Foundation Book For every teacher LARGEST HOTEL IN THE STATE (New York City excepted) SYRACUSE, NEW ROOMS $2.00 AND UP Central New York's most beautiful Candy Shop connected with the Hotel. Entrance on Warren Street or through Hotel Lobby Headquarters for the Associated Academic Principals, December 27, 28, and 29 Issued the tenth day of every month except July and August Owned and Published by THE NEW YORK EDUCATION CO., 50 State St., Albany, N. Y. PRESIDENT A. R. BRUBACHER, PH. D., NEW YORK STATE COLLEGE FOR TEACHERS PRESIDENT HENRY SUZZALO, PÉ. D., UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON CHARLES ALLEN PROSSER, PH. D., DIRECTOR, DUNWOODY INSTITUTE, MINNEAPOLIS PROFESSOR EDWARD F. BUCHNER, PH. D., JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY WILLIAM PAXTON BURRIS, DEAN COLLEGE FOR TEACHERS, UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI PRESIDENT LOUIS W. RAPEER, PH. D., RESEARCH UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C. ALBERT LEONARD, PH. D., SUPT. OF SCHOOLS, NEW ROCHELLE, N. Y. H. B. WILSON, SUPT. OF SCHOOLS, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA E. C. BROOME, PH. D., SUPT. OF SCHOOLS, EAST ORANGE, N. J. JAMES WINGATE, ASS'T IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION, N. Y. STATE DEP'T OF EDUCATION DR. A. C. HILL, NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PROFESSOR WILLIAM S. MORGAN, PH. D., BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA CLINTON P. McCORD, M. D., HEALTH DIRECTOR, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, ALBANY, N. Y. 156 Schools of To-day in the Old World and the New 161 Plymouth and the Pilgrim Fathers, After 300 Years 163 Successful Educators: Lotus D. Coffman Stephen P. Duggan Horatio M. Pollock 165 Annual Meeting of the New York State Teachers' Association 178 Regents' Questions and Answers: History of Great Britain and 184 Book Notices SUBSCRIPTION Annual Subscriptions, $1.50, postage free in the United States, Alaska, Cuba, Porto Rico, Mexico, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Philippines. For countries other than these named, the equivalent of 40 cents American money must be added to cover postage. For Canada add 20 cents. Single Copies, 20 cents each postpaid. 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Both old and new addresses must be given. Contributions of 1500 words or less will receive careful consideration. Educational news items are solicited. The English studied in the schools and colleges of the United States, as "officially approved and recommended" by the National Council of Teachers of English, is divided into two classes, viz.: "Requirements under the Restrictive Plan," and "Requirements under the Comprehensive Plan." The KINGSLEY OUTLINE STUDIES cover the books in the first class, except Macaulay's "Clive" and Arnold's "Wordsworth." We are pleased to announce that beginning with the October number of EDUCATION we shall publish a new series of Outlines covering the English Requirements included in the Comprehensive list, one Outline appearing in each number of our Magazine until the whole list is covered. English Teachers everywhere should subscribe to EDUCATION, beginning with October, to get this valuable new series of Outlines by Miss Maud E. Kingsley. Of her series on the Restrictive list we have sold hundreds of thousands. They are used everywhere. The new series will be equally helpful. The Outline in October EDUCATION will be on Emerson's Essays, which are widely fead in the schools. EDUCATION is the oldest high-class monthly educational magazine in the United States. Price, $4.00 a year; 40 cents a copy. THE PALMER COMPANY Educational 120 BOYLSTON STREET Publishers BOSTON, MASS. FROM KINDERGARTEN TO COLLEGE VOL. XXIV Salaries for EDITORIALS A FEW weeks ago the acting-provost of Yale University called attention in his annual report to the attitude of the student body toBetter ward teaching as a proSuperintendents fession. "A dozen years (( ago," he says, twenty or thirty men in a class looked forward to teaching as their life work, while now it is the exception when a Yale man adopts teaching as his profession." Like reports come from most of the larger colleges and universities. Even in the years before Dr. Eliot retired from Harvard, he was quoted as saying that Harvard men were not preparing to be superintendents of schools. It is unfortunate that the nation can not look to the leading colleges and universities for its leaders in education. In such professions as law, medicine, engineering, and in business, the conspicuous leaders have for many years received their training in the great universities. In the field of public school education the contrary is true. Because of the meager salary and hampering restrictions that go with the position of school supervision, men who have had the broadening influence of university training have turned to other life occupations. At the present, more than ever, the university-trained graduate is refusing to look to school supervision as a life profession. Within the past few years the salaries of teachers and principals have been noticeably increased, and rightly so. These increases, ranging from 50 to 100 per cent, have not yet brought these salaries up to the proper level. But within the same period the salary increases for superintendents have been far more modest. In many cities a principal of an elementary school, with scarcely a dozen teachers to be responsible for, receives more than half the salary paid to the superintendent with 300 or 400 teachers to look after. This is all wrong. It is hard to understand why there is not a stronger sentiment in favor of more liberal salaries for men who assume the exacting responsibilities that the position of school supervision carries with it. In all but a few cities of exceptional intelligence, the superintendent of schools receives a salary far too low to make the position attractive to the university graduate who is choosing his life career. All this means a loss to American education. It is a truism to say that the schools of a community are what the superintendent makes them. His spirit, his ideals, his standards of education and culture determine the quality of the schools under his care. Every child in the schools will feel the influence, either directly or indirectly, of the man who shapes the policy of the schools under his direction. There is no other position in the educational world that calls for a higher degree of ability than that of the superintendent of schools in a modern city. He must have a many-sided ability. The demands upon his energy and resourcefulness are constant and heavy. School supervision, to be what it should be, requires mental alertness, broad scholarship, and administrative ability of a high order. Without these qualities in a superintendent of schools his work becomes mediocre, perfunctory, and comparatively worthless. It is only by the adoption of a more generous recognition of the worth of school supervision that the American public schools can be kept from falling below the standard they should be expected to reach. There can be no greater calamity than would come from having the management of our public schools in the hands of men satisfied with a financial recognition far below that of other occupations much less vital to the welfare of the nation. * * * THE announcement by Assistant Commissioner Wiley of New York regarding the rural school survey is unusually significant for education in New York New York's Rural School Survey State and in the nation at large. The Committee of Twenty-one is the first representative body to attack the problem of rural education. Twelve of the twentyone represent various farm organizations, a guarantee that the rural point of view will have full consideration. Reuben has long been furnished with the educational menu prepared for Reginald, but it is clear that a change is desirable. The desire for this change will be voiced with much emphasis by the rural members of the committee. The drift from the country to the city; the desertion of farms; the shortage of agricultural operatives; the eagerness of farmer's children and farmers themselves for the social distractions of the city and the consequent threat of an inadequate supply of foodstuffs unite to give emphasis to the demand for change of some sort. What that change should be is of course a very difficult question. The urban mind has decided that the rural school is at fault. It brings a bill of particulars. The "one room" school is inefficient; the supervision of outlying schools is inadequate; rural teachers are under age, unprepared, untrained and under-paid; community pride in rural districts is not supporting the schools; the curriculum is unsuited to the education of farmers; in fact, the rural school must be made over, modernized, vocationalized. The rural mind has not yet been spoken. It is more diffident than the city mind, less verbose, more given to meditation. Here then lies our hope, that this Committee of Twenty-one may bring the rural mind to expression and that we may at last learn the truth about country life. A few items have even now been divulged. The present tax system is iniquitous. One rural district with one hundred children may have a taxable list thirty times as large as a neighboring district with more children to educate. And we expect the poor district to provide the same facilities as the rich district. The one room school is not per se an educational fallacy. It depends on the teacher, the number of children and the equipment. The sixth grade boy will find inspiration in "overhearing" the eighth grade history lesson. The anticipation of those lessons ahead may keep him in school. The habit of making an independent effort to learn is a by-product of the "one room school, and, properly cultivated, this habit becomes a virtue. It leads to the related habit of meeting new problems with a spirit of inquiry and a will to grapple with them. The city-minded teacher in the rural school is a source of discontent. She measures everything by city standards. The county road, the barn, the farm house, the country store, the country church, the grange hall, the village theater, the country social club, arouse city antipathy. The city-minded teacher arouses in country children an unfavorable reaction, unfavorable to the farm. A discontented city-minded teacher will rapidly depopulate the country. |