The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-10-28

| the minds of parents, taxpayers mayors, etc. Each school man i coming to feel that until he has ex 1 plained the situation of his schooi defensive. Thus gradually-no, rap 1 idly-the audience for school reports ! is changing from ones fellow superin 1 tendents, or from the students of ed ucation in colleges, or posterity, tC
 the men and women who support the schools about which the Superinten. dent is writing.
 Perfunctory school reports will soor be a thing of the past. Even inter esting school reports are not enough They must be enlightening and con vincing. To enlighten and to con perintendents are employing the art
 which has given newspapers and mag azines and advertising specialists their enormous circulation, namely illustra- tions
 In addition to the direct appeal to
 through the school report, city su-
 perintendents are making direct bids for civic cooperation. No one has
 ever expressed better the attitude
 that should prevail among both su-
 perintendents and civic agencies than
 Superintendent Maxwell of New York
 city in his school report for 1905:
 T look forward with earnest hope fulness to the day. when every educa- tional agency, civic or endowed, will not feel it's duty done until it con- tributes freely of it's resources to the American and Americanizing instftu- ton nf free education.''
 That day, of course, can never come until places where laymen can take hold are suggested by the school men themselves. School reports must list needs not yet met, work remaining to be done. fSrfa.#.
 Hopeful as the outlook is. and sweeping as have been the improve m ents, what remains to be done re- quires constant promotion by some national agency equipped with funds to make available to all school men the best experience of each.
 A part of this field should be cov- cred by the United States Bureau of Education. Why should it not pub fish in monthly digest the counter part of the Review of Reviews in the magazine world, where school men may find in brief form the best of formal utterances by their colleagues in all parts of the country? Why should not state superintendents rem der a similar service for the school reports within their own states?
 The need would be met by another national clearing -house with the lati- tuIe lIldl lIlu6 lcA 1lflS OCCD 1Ouho POS- sible only by private agenciesJ-- something like the Carnegie Founda- tion for the Advancement of Teach ing-which would cover the second ary and primary schools, public, pri- vate, and parochial. Such a founda- tion could universalize efficient meth cd and sound idea by means of reit-. eration.
 No man can write a proper school report after June 30th who did not ask the significant school questions before the preceding September and for each successive day during the school year Adequate records will, however. follow a desire to know something that is not yet known. To stimulate that desire should be the function of some national fund which would be unremittingly at work dis tributing among school men questions and suggestions for giving the slow est and the weakest superintendent the benefit of the experience and method of the most efficient.