the living. I believe it was Charles Francis Adams who suggested about ten years ago that the best way to reform schools and teaching was to train expert superintendents. If I may judge by my own failures and by the failures of my brethren-if they will forgive me the repentance that confesses their sins-I am forced to believe that his suggestion was

correct.

2. The most effective means of accomplishing this work-of teaching pedagogics—is the teachers' meeting. It cannot be done by giving individual help in the school. The instruction at these meetings ought to cover, at least, educational psychology, the general principles of education, the discussion of the best methods of teaching the various branches of the school curriculum, and a sketch of the history of education. The work at these meetings should not differ materially from that of the department of pedagogics in a college in which such department is well conducted. A superintendent has in fact better facilities for teaching pedagogics effectively than a teacher of pedagogics in a normal school or college. He has mature students, students of experience to whom he can appeal, and the course of study is limited only by his own ability on the one hand and by his tenure of office on the other.

At present expert supervision, in most cities, is secured through special supervisors-supervisors of drawing, of music, of physical culture, of science, of primary schools, of kindergartens, of sewing, and of manual training. If I may judge the feelings of others by my own, I may say that it would be a comfort to the superintendent if the only necessity for these special expert assistants were the fact that he has not sufficient time to do the work himself.

3. The superintendent ought to be the educational adviser of the board, and his counsel ought to command the same respect on their part as that of the city solicitor on a question of law, or that of the city physician on a question of sanitation or the public health. He ought to be held strictly responsible for his advice, just as they are, and for the action of the board based on it. He, and not the school board, ought to be held responsible by the public for the course of study and for the methods of teaching in the schools. If his advice and judgment are found to be untrustworthy, the school board, instead of retaining him and making him simply their clerk

and agent, and assuming the responsibilities themselves which properly belong to him as an expert, ought to dismiss him. and secure a person whose judgment they can trust.

4. The superintendent ought also to make it his duty to fashion and shape the educational thought of the community. This he can do through public addresses, through private conferences with thoughtful citizens, and through the daily papers. He ought to make the schools known and popular in the community. In this way he can create the public sentiment which he needs to sustain him at every step he takes in the direction of improving the schools. It is needless to add that in order to do this successfully, he must be a scholar, and must in some measure possess the ability of stating clearly and convincingly his own convictions to others.

5. It is quite true that in many communities the superintendent of schools must take an active interest in the matter of schoolhouse architecture, in the management of the financial affairs of the schools, and in various other matters important to the schools; but he is never justified in allowing his time. and strength to be absorbed in these directions to the extent of rendering it impossible for him either to carefully study educational questions or to teach his teachers pedagogics. Nothing can justify ignorance of the law in a lawyer or ignorance of medicine in the physician.

6. What I have thus far said applies especially to our smaller cities and towns. But even in our large cities the only possible substitute for the mechanical courses of study and the other machinery that so embarrassingly hamper good teaching, is competent supervision that will train teachers to use their brains in studying children instead of courses of study to find out what to teach and how to teach it.

7. What has been said applies to all superintendents of teachers' work. In its application to the work of our State superintendents, there is need of considerable modification. The work of these officers is mainly administrative, and they have to deal with educational questions in a general way, especially in their social and economic bearing. They have to study school systems and legislation. A mere educational expert would be apt to take a microscopic instead of a telescopic view of things, and might be a total failure. Executive ability, a knowledge of men and of the ways of reach

ing them, are of more importance than the expert knowledge of pedagogics for which I have been pleading. The majority of our most successful State superintendents have been men of limited acquaintance with the science of education, but men who could sense the needs of public schools and had the executive ability and tact to secure the legislation that supplies these needs. THOMAS M. BALLIET.

SUPERINTENDent of SchoOLS,

SPRINGFIELD, Mass.

VI.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE.

CONTEMPORARY

EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT IN GREAT

BRITAIN.

The most important of recent events in the educational history of England is the enactment, in the last session of Parliament, of a measure which renders primary education almost entirely gratuitious. The Free Schools Act, as it is more generally called, received the royal assent on the 5th of August last, after much discussion in both houses of the legislature.

The cause and the effect of this measure cannot easily be estimated by American readers without taking into account one or two previous facts and considerations. The elementary schools of England and Wales, of which, according to the last report, there were 19,498, containing 29,468 separate departments, with a total number of 4,825,560 scholars, have hitherto derived their income from three sources: the imperial grant, the fees paid by parents, and the local contributions. These local contributions are provided in voluntary and denominational schools, by the subscribers; and in Board-Schools by local rates. All the schools alike are visited by the government inspectors, annually examined, and aided by the grant dispensed from the Treasury; the amount of which is determined partly by the number of the scholars and partly by the efficiency of the school as tested by examination. Now, of these three sources of revenue, the government grant is the largest, and has slowly increased of late years, until it has nearly reached one-half of the total income; the children's fees have amounted to nearly one-third of that income, and the local subscription and rates, though larger in the great towns, have in all not much exceeded one-sixth.

The varied and composite character of the school fund is significant of the peculiar growth and history of the English primary-school system. It is not a symmetrical plan of public instruction, predetermined by the foresight of statesmen and theorists, but the result of a series of compromises and experiUntil 1846, when the central government began to grant public money in support of education, all the primary

schools in England were the product of private benevolence, chiefly in connection with the various Christian churches; and the school revenue was wholly derived from the voluntary subscriptions and from the fees paid by parents. And when the Parliamentary grant was first made it was essentially a grant in aid of local effort; and was administered wholly through the agency of the various voluntary societies-the principal being the National Society for educating the poor in the principles of the Established Church; and the British and Foreign School Society, which, though teaching no catechisms or formularies, was distinctly Christian in its character and attached much importance to Scriptural education. The former Society enlisted the sympathy of the majority of English Churchmen, and the latter was obviously more acceptable to the great body of Nonconformists, and yet was supported by great numbers of Liberal Churchmen. Besides these two great societies, the Wesleyan and the Roman Catholic bodies established schools in connection with their several congregations, and all of them were alike entitled to claim a share of the public grant, on submitting to inspection, and giving evidence of their efficiency. When in 1870 the Education Act accepted, in behalf of the nation, the obligation to make a complete provision for elementary instruction, it left undisturbed the whole field already occupied by the voluntary bodies, and simply required that wherever the existing provision was insufficient, schools were to be created at the cost of the ratepayers; and these, which are known as Board Schools, were also to receive fees from parents and aid from the Parliamentary grant on the same conditions as others.

Thus the three forms of payment may be said to represent the three separate forms of influence under which the school system has been developed. The fact that the parents paid fees gave them a right to choose the schools they preferred, and also in an indirect way to exercise control over the management. The local contributions, whether voluntary or involuntary, were provided by persons of authority and influence on the spot, who formed the local committee of management, and appointed and dismissed the teachers, and superintended the general working of the machine. And the imperial grant, administered through the agency of inspectors appointed by the Crown, served to keep every primary school in England acquainted with the standard of efficiency set up