USA > Ohio > Annual report of the State Commissioner of Common Schools, to the Governor of the State of Ohio, for the year 1880 > Part 3
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STATE COMMISSIONER OF COMMON SCHOOLS.
position they hold. This is not a reckless or unkind remark. At most, it does not savor of unkindness to the rising generation. Yet each of these persons is the owner of a certificate from some Board of Examiners, which thus furnishes the temptation for incompetent or partial directors to impose upon an unfortunate community. The correspondence of this office furnishes a broad base for this assertion.
The proper table will show how many applicants get from the examiners six-months' certificates ; who go through, where to pass there is such scanty room the bar descending cuts the year in the middle ; then enjoy, apparently, a sweet content so far as literature, science, mathematics and language are concerned, until the days of that brief license are about told. There is then a spasm of rattling amid the dry bones of definitions, problems, and such things. Too often the effort at self-improvement is limited to a search for the answers to probable questions by examiners contained in published lists. Many desire copies of the Commissioner's Report simply for the specimen questions asked by county examiners. From what I have noticed concerning the demand for scholastic mince-meat, I fear that if some one should prepare a book containing answers and solutions to the questions and problems furnished as samples during the last half-dozen years, it would have a large sale. Doubtless these lists have good cause for their appearance in the Report ; but if a teacher truly intend to study, he can find some- thing better worth his time and attention.
If he wish to teach arithmetic well, he should learn at least the elements of algebra, and plane and spherical geometry. Geography should be re-inforced by geology and history; English grammar by the grammar of some other tongue, and the "daily bath in the fountains of literary art", which is needed to give a wider margin to the teacher's life, and resist the actual narrowing influence of his occupation.
While he does these things he must not fail, as a part of his self- culture, to study the science of teaching and catch something of their spirit from an earnest reading of the lives of the world's great teachers. When we have, in all our schools, teachers who will subject themselves to such a regimen, light will break in upon many a dark problem, and writers in the Reviews will not make the periodic discovery that our common school system is a failure.
PROMINENT FEATURES OF A SCHOOL SYSTEM.
A complete school system would have the following among its features :
A State Superintendent, or Commissioner, holding his office for
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such a term as would render his experience of most value to the service. Ohio's Commissioners of Schools have been officially short-lived. Among my predecessors have been some of the ablest educators of the country, but their stay in the office was too short for the making of a great and lasting impress upon the educational system of the State.
As a remedy it is often urged in professional circles, that this officer should be chosen by a State Board of Education instead of at the popular election, that this would " take it out of politics," as the phrase goes. That depends, one would naturally suppose, upon how the Board itself is constituted.
Some would have the office filled by an appointee of the Governor. No greater permanency would be given it by this change, if the history of state politics in Ohio means anything. As it may be of interest to many, here is the way this thing under consideration is done throughout the country. It is quoted from the last Report of the National Commissioner of Education :
Superintendents of education, of instruction, of common schools, or of free schools (sometimes styled Commissioners) are elected by the people in 21 States and 2 Territories, viz. :
Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Utah. They are chosen by the State Board of Education in 5 States, viz .: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Texas. They are appointed by the Governor, generally with consent of council in 8 States and 3 Terri- tories : Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Dakota, Montana, and Washington. They are selected by joint ballot of the Legislature in 3 States: New York, Vermont and Virginia. They hold office by virtue of some other office in one State and 2 Territories ; the principal of the State normal school for whites being ex-officio superintendent in Maryland, the territorial controller in Idaho, and the territorial librarian in Wyoming.
A state system of public instruction should embrace adequate means for the proper training of teachers. It would be true wisdom, as well as genuine economy, for the State of Ohio to give recognition to the private normal schools now in operation, and to encourage the founding of others at suitable locations, and by thus aiding to bring them up to a prescribed standard, gain the right to a voice in their control and place them under the supervisory care and visitation of
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STATE COMMISSIONER OF COMMON SCHOOLS.
a State Board of Managers, the diplomas whereof to be valid as State certificates.
By giving State aid to this cause she would be acting in company with her sister Commonwealths: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Cali- fornia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Utah.
The greatest extravagance is the employment of poor teachers, even if they worked without wages. . No state or community can afford it. This assertion, or its equivalent, has grown trite and lost much of its meaning except in the minds of those, who, possessing a lively sense of the value of a good education, and the importance of correct training and example during the child's early years, make the case their own and reflect : What kind of a teacher should our children have?
Another essential feature of a complete school system is, that every school is under the inspection of a skilled expert, or Superin- tendent. This is more imperatively demanded when so many persons enter the schools as teachers, who have had no previous training, and who are in possession of but very limited scholarship. Then, failure to supervise for the purpose of encouragement, caution, advice, is to risk a waste of time and money, and the loss of all the grand results which are the children's rightful inheritance.
Experience and observation only strengthen my conviction that our plan of organizing and managing rural schools is radically defective.
In season and out of it, possibly, it has been pressed upon the attention of the tax-payers of Ohio, that, leaving out of the question all stronger considerations, when, in each county, such vast sums of money are every year expended passing into the hands of a large number of workmen, it would be economy and good business manage- ment to have some responsible manager to see that the money is expended to the best advantage.
The tax-payers aforesaid pay little heed to the opinions of school- men. They know, or imagine they know, that these gentlemen are influenced by selfish motives, are wishing to feather their own nests, and other pleasant metaphors in the same vein.
As a brief chapter of current history upon this topic, County Super- intendents, or Commissioners, are elected or appointed in nearly all the States of the Union. Township superintendents are elected by the people in Vermont and Michigan, while the new school law of Alabama provides for both township and county superintendents.
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The amount of money that could be saved by a better system of management would maintain the needed number of normal schools and pay reasonable salaries to a full corps of competent county superin- tendents. This would require a saving of only a small fraction of one per centum of the total school expenditures. At the same time com- petent teachers could be better paid, and the efficiency of the schools be largely increased. It is the old maxim over, that workmen who know how to do a given task will work to better advantage; and, while earn- ing better wages, will save time and money for their employer.
The fatal objection seems to be that, for the first few years, the saving would not be apparent, while there would be a necessary outlay. So there is when a mower or reaper is bought to supplant that poetic implement, the cradle.
Two kinds of school districts-city and township-are enough, and in the latter, there should be no subdivision of authority. That is, the township, like the city, should be under the jurisdiction in all its school affairs of a township Board of Education, elected by the town- ship at large. These gentlemen should be selected with special regard to the duties of employing teachers, and, in the control of their schools, of representing, on the one hand, the people of the district, and on the other the sovereignty of the State. They should be men of some edu- cation, eminently trustworthy, and of good business habits.
The persons composing this Board, five or six in number, should be paid a reasonable compensation for their service. Township trustees are paid. Why not pay officers to whom more important functions are entrusted ?
It would be an improvement on the present plan to commit the schools to the township trustees ; and if these officers could, by a change of our Constitution, be chosen for three or five years, we should have a far more rational mode of rural-school management than the one we now enjoy.
· The plan here advocated would not remove the schools from the hands of the people, nor alter the present sub-district lines, only as time and careful investigation would show good reason for changes.
The ease with which these changes are now made, and the fact that the motion is often voted on first and discussed afterwards, is harmful. Instances occur where hasty action raises a cry of opposition, which is followed by equally hasty undoing; but a neighborhood contest was excited which did not quiet by a vote of the Board.
The township sub-districts have too much law and too little justice ;
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and a good illustration is brought forward when we notice that there is a method now by which a sub-district can be created, against the will of the Board, and must then be left in the hands, and largely at the discretion, of the body which had formally decided that it would be bad policy to form it, and which now, perhaps, grudges it an existence. There may be a planet whose inhabitants are of such a mold that when one has publicly stated a conclusion to which he has come, but is over- ruled in the action to be taken, he labors with soul. mind, and strength to prove that he was wrong and the others right, but its sweet influence does not seem yet to have reached the globe with which we are more immediately concerned.
But illustrations are not limited in number to those already given.
The law prescribes, and the Board of Education resolves, that all the schools of the township shall continue the same length of time. The directors of the respective sub-districts, acting independently, determine when their schools shall open and close.
The Board fixes the amounts of tuition-fund for the year; the > directors employ the teachers and fix their monthly wages; and though the directors of a given sub-district must not "exceed the amount of money to which the sub-district is entitled for the purpose of tuition for such year", suppose they do exceed it-and they often do-what then ? The law authorizes them to give the teacher a certificate stating the amount due him, which certificate he presents to the township clerk. This officer knows that it calls for a larger sum than that to which they "are entitled for the purpose of tuition", but when he reads a little farther down in section 4018, where it says, the clerk upon presentation of such certificate, etc., "shall draw orders on the township treasurer for the amounts certified to be due * * and the treasurer shall pay the same", he naturally wonders in what manner he may fulfill the whole law. Usually, like a military man, he obeys the last command received, and the treasurer finds himself unable to pay the order "for lack of funds"; or if he pays it, the sub-district is allowed to draw upon its next year's fund-to get in debt to the district-which is a thing not intended by the law in any case.
Again, the Board adopts a course of study and selects the text-books to be used in all the schools of the township. Here there need be no interference, but there is plenty of it. The directors of some sub-district refuse to make the required change, or they approve of a change made by the teacher without authority from the right source. How shall a uniformity of text-books throughout the township, the end directly aimed at by the law, be secured ? The Board can not discharge the
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ANNUAL REPORT.
teacher, for that can be done only by the directors. Some legal gentle- man steps forward and suggests a mandamus, to bring these directors to a sense of their official duty. But before the law's delay provides a quieting of the trouble, there has been a change, probably, in the membership of the Board, or a change in its opinions, the unlawful book has gained the right to stay, and the seat of war is transferred to some other part of the township.
If a teacher who is engaged for six months be illegally discharged at the end of one, he may bring suit against the directors and get his wages for the next five months, and so draw out all the tuition-fund of the sub-district for the year. The Board of Education is not bound to duplicate for that sub-district, and, at any rate, it will likely be months before it holds a meeting. Meanwhile, how is the school in that sub- district to be maintained ? A village or city Board could find a path around the obstruction and would be pretty sure to do so, so as not to magnify their official mistake in the eyes of the public. The directors are helpless, and the children are liable to go untaught.
The Board of Education assigns pupils to the schools, and often ‘ receives them from other districts. These must, of course, be placed in some sub-district school or schools whose teacher was employed by the directors without any knowledge of this extra work-that is, a contract is altered by a paramount authority and neither party has a remedy. A case occurred recently where eighteen pupils were assigned to a school after the session opened and the conditions under which the teacher labored were radically changed. This is not fair business dealing.
In the exercise of a legal right the Board resolves that Physiology or Algebra, or Botany, or History shall be taught in the schools. It would be notable to find a township where, after such action has been taken by the Board, half of the teachers employed by the directors are licensed to teach the additional branch.
The teacher wonders which to obey: The statute of the State or the statute of the Board of Education. This dilemma is avoidable but it is not avoided. Many persons suffer impalement on one or the other horn.
These are some of the reasons-the minor ones, the main ones having been given in previous reports-why I am for the third time saying to the General Assembly, and to that body which makes General Assemblies, that our system for managing the schools of the country districts calls for reform. It is needlessly complex and vexatious. It is contradictory. It is hard to follow by those who wish a guide. It
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is easily ignored by those who would rather be a law unto themselves. And in making this list of some of the evils which so easily beset the " wheel within a wheel " plan, I affirm that I drew no aid from my imagination and did not severely task my memory.
In a good system of public schools the responsible duty of licensing teachers should devolve upon a committee of the best school-men in the county. The county should command their service. Actual success in the school-room is a more important consideration than grace and ease in answering questions on paper. But this " weightier matter " can 'not be tested unless an inspector of the school has a part in the licensing of the teacher. Otherwise, we tithe the mint and cumin.
Life-long teachers of the common branches should have a readier way than now of escaping the drudgery of periodical examinations, and becoming in the eye of the law professional teachers for life. If in addition to the fact that one is recognized as a professional teacher, his tenure of place could be made more secure, and success be the only condition of its continuance, he would stand upon a higher plane and could justly be held responsible for yet better work. The shifting sand of annual elections with a steady minority in the Board wishing for a change, is not an eligible foundation for a lasting structure, though it may afford an easy method of dropping from the pay-roll " without prejudice " one who fails to give satisfaction.
Some approach, at least, to an equality of school privileges should be afforded. At present, Ohio furnishes examples of school districts which afford advantages equal to the best in the land, and, I fear, other examples much resembling the poorest. Of course, no friend of popular education desires to have the former leveled down, but the citizen whose views are broader than his own neighborhood does hope to see in the latter a gradual leveling up. And it must be gradual, for the con- ditions of progress are different in the extreme, between a sparsely peopled township with poor roads and few bridges, bare school-houses wide apart, a small tax list, not a shelf of good books within the children's reach, periodical literature ! represented by the organ of one of the political parties, the teacher, one who is thought fit to teach our school because the pupils are not far advanced and are few in number, the contrast, I say, is great between this true picture and the other bright one which I need not draw. Yet that back township is the one which needs help from without. Those pupils have rights which want recognition. No wonder they are not advanced. Suppose the right teachers, able, earnest, enthusiastic, to be placed and continue in charge of those
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schools. An intellectual light would shine thence to the borders of the district.
But the bright picture above hinted at is not all bright. Within the confines of our most noted districts are boys and girls growing up in ignorance. Some are at work under circumstances not favorable to any kind of growth. Some are truant in spite of parent and teacher. Some are born Bedouins, and the streets and alleys are their desert.
A scheme for public instruction is imperfect which does not provide for the wants of those children who are without legal protectors, or whose parents, from whatever reason, fail to see that they obtain at least an elementary education. In Ohio something has been done in the way of legislation on this subject. Section 4023, Revised Statutes, relates to the obligation of parents and guardians to send their children and wards to school. It is so weakened, however, by various grounds for excuse as to be of little worth. Sections 4024, 4025 and 4028 have regard to the em ployment of children under fourteen years of age in manufactories, mills and mines, and the duty of the Board of Education in the matter. They are not so minute, so definite and fortified with penalties at every step as the English Act recently published in a report of the U. S. Secretary of State on the "Condition of Labor," but it is much better than no law, and the leaven that is in it should be set at work upon the lump.
I regret to say that, as a general thing, no effort is made to put the law on this subject in force. September 27, 1880, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics sent out circulars to the Clerks of the Boards of Educa- tion in most of the manufacturing towns, making certain inquiries, these among them :
1. Are children under the age of fourteen years employed in man- ufacturing, mechanical or mining establishments in your district? If so, state, if possible, the total number so employed.
2. Have you given during the year any certificates to children under the age of fourteen, enabling them to be legally employed as pro- vided in section 4024, Revised Statutes, page 76, school laws of Ohio?
3. Has your Board of Education ascertained the condition of the children under the age of fourteen years who are employed at daily labor, as provided in section 4025, Revised Statutes?
4. Have there been any prosecutions of parents or employers of children, as provided in sections 4027 and 4028, Revised Statutes ?
The replies to these queries prove that the law is virtually null, through, I think, the inaction of officers. Is it possible that public sen- timent is opposed to coercion in the mild form authorized by this stat- ute ? It does not oppose the payment of school taxes under compulsion
.
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by those persons who have no children to educate. Like any other statute, this one is dead unless public sentiment breathe into the mere form molded by the Legislature the breath of life. But before public sentiment can approve of this measure, the public must know of it, and the way to inform it is for public officers to do their sworn duty.
It is asked why not leave the matter of their children's education to those who supply them food, shelter and clothing. If all systems of State education were done away, doubtless the youth of many families would receive as much intellectual training as the most fortunate do now, but a much larger number would receive comparatively none. Again, it is probable that the education of one-half of the children at private schools would cost more than that of the entire number at public schools. The latter are, therefore, a positive necessity with regard to one portion of the youth, and a great economical agency with the other portion. Organized society, through its representatives, has the same right and the same reason for legislating on this subject that it has to make laws to punish crime or to regulate commerce. It aims to secure its own per- petuation by preparing the youth to take their place as partners in the firm, thus keeping up and, if possible, constantly increasing the degree of prosperity already attained, and knowing the relations and fairly performing the duties of the individual man to the aggregate-the State. And this preparation, or education, is needed in the ratio that the gov- erning class bears to the whole people, and where all are rulers educa- tion should be universal, the extent to which it should be carried depending on the formally expressed will of the society itself.
STATE CHARITIES.
Each State should recognize the duty resting upon it to furnish educational advantages to the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the idiot ; and our great system of State Charities, as they are improperly called, is really a part of our public school system.
DRAWING.
As a contribution to the discussion of what branches should consti- tute the course of study in our common schools, Prof. W. S. Goodnough, Superintendent of Drawing in the Columbus Public Schools, prepared, at my request, a paper entitled "Drawing as a Regular School Study." I am satisfied that it is a valuable addition to this report, and my thanks are hereby tendered to the writer:
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DRAWING AS A REGULAR SCHOOL STUDY.
The time has come when drawing should be more fully recognized as a regular and not a special study in the schools of Ohio, and should be pursued more extensively and more systematically. The National Association of School Superintendents at their last meeting in Wash- ington, unanimously resolved that Industrial Drawing should form one of the fundamental branches of study in all grades. There is not a prominent educator who does not recognize its importance in influ- encing the character of our industries, to say nothing of its educational value. Ten years ago Massachusetts, finding that she was destined to flourish only as a manufacturing State, took measures to increase the value of her industries. She enacted a law making Industrial Drawing one of the regular studies in all grades, and requiring an evening art school in every city for mechanics and artisans over fifteen years of age. She secured a State Director of Art Education from Europe, thoroughly conversant with the subject, equipped drawing-rooms in her five State Normal Schools with suitable copies, models, casts, and other appliances, established a State Normal Art School with a most thorough four years' course to prepare Art Teachers for her Normal Schools, Evening Art Schools, and to superintend the subject in the public schools of the various cities.
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