachers is large, the superintendent is a.s.sisted by princ.i.p.als of different schools, and by deputies. The teaching force is better prepared, and hence requires less close supervision. School standards are higher, and the cooperation of patrons more easily secured. The course of study is better organized, the schools better graded and equipped, and all other conditions more favorable to efficient supervision. It would not, therefore, be just to compare the results of supervision in the country districts with those in urban schools without making full allowance for these fundamental differences.

The county superintendent is in many States discriminated against in salary as compared with other county officers, and, as a rule, no provision is made to compensate for traveling expenses incurred in visiting schools. This, in effect, places a financial penalty on the work of supervision, as the superintendent can remain in his office with considerably less expense to himself than when he is out among the schools. In some instances, however, an allowance is made for traveling expenses in addition to the regular salary, thus encouraging the visiting of schools, or at least removing the handicap existing under the older system. An attempt has also been made in some States to relieve the county superintendent of the greater part of the clerical work of his office by employing for him at county expense a clerk for this purpose. These two provisions have proved of great help to the supervisory function of the county superintendent's work, but the task yet looms up in impossible magnitude.

The county superintendency is throughout the country almost universally a political office. In some States, as, for example, in Indiana, it is appointive by a non-partisan board. But, in general, the candidate of the prevailing party, or the one who is the best "mixer," secures the office regardless of qualifications. Sharing the fortunes of other political offices, the county superintendency frequently has applied to it the unwritten party rule of "two terms and out," thus crippling the efficiency of the office by frequent changes of administration and uncertainty of tenure.

No fixed educational or professional standard of preparation for the county superintendency exists in the different States. If some reasonably high standard were required, it would do much to lessen the mischievous effects of making it a political office. In a large proportion of cases the county superintendent is only required to hold a middle-cla.s.s certificate, and has enjoyed no better educational facilities than dozens of the teachers he is to supervise. The author has conducted teachers' inst.i.tutes in the Middle West for county superintendents who had never attended an inst.i.tute or taught a term of school. The salary and professional opportunities of the office are not sufficiently attractive to draw men from the better school positions; hence the great majority of county superintendents come from the village princ.i.p.als.h.i.+ps, the grades of town schools, or even from the rural schools.

A marked tendency of recent years has been to elect women as county superintendents. In Iowa, for example, half of the present county superintendents are women, and the proportion is increasing. In not a few instances women have made exceptional records as county superintendents, and, as a whole, are loyally devoted to their work.

They suffer one disadvantage in this office, however, which is hard to overcome: they find it impossible, without undue exposure, to travel about the county during the cold and stormy weather of winter or when the roads are soaked with the spring rains. Whether they will be able to effect the desired coordination between the rural school and the agricultural interests of the community is a question yet to be settled.

In spite of the limitations of the office of county superintendent, however, it must not be thought that this office has played an unimportant part in our educational development. It has exerted a marked influence in the upbuilding of our schools, and accomplished this under the most unfavorable and discouraging circ.u.mstances. Among its occupants have been some of the most able and efficient men and women engaged in our school system. But the time has come in our educational advancement when the rural schools should have better supervision than they are now getting or can get under the present system.

The first step in improving the supervision, as in improving so many other features of the rural schools, is the reorganization of the system through consolidation, and the consequent reduction in the number of schools to be supervised. The next step is to remove the supervising office as far as possible from "practical" politics by making it appointive by a non-partisan county board, who will be at liberty to go anywhere for a superintendent, who will be glad to pay a good salary, and who will seek to retain a superintendent in office as long as he is rendering acceptable service to the county. The third step is to raise the standard of fitness for the office so that the inc.u.mbent may be a true intellectual leader among the teachers and people of his county.

Nor can this preparation be of the scholastic type alone, but must be of such character as to adapt its possessor to the spirit and ideals of an agricultural people.

A wholly efficient system of supervision of rural teaching, then, would be possible only in a system of consolidated schools, each under the immediate direction of a princ.i.p.al, himself thoroughly educated and especially qualified to carry on the work of a school adapted to rural needs. Over these schools would be the supervision of the county superintendent, who will stand in the same relation to the princ.i.p.als as that of the city superintendent to his ward or high school princ.i.p.als.

The county superintendent will serve to unify and correlate the work of the different consolidated schools, and to relate all to the life and work of the farm.

If it is said that systems of superintendence for rural schools could be devised more effective than the county superintendency, this may be granted as a matter of theory; but as a practical working program, there is no doubt that the office of county superintendent is a permanent part of our rural school system, unless the system itself is very radically changed. All the States, except the New England group, Ohio, and Nevada, now have the office of county superintendent. It is likely, therefore, that the plan of district superintendence permissive under the laws of certain States will hardly secure wide acceptance. The county as the unit of school administration is growing in favor, and will probably ultimately come to characterize the rural school system. The most natural step lying next ahead would, therefore, seem to be to make the conditions surrounding the office of county superintendent as favorable as possible, and then give the superintendent a sufficient number of deputies to make the supervision effective. These deputies should be selected, of course, with reference to their fitness for supervising particular lines of teaching, such as primary, home economics, agriculture, etc. A beginning has already been made in the latter line by the employment in some counties, with the aid of the Federal Government, of an agricultural expert who not only instructs the farmers in their fields, but also correlates his work with the rural schools.

This principle is capable of almost indefinite extension in our school system.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: See Coffman, _The Social Composition of the Teaching Force_.]

[Footnote 6: _The Social Composition of the Teaching Population._]