but the means. The proper combination of
these two factors is all too rare, but it is in this combination that
the ideal supervisor is to be found.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: A paper read before the fifty-second annual meeting of the
New York State Association of School Commissioners and Superintendents,
November 8, 1907.]

~V~

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER

I

It is difficult not to be depressed by the irrational radicalism of
contemporary educational theory. It would seem that the workers in the
higher ranges of educational activity should, of all men, preserve a
balanced judgment and a sane outlook, and yet there is probably no other
human calling that presents the strange phenomenon of men who are called
experts throwing overboard everything that the past has sanctioned, and
embarking without chart or compass upon any new venture that happens to
catch popular fancy. The non-professional character of education is
nowhere more painfully apparent than in the expression of this tendency.
The literature of teaching that is written directly out of
experience--out of actual adjustment to the teaching situation--is
almost laughed out of court in some educational circles. But if one
wishes to win the applause of the multitude one may do it easily enough
by proclaiming some new and untried plan. At our educational gatherings
you notice above everything else a straining for spectacular and bizarre
effects. It is the novel that catches attention; and it sometimes seems
to me that those who know the least about the educational situation in
the way of direct contact often receive the largest share of attention
and have the largest influence.

It is in the attitude of the public and of a certain proportion of
school men toward elementary teaching and the elementary teacher that
this destructive criticism finds its most pronounced expression.
Throughout the length and breadth of the land, the efficiency of the
public school and the sincerity and intelligence of those who are giving
their lives to its work are being called into question. It is
discouraging to think that years of service in a calling do not qualify
one to speak authoritatively upon the problems of that calling, and
especially upon technique. And yet it is precisely upon that point of
technique that the criticisms of elementary education are most drastic.

Our educational system is sometimes branded as a failure, and yet this
same educational sys