News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1889-02-28
The County Superintendent and cur
Common Schools.


may be well to start with the inquiry about
what the best results are. The reply must be,
that what shall most benefit the largest num-
bers, are the best results. We need to keep
ever in mind that most of the larger villages
in our State are looking after the interests of
their schools much better than ever in the
past. 1t is the rural schools, where the
: largest share of the children dwell, that es-
pecially need and may have great benefit from
| the changes IN management soon to go in
force. Another fact also to be borne in mind
is this: there is a great advance III all meth
DDS of teaching in the elementary portion of
education. Primary schools have been made
a study by those competent to improve them,
for the last ten years, as never before. The
trouble in securing good education has
been found in the fundamentals. The monoto-
nous, eXpressionless reading, and dull, SLOW
inattentive and therefore inaccurate opera
lions in ''cyphering;" the inobservant and
therefore laundering photography, and the
study of grammar with no known reference
to the language it was intended to teach; to-
gether with the heavy and comparatively
useless work upon all the elements of educa-
ton have at last called the attention of a few
persons who were competent to devise a RENE
dy. And they have begun good work. There
is no patent upon much of their invention,
yet there is some cost in looking up and
adapting to each different place the vast i'm
proYements that have been discovered. And
it follows that the child of ten years or less,
who has enjoyed these advantages, carefully
applied to him in his surroundings, is better
qualified for business life or for further study
up to the broadcast liberal education, than
was the average youth of eighteen at any
point in our history, till within twenty years.
This statement is not guess or brag. 1t can
be shown to the satisfaction of any reasona-
BILE person. in several places of our own State.
A few of these places are the rural schools,
too. This result is secured, not by pushing
the pupil over more advanced studies or high
er grades in those studies, than pupils of the
same age formerly took up; but the pupil is
brought to be at home and at ease in the
work before him. On the printed page every
word, capital, mark of punctuation, sentence
and letter, are known, both as to their force
and reason for being there. The child is
| trained to handle Them not as boy would
a ball weighing fifty pounds, but as he would
handle q marble. Therefore he puts out his
hand to anything new, word or an idea he
has not met before, as though he was. a man
in his place. OF the timid and faltering ad-
vance with which we older ones stepped for
ward on any new ground, the few children
with this improved training know nothing.
The way they have come already is well trod-
en- and affords good footing. determination
so far being firm, the next stone can be laid
without fear that it will give way from below.
Now, these improvements in teaching are not
complete, they are only well begun, yet,
in any place in our State In most rural
schools they are not yet begun. So it be-
gins to appear what we are to do that they
become universal. The great burden of this
work must come on the county supervisors;
hence it is to be the special care of the men,
bers of the school board in each town, and
hence it is to be the care of the towns who
are in March to elect, each a member of the
county school board. The question to come
before the town is not whether we will elect
men to these offices and vote tax to pay
them, for that will have to be done anyway.
The question is whether we will choose such
men as will be most likely to secure it, that
our money paid them shall bring us the best re-
turns. The man for county supervisor should
be an educator; one whose eyes are open and
heart warm towards these vast improvements
in all elementary instruction, and who will
keep ahead of his time; man who, If not in
the Office, would be on the alert to see and APP
preciate these advances in training children,
and with experience enough to sift out the
methods that are merely experimental and
not tested.
county supervisor must not himself be
an empiric or one easily duped by empires |
not an inconoclast in attacking old meteOds |
for the sake of putting something new in place |
of them. But he must be a man who can put |
new life into any method and supplant all |
that is old and inefficient by what is better, |
without making the friends of the old feel /
that their notions are dealt with rudely. As |
the scrub pine tree that has stood out on the |
plain without growing afoot for generations, /
may, by human skill, become thrifty and visi- |
bly, taller from month to month, so there in
need of like skill to take hold of our rural
schools and every pupil therein. The only |
man to do it is the county supervisor backed |
up as he must be by those who elected him, |
and by the educational spirit in the towns
that are soon to put these electors in Office.
The strongest allies that he can summon to
his aid are the normal schools of the State, if
hey are what they should be and what ehas
power to enforce them to become II |
hey are not such now 1t will be in his hands to
make requirements of those who offer them
selves to teach, that shall compel them to
seek a better training than our rural schools
show their teachers to have had. He can there
fore fill up the normal schools and give them
trial such as they never have had, since not
more than one in ten of the entire teachers |
LeaelaEs-1-4Llasa-la -eaar,~bs-Reas laass-ssase
certificates of incompetents, compel the nor
NAL schools to give the training needed, If |
they are not giving it now, to those he sends
them. That the man with this power and re-
sponsibility must be one whose business and |
soul are aud are to be in educational work,
ought not to need argument. To oversee
and secure a good job in mechanical work, or
farming, or mercantile business, none but
q trained mechanic, farmer or merchant
would be elected. That man has been or is
coming to be fine preacher and pastor, a
good lawyer, doctor, musician, politician, or
a merchant who knows men, farmer who
has run large business, or an efficient at
Any JnlIl2 else, uOeS nOU QudllIy MIN lOr IHls
office. Even if he has been successful
teacher forty, twenty, or even ten years ago,
does not of necessity fit him for it.
He must be alive to fundamental education
as 1T is to-day and as it is to be for the forth
coming years, chained to no method but the
one he shall see is securing the result he aims at
And the idea he has in mind must be the true
one No man should be allowed in the pos
sible ranks of candidates for this Office, whose
claims upon office through wealth or poverty, |
craftsmanship or past political or moral service,
whose rising promise for other callings than /
education, shall come to the front. He must be
a man working not for his pay any more than
the general of an armyi is. He ought to expect |
and plan to be worth to those he serves many
times what he is paid, or would be if the pres
ent salaries were quadrupled. Personal |
likes and dislikes should be wholly laid aside
in selecting the man for this most RESPONSE
bic office Not the man who wants the office,
but the man whom the office wants, should |
govern the choice virtually. And he who is
elected to it can serve his town, county and
State more usefully, in the present juncture
OF affairs, than any other person the State |
has in office. No debt, then, of grudge or
favor, no side issues or foreign influences,
such as often effect other elections, should |
have any part in this. crisis in popular
for the masses is upon u.s. If we act
wisely in this matter now, we may easily |
come to the front among the States in the /
matter of general culture. If we are governed |
by other motives than that of the single aim
to secure the best results from our expendi-
ture for schools and school management, our
rural schools will still remain on the low level
rom which they have risen but little if any for
iorty years.. in the Newport Express