Who shall Rate the Superintendent? CHARLES A. WAGNER, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, T HE rating or ranking of teachers for efficiency, as it is called, or the assignment of grade or values for results of their teaching, has brought out various and diverse opinions. Of all the questions raised, the caption of this article has been least discussed. This has given many teachers and all the opponents of the rating schemes or systems the impression that there is no satisfactory reply to the question. Usually the question is thought and not asked, although there can be no good reason why teachers should not ask such a question. Certainly there are some very good reasons why it should be answered, if any large number of teachers suppose that no good answer can be given, and if they suppose that to ask the question is at once to bring rating plans into ridicule. Superintendents are as much "rated" and more "berated" than teachers. Although teacher rating by superintendents and supervisors is a professional procedure based on the rater's long experience, special preparation, and sincere and honest desire to do right and to deal fairly, the "rating" of the superintendent is done by everybody, often with malice, mostly in ignorance, and without any special knowledge or experience in the matters judged. Not all superintendents and supervisors are perfect, none are infallible. Some may be and are influenced by considerations which are not professional, but entirely personal. This must be admitted, but the admission will not deprive rating schemes and processes of all claim to support for their continuance. Pupils rate the superintendent. They think his examinations are too difficult, his rules are too strict, his requirements are too exacting, when the rating is low. He may be an amiable person, all of whose deeds are entirely pleasing to the children. Between these extremes are all shades of modified opinion, more or less colored by repetitions of opinions gathered from elders at home or on the street, or sometimes even nearer the seat of authority. Every superintendent knows that for him there is no immunity from some kind of opinion held by the pupils of the system. Parents rate the superintendent. They praise or blame, sometimes one and sometimes the other, according to current opinion, settled habit, or temporary community excitement. In about ninety-nine per cent of these cases these opinions are based on half-knowledge or less than half-knowledge. The equal rights theory of democracy is perverted into a supposition of equal knowledge and equal competency, and judgments are rendered on the supervisor and supervision with entire disregard for limited knowledge and lack of skill to judge that kind of values. Every superintendent knows he is being thus rated and accepts the fact as part of his official responsibility. Does not every day's experience on the streets of his city confront him with persons who have a grievance against the schools? Does he not many times have to explain and justify the acts of teachers who protest against his rating of their work by asking the question, "But who shall rate the superintendent?" Does he not know that he is being rated just as certainly as are the teachers, and does he not also know that usually there is no "long preparation, long experience, sincere desire to do right and to deal fairly." Just as with teachers, rate of pay and continuance in office depend on such rating for the superintendent. The newspapers rate the superintendent also. Generally this is intelligent and sympathetic rating. Often it too is based on incomplete acquaintance with the facts. This rating is public, spread before all the people, all the children, over an entire county. The teacher never is subjected to a rating such as newspaper discussion of the work of the superintendent constitutes. This too is part of the inevitable responsibility of the office, and every superintendent knows he must expect it. The recollection of this fact should help teachers to realize that their own rating and grading, which never becomes public, is as nothing compared with the superintendent's rating. The teachers rate the superintendent. Not always, of course, from the broad and professional basis that should be expected. Sometimes they rate him from a purely personal point of view, sometimes from the particular school or grade point of view. A true view and judgment of the superintendent by the teacher should take into consideration the entire aim and policy, the complete program of the entire system. Getting this larger point of view and the endeavor to compass and to assimilate it for the purposes of co-operation and participation, this will forestall littleness and narrowness. A teacher who does this will have individual opinions about matters, but her sympathies are almost certain to be friendly. While not all superintendents judge their teachers on clearly professional considerations, it is certain that more superintendents are right in this matter than are teachers; or to say the thing differently, the percentage of superintendents who form professional estimates of their teachers is larger than the percentage of teachers who form a professional estimate of the superintendent. Training, experience, outlook, all combine to make this true. The fact that it is true, however, has an important bearing in this discussion; the teachers' rating of superintendents is not entitled to the same consideration that could and would be accorded it if the judgment were entirely broad, impersonal and detached. The two judgments are not reciprocal, therefore cannot cancel each other. The Board of Directors rate the superintendent; usually this rating is quite unreserved, frank, and entirely undisguised by an diplomatic effort. Position, pay, peace of mind, esteem of the community, and other values depend upon it. It is a part of the responsibility and is so accepted by the superintendent. Any and every phase of the many varieties of duties imposed by the office is subject to rating by the Board. Nothing in a teacherrating scheme can in any way compare with the Board's rating of the superintendent. This fact is urged, so that teachers may see and comprehend how much pleasanter is their lot when rated by the superintendent and supervisor than is the superintendent's when rated by the Board. "Who shall rate the superintendent?" is admittedly a fair question. He is rated by pupils, by parents, by the community, by the newspapers, by the teachers, by the Board of Directors, and by State officials. The superintendent, too, has not one but many persons who rate his work. Knowledge of his work in many cases is very incomplete and one-sided, disposition is biased, judgment is given about matters of which the judge has no knowledge of values. Teachers rated by superintendents, by principal and by supervisor, surely cannot think they have made rating of teachers ridiculous by asking satirically, "But who shall rate the superintendent?" They cannot avoid the conclusion that theirs is the lighter burden. So it should be, of course. The Svastika Soaring o'er crowded street and tangled car-line Eons ago, some hands in rudest carving Yes, fancy carved it, an eternal symbol Centuries swung around its form uplifted- Yes, over nations struggling with its message, Upward and outward-downward-life still ranges, What have we learned? Can we, in bowed remembrance, HELEN CARY CHADWICK. The Training of the Subconscious Mind in I the Schoolroom PEARL TYER, BOISE, IDAHO. N the energy and wakefulness of educators in casting about for solutions to the problems of the schoolroom, the consensus of judgment is fast recognizing the necessity of subconscious training. It is understood that to change conditions in the child mind, which lie deep in the inherent nature, more than surface mentality must receive attention. The great strides of psychology in the near past and the swiftly following formulation of rules of the mind comes in answer to the search of the educators. To go deep into the mind with a conscious and wise touch brings marvelous and happy results. As the subconscious is that part of the mind which controls the function of the body and the tendency of the thinking, so to heal the body or the thoughts this stratum must be reached. It is not difficult to establish acquaintance with the subconscious portion of existence in childhood. As the great poet has said: "Heaven lies near us in our infancy. Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy: But he beholds the light and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy." As the pupil is given the injunction to study hard and master his lesson, let him be taught how to study, let him know whence come the springs of knowledge, feel their presence, and be guided in the control of those valuable fountains of thought. And it is the child's right that he shall receive a knowledge of his entire mind, just as it is the instructor's necessity to bring that whole mind into expression to obtain satisfactory results. |