Vital Points Touching the Public 
 Schools of a Large City 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 The Public Education Association 
 
 City of Philadelph 
 
 Monday , “January , jgth , /poy 
 
 Andrew S 
 
 per, LL.D 
 
 President of the University of Illinois 
 
 Philadelphia : 
 
 Innes & Sons, 200 South Tenth Street 
 
PRESIDENT DRAPER 
 
 X-'f.. 
 
 President Andrew S. Draper, of the University of 
 Illinois, has had an unusual educational experience. He 
 was born on a farm in central New York, and first 
 attended a primitive, one-room, country school. From 
 seven tb fifteen years of age he attended a city graded 
 school. Then he attended and graduated from an “ Old 
 Line Academy/' the Albany Academy. He taught a 
 year in the Academy, and afterwards was principal of a 
 graded school in a country town. Taking the course in 
 the Albany Law School he was graduated, admitted to 
 the bar, and practiced law for fifteen years. In the 
 meantime he was a member of the Board of Education 
 of the City of Albany and trustee of the New York State 
 Normal College. He also became a member of the 
 New York Legislature, and served as one of the judges 
 of the United States Court which heard the individual 
 claims against the Geneva Award. In 1886 he was 
 elected by the New York Legislature on joint ballot to 
 the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction, 
 and served two terms, or six years. In this capacity he 
 was a regent of the University of the State of New York, 
 and a trustee of Cornell University. From 1892 to 1894 
 he was Superintendent of Instruction of the Cleveland, 
 Ohio, public schools, with the sole power to appoint and 
 remove teachers. In 1894 he was called to the presi- 
 dency of the University of Illinois, which at that time 
 had ninety in the Faculty, and 755 students, and which 
 now has 315 in the Faculty, and 3,250 students. In 
 1889 the degree of LL. D. was conferred upon President 
 Draper by Colgate University, and in 1903 by Columbia 
 University. . . : \ 
 
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 Vital Points Touching the Public 
 Schools of a Large City. 
 
 Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen ! 1 
 
 LI I i. I / 
 
 For the invitation to come and treat of public school in- 
 terests in this great, thrifty, historic city, I tender to the 
 Public School Association my cordial thanks. I have re- 
 sponded to your call willingly, for the subject is fascinating 
 to me, and I would not withhold any aid which I may give ; 
 but I may say truly that I have come with misgivings, for 
 there is little which I may say which has not been said better 
 many times before. 
 
 I would hold out no unwarranted implications. I know 
 little of the school affairs of your city. I have seen some 
 statements in the daily press from time to time which went to 
 show that some matters were altogether wrong, and I should 
 not expect it otherwise, for we have not yet entered the hal- 
 cyon days which justify expectation of perfect organization 
 and ideal administration of such a trust as the educational 
 system of a mighty city. Very likely more matters are wrong, 
 and more thoroughly wrong, than they ought to be. Even 
 so, it would doubtless be much farther from the truth to con- 
 clude that all things are wrong. 
 
 Beyond a peradventure the truth here, as in other great 
 cities, is that there are good men, and weak men, and possi- 
 bly bad men, in the Board of Education ; that there is an or- 
 ganization ill adapted to the proper management of the busi- 
 ness in hand ; that there are hundreds of capable and con- 
 scientious teachers struggling against a system which they 
 think unappreciative and unjust ; and that there are other 
 teachers working for nothing but their monthly stipend, and 
 without any sense of the real fascination in a teacher’s work ; 
 and that the whole situation is unsatisfactory to the public. 
 
 i 
 
and particularly to the patrons of the schools, because they 
 know there are some evils and weaknesses in the case, and 
 because too much is undertaken, and too much of what is at- 
 tempted is not understood. 
 
 CONFIDENCE 
 
 The very cornerstone of a satisfactory school system is 
 public confidence and pride in it. If there is suspicion that 
 there is venality in the school board, or that members are 
 making political plunder of the most sacred common inter- 
 ests ; that the superintendent’s office is not equal to its high 
 trust, or is run down by opposing forces which it cannot con- 
 trol ; that some of the teaching is worthless, and some of the 
 work meaningless ; there can be little hope until these things 
 are cleared up, and it is commonly the case that they cannot 
 be cleared up except through an indignant outburst and a 
 revolution. If there is want of public confidence, and if peace- 
 ful remedies cannot be enforced, there had better be a revo- 
 lution. Nothing can be accomplished until a situation is de- 
 veloped in which the people believe. 
 
 THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 
 
 Much, very much indeed, depends upon the spirit, and 
 outlook, upon the policies which prevail as a matter of course 
 and without comment, in the Board of Education. There is 
 no other public position in which a qualified man, with a spirit 
 that rings true, may render such important public service as 
 upon a school board ; and there is no other in which the other 
 kind may make such an everlasting hindrance and nuisance 
 of himself. 
 
 The position is in a peculiar way prolific of misunder- 
 standings and temptation. I do not refer to temptations to 
 commit crimes. A few men may get into school boards only 
 to prove that they ought to be in jails, but the percentage is 
 exceedingly small. By far the greater number mean well 
 enough, and if they stay long enough many of them get edu- 
 cated up to a sane and competent public service. 
 
It never seems to occur to any American citizen that he 
 may not be qualified for service on a school board. He went 
 to school once : does he not know all about the schools ? 
 He may never have acquired or managed any property in his 
 life ; but does he not know just how to care for the millions 
 in charge of a school board ? He may never have built a 
 house of his own in all his days ; but does he not know just 
 how and just where to build the next schoolhouse ? He may 
 not have been in a schoolhouse in thirty years ; but does he 
 not know just what ought to be done and how it ought to be 
 done ? Superintendents and teachers are a good enough sort 
 of folks, according to his ideas, but they are narrow and know 
 little of affairs and need superintending and teaching by some 
 one right fresh from the people. He has a wrinkle in his 
 head that there is a vast lot of nonsense in the schools and 
 that their work needs reforming directly from headquarters. 
 Moreover, the town must know that he is of some importance, 
 and the way to have that understood is by getting jobs for 
 friends who want them. It may make him available for the 
 legislature. Quiet, competent, sympathetic and stimulating 
 service may go all unnoticed. He must have individuality 
 and make an impression. It is to be made by lording it over 
 everybody under the control of the board who does not sue 
 at his court, and by losing no opportunity to reconstruct 
 everything that was ever done before he came. 
 
 It is not said that all school directors are of this stamp ; 
 it is said that enough of them are to keep most school sys- 
 tems on edge. School systems are sensitive institutions. One 
 self-conceited man may stir up more in a school system in a 
 month than a half dozen discerning men can build up in a 
 year. 
 
 Even the purely business side of school administration 
 demands special knowledge. A modern schoolhouse is a de- 
 velopment. The location, the construction, or the care of 
 one claims the unbiased and serious judgment of men who 
 have learned much, but not so much that they are unwilling 
 to learn much more. The adjustment of salaries is a delicate 
 
 3 
 
matter, which reaches to the very heart of things. The judg- 
 ment which can control the purchase of supplies, and keep 
 out all scandals, will have to be a sharp and alert, an expe- 
 rienced and balanced one. The character which can level up 
 the revenues of the schools to the needs and means of a com- 
 munity, which can secure enough money to ensure results 
 which appeal to the common pride, and then can spend it so 
 wisely as to get those results and meet the exactions of men 
 who know the value of money is a character which already 
 has some successes to its credit, and did not begin to think 
 about school problems yesterday. 
 
 If the business side of school administration calls for 
 some special knowledge, the instructional side demands in- 
 finitely more. The laying out of the course of study, the 
 creation of a pedagogical atmosphere, the development of a 
 happy, enthusiastic and self-respecting body of teachers, and 
 the making of an organization which will inspire pupils, give 
 latent genius its chance and assure the just rights of all the 
 parents and children in a great city, is the heavy task of a 
 man of good heart and quick mind, who has given years of 
 serious study to the problems involved and who is too sane 
 to be a doctrinaire, who can recognize merit and do justice, 
 who has been seasoned by contact with affairs and can endure 
 much, but who knows where the vital points are and will 
 not let them be trampled upon by the rough foot of political 
 or official power, and who, if necessity arises, can go straight 
 to the people with a case which will command respect. The 
 man who can do this is an expert so rare that in this country 
 of eighty millions of people there is hardly one of him in a 
 million ; with our fast growing cities there are not enough 
 like him to go around. 
 
 I am not overlooking the importance of popular influ- 
 ence upon the instructional work of the schools. The best 
 of superintendents and teachers are made better by the com- 
 munity feeling, if it is expressed through men and women 
 who really represent discretion, the sense of justice and the 
 sympathetic feeling of the people. The schools cannot be 
 
 4 
 
efficient and adaptable without it. The ideal arrangement is 
 a scholarly, experienced, sane and conscientious superintend- 
 ent, working in accord with a board of genuine men and 
 women who truly stand for the better intelligence of both the 
 operators and the wage earners of the community. Such a 
 board and such a superintendent, discussing the interests of 
 the schools in quiet tones, without excitement because with- 
 out selfishnesss, constitute a force in the life of a people 
 v/hich claims the best efforts of all who have a shade of civic 
 pride or the least interest in the progress of the mass. 
 
 THE TEACHING FORCE 
 
 Boards of education are appointed and buildings erected 
 and superintendents employed to the end that the children 
 of a city may be taught. There is teaching as clear and as 
 full of sparkle and progress as a mountain stream, and there 
 is teaching as dense and heavy and lifeless as an old log 
 which has fallen across that stream and is going back to 
 earth again. It all depends upon the teachers. And the 
 teachers depend upon the system and upon the forces which 
 give tone and strength and energy to the system. 
 
 The teachers are for the most part women. It is not so 
 in other lands, but it is so and it is going to be so here. I 
 am sorry for a boy who has no other teacher but a woman, 
 no matter how good a woman or how good a teacher she 
 may be, but it is better so than that his teacher shall be a 
 narrow or effeminate man, and the alternative seems inevita- 
 ble. Women teachers are more conscientious and more sen- 
 sitive than men. They are specially responsive to the tone 
 and spirit and ideals of a school system. This is true 
 whether the tone is good or bad, or the ideals high or low. 
 They are not only quickly responsive but they are keen in 
 their perceptions and intuitions. It is a fact which has great 
 potentiality in it and it is to be reckoned with. 
 
 If the women teachers of a city can know that merit will 
 be appreciated, and that promotion will be its reward, they 
 will act upon the knowledge with even more impulsiveness 
 
 5 
 
and energy than men. If culture commands recognition and 
 artistic teaching gains approval they will grow* in culture and 
 in power. If even-handed justice prevails, they will work 
 quietly and steadily, content to bide their time and take their 
 chance. 
 
 And platitudes will not deceive them. They know 
 what is going on at headquarters even when they are not 
 there, and even in the face of denials, for the evidences are 
 unmistakable and the knowledge at once becomes common 
 throughout the whole system. They will look upon the ad- 
 vance of an associate without heartburnings where there is 
 reasonable ground for it. But if appointments are brought 
 about through influence, if one who cannot teach fares better 
 than one who can, if promotions turn upon favoritism, they 
 will either sink discouraged into a lifeless and heartless 
 routine or their impulsiveness and intensiveness will lead 
 them to even more unconscionable lengths than most men 
 will go, to reach the ends which unconscionable practices 
 may gain. 
 
 Teaching is of little worth if it is not free. It cannot 
 be free in the hands of untrained persons who follow it only 
 for a living. Nor can it be free in the hands of teachers 
 soured by injustice. It cannot be free in the hands of one 
 who relies upon some kind of secret influence to keep her in 
 place. For such there must be rules and much governing 
 and directing to prevent wrongs which even a long-suffering 
 public will not stand. 
 
 A school system is no stronger than its weakest part. 
 If there is one opening in the dyke which some one with 
 ample authority is not trying vehemently to close, enough 
 water will rush in to wash everything down to the dead level 
 of indifference and mediocrity. 
 
 A school system is a thing of life. It is a wonderfully 
 sensitive thing. It does not long stand still. It is steadily 
 growing finer and stronger or coarser and weaker. If condi- 
 tions prevail which breed jealousy and bitterness, the case is 
 hopeless until they are completely removed, or at least until 
 
 6 
 
it is well understood that the way is opening for their re- 
 moval. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 The public point of view is too often overlooked by the 
 men and women of the schools. The most cherished desire 
 in a parent’s heart is that his children maybe better educated 
 than he was. For this no sacrifices are too heavy for him. 
 To this end he will labor with music in his soul and find 
 abundant recompense in the intellectual progress of his 
 household. But sometimes he wonders. He hears much of 
 modern educational theories and of surprising methods in the 
 schools. He is made to know that of the making of school- 
 books there is no end. He is by no means an ignorant man ; 
 he has read and worked, and such men know some things. 
 But he hears things through his children that he never heard 
 of before. He must not doubt the superior knowledge of 
 the schools, however, and he puts away his incredulity. 
 By and by something happens which makes it necessary for 
 him to see the teacher, and then he finds himself in contact 
 with a force which is of the utmost moment to him, but 
 which is indifferent to his rights or powerless to assure them. 
 
 A mother of refinement sends her children to the public 
 schools. The family circumstances hardly warrant sending 
 them to private schools, and beyond that she has some 
 patriotic sentiment about the matter. She wants to believe 
 in the public schools and support them. She, moreover, 
 wants to be on terms with the teacher of her children to the 
 end that she may give commendation and support where it is 
 due, and that they may work understanding^ together. To 
 her surprise she finds a woman far below her standards of 
 womanly sympathy, tact and culture. She cannot subject 
 her girls to such an influence and such teaching as that. 
 But what is she to do ? If she seeks remedy she is more 
 than likely to find that there is none. 
 
 It Fas often seemed to me that there is no sort of a civic 
 or political organization in this country so fortified against the 
 enforcement of a citizen’s right as a school organization which 
 
 7 
 
has grown to large proportions on the old lines and has not 
 yet been brought to terms of centralized authority and re- 
 sponsibility. You may start out to redress a wrong which is 
 wearing your life at its best parts. It is not a question of 
 public policy, but of an individual citizen’s right. You com- 
 mence with the teacher ; she refers you to the principal ; he 
 advises you to see the supervisor ; that official passes you 
 along to the superintendent ; he would likely aid you if he 
 could, but he knows very well he cannot, and suggests that 
 you carry the matter to a trustee or a committee ; and there 
 you are told that it is a matter for the whole board, and the 
 board is utterly beyond you. If the truth were told, you are 
 thwarted, your rights are denied by reason of political or per- 
 sonal influence, which is not only ignorant and selfish, but 
 resentful and spiteful. Anyone in official position who op- 
 poses it is likely to feel its fang. And the whole thing is so 
 arranged that no one dare help you ; no one has the author- 
 ity to help you ; and no one who refuses you justice in a just 
 cause can be called to account for it. 
 
 It is not implied that the men and women along this official 
 line you have traveled are all vicious. There is wickedness 
 somewhere in the business, but these people would, for the 
 most part, be glad to be released from it. The trouble is in 
 the fact that the system is more irresponsible and vicious than 
 the people are who administer it. It is hospitable to flagrant 
 and insidious evils which no power short of the legislative 
 power of the state, or the aroused and indignant political 
 power of a community can drive out. 
 
 Our fathers were more accustomed than we are to call 
 the schools “ the common schools.” It was a good term ; it 
 grew out of a fact, and it implied much. It would be well to 
 go back to the name and give new emphasis to the fact. If 
 the schools are to become the schools of the poor who can 
 afford no other, if they are to become the schools of the un- 
 fortunate who do not know their rights or cannot assert them, 
 if they are to irritate the well-to-do, who must support them 
 without direct benefits, if they are to make for the segrega- 
 
 8 
 
tion of classes rather than serve as a bond of union between 
 all citizens, then a unique and cherished ideal of our demo- 
 cratic life is being overthrown, and an evil day is coming 
 upon us. 
 
 We will not believe it. Our democracy has harder prob- 
 lems than in the days of our fathers, but we understand those 
 problems more clearly and are better able to meet them than 
 they. The shaping and the management of institutions by 
 the people must encounter some difficulties that would never 
 appear to a minister or a cabinet, but in the end it is better. 
 The popular will is slower than the will of one man in acting, 
 but when it does act it is more forceful, more steadfast, more 
 pervasive. The exercise of the democratic principle is educa- 
 tive in itself. The mass slowly, steadily, rises to the enforce- 
 ment of principles which it accepts. Democracy learns to do 
 by doing. 
 
 Educational equality, schools common to all, at whatever 
 pains and at whatever cost, is a doctrine universally accepted 
 in America. The people will make that doctrine a living fact 
 in our democratic life. It is being put to its severest test in 
 the great cities where such vast amounts are involved and 
 greed is so rampant, where so many teachers are required and 
 the children are so unlike, but even those cities are rising to 
 their great task, and they will be no exception to the universal 
 rule. 
 
 New and higher standards are appearing in the school 
 systems of our largest cities. Look upon the stately and 
 healthful buildings of the newer type, good enough for the 
 very best, and therefore good enough for all. The City of 
 New York has not always been in a position to claim com- 
 mendation for the situation and the work of its schools, but 
 that city has in the last two or three years made a notable 
 contribution to the architecture, the hygiene, and the decora- 
 tion of the large city schoolhouse. And I would not imply 
 that that is the measure of its contribution. There is abund- 
 ant reason to believe that its early contribution, under a 
 capable and free superintendent, to the organization and the 
 
 9 
 
administration of the schools will be no less notable. What 
 is possible in that city of rampant and unclean politics is quite 
 possible in any other American city. 
 
 But it is possible only through an understanding by the 
 citizen of what he ought to expect and what his rights are in 
 the schools, and then through agitation and combination 
 which will secure needed legislation and an organization which 
 will make those things possible. 
 
 WHAT TO DEMAND 
 
 Every citizen is bound to demand that within easy reach 
 of his door there shall be a school building which is substan- 
 tial, attractive and healthful. He has the right to expect 
 that in that building there shall be a corps of teachers of 
 capacity and culture, with teaching power and quick interest 
 in his child. Refinement, truth, strength, industry and 
 patriotism must all grow under that roof. He has the right 
 to expect that that building and those teachers shall be free 
 from partisan or sectarian influence, and that all that is 
 done there shall bind all good citizens together in a patriotic 
 league and make for the intellectual and ethical quickening 
 of society. If in any particular it is not so, he has the right 
 to know just where he may go to an experienced and cap- 
 able officer, with ample authority, responsible to nobody but 
 the community he serves, the law which sustains him, and the 
 intelligence and conscience which guide him, and have imme- 
 diate attention to his complaint and quick redress, if his com- 
 plaint be a reasonable one. 
 
 HOW TO GET IT 
 
 If this is not already so, it is to be brought about through 
 direct appeals to the people until the common sentiment is 
 quickened to a revolt, and then through a school organiza- 
 tion which differentiates legislative and executive functions, 
 which gives business matters to business men, and instruc- 
 tional matters to teachers, which centralizes authority and 
 responsibility for doing things in individuals, and is amply 
 protected against influence. 
 
 io 
 
We have less confidence in the crowd than we ought. 
 The men and women who have descended from the earlier 
 American families are not the only ones who are interested in 
 the American schools. Nor are the men and women who live 
 in costly houses the only ones interested in the schools by any 
 means. It often happens that one of the new families has a 
 keener appreciation of school privileges than one of the old fam- 
 ilies, and that the strongest supporters of the school system are 
 the men who live in moderate circumstances. Sectarianism 
 cannot come into the schools, but there is no reason why the 
 interests of the schools shall not be carried to the religious 
 denominations. A public school talk at a Presbyterian club, 
 or a Methodist league, or a Roman Catholic lyceum is often 
 welcome and always counts. A discussion of the true inter- 
 ests of the common schools before a labor union always de- 
 velopes a quick interest and often an aggressive response. 
 Gatherings of the people in the schoolhouses germinate pub- 
 lic school enthusiasm and strengthen the foundations of the 
 school system. You may often see things which make you 
 doubt, but there is virtue and honest desire among the people, 
 and if you agitate the mass, the good and true will come to 
 the surface, and if you gather and direct it, it will bear down 
 the combined forces of evil. 
 
 There is to be no politics in the schools, but the inter- 
 ests of the schools must often go into assemblages where 
 politics is rampant. The schools are very commonly admin- 
 istered by men and women who are in official position as the 
 result of political action and partisan choice. It often hap- 
 pens that these people do things which they would not do if 
 they were free. Public sentiment must set up standards and 
 create an organization which will not only free them but pun- 
 ish them if they put the law on sale or make plunder of 
 sacred rights. 
 
 I am a partisan. I believe in politics. I know the need 
 of organization. But if the men who make such boast of 
 party loyalty without being as true as I am to principles for 
 which the party stands, if the men who give their days and 
 
 ii 
 
nights to managing “the organization” and seem to think 
 that party machinery is to be supported by plundering the 
 whole people, do not take their hands off the public schools 
 and help on legislation which will give the common schools 
 their best opportunity, I would take all the chances of throw- 
 ing my vote and of bearing a hand at politics in a way which 
 they would be very quick to understand. A small measure 
 of manhood independence, a reasonable exercise of a free- 
 man’s right has a surprising effect in the back room of a po- 
 litical machine. 
 
 LINES OF ACTION 
 
 But no matter how much sentiment may be aroused, it 
 must act upon rational lines. A few men of good standing 
 who have thought things out to a conclusion and can mar- 
 shall the facts and the reasons in ways which appeal to pub- 
 lic sentiment, and who know how to enable public sentiment 
 to have its way are of more moment in the educational affairs 
 of a great city than thousands of indignant and unorganized 
 men who do not know just what they want and do not see 
 how to get something which will be of advantage to them. 
 
 The school system of the city of Philadelphia is not 
 wholly or exclusively an affair of the city of Philadelphia. 
 It is a matter, and a very large matter, of the State of Penn- 
 sylvania. The interest of the whole State is immediate, and 
 the authority of the whole State is imperative. The school 
 system rests upon the high power of taxation, and that 
 power is exercised by act of the Legislature which sits at Har- 
 risburg. The power which may tax is bound to regulate 
 expenditures. But that is not all. State legislation govern- 
 ing the schools does not invade the principle of home rule. 
 The common school system is in no sense a local system. 
 The schools in the largest cities are subject to the same 
 authority as the schools in the mountain regions. That 
 authority may administer them under one set of legal regu- 
 lations and by one class of officers in one place and by 
 other regulations and other officers in another place, but 
 they never cease to be the common schools of the State. The 
 
 12 
 
State sets up the machinery to make certain that schools of 
 suitable character are maintained in all places. If any city 
 or district has the will and the wealth to go farther than the 
 State requires, no one objects, but all cities and all districts 
 must go as far. The legislative power has the clear au- 
 thority and is charged with the manifest responsibility of 
 legislating upon the administration of the whole system. 
 This is an important principle in public school administration. 
 It has been established by consistent and harmonious legal 
 action in practically all of the States where the question has 
 become the subject of legislation or of judicial determina- 
 tion. I have no doubt of, indeed I think I recall, decisions 
 of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to this effect. Legisla- 
 tion regulating the administration of the schools in the city of 
 Philadelphia is logical and in accord with the established and 
 legal order of things underlying the common school system. 
 
 New legislation is needed unless there has been radical 
 action since the city came to such large proportions and the 
 schools to such great importance. The trouble in many 
 school systems is that the business to be managed has alto- 
 gether outgrown the organization for managing it. There are 
 school boards in a dozen American cities managing more 
 property, spending more money and making more appoint- 
 ments to positions than is the case with the governments in a 
 dozen American States. Those boards very commonly are 
 without specific legal directions and without check upon their 
 action. Often the members are without public experience. 
 Reasoning that they owe something to a party which gave 
 them place, anxious to show their neighbors that they can 
 bring about results, they stagger along through a devious 
 course which makes fraud quite possible and certainly pro- 
 motes confusion, injustice and inefficiency in all the opera- 
 tions of the schools. 
 
 PRINCIPLES TO BE UPHELD 
 
 This is not a place for me to attempt to present legisla- 
 tive measures for the good of a school system of whose con- 
 
 13 
 
ditions I have very little exact knowledge. Nor is it the 
 place to lay down principles about which experienced men 
 unselfishly interested in the schools would have differences 
 or misgivings. But it may doubtless be said with conserva- 
 tism that the following principles must be asserted, must be 
 enforceable by law before the educational rights of the people 
 can have any promise of being satisfied : 
 
 1. The Board of Education must be small in numbers 
 and the members must not be chosen by or for a district of 
 the city, but must represent all the people and every educa- 
 tional interest of the city. 
 
 2. There must be a complete separation of legislative 
 and executive functions. The board must have legislative 
 powers only. Its functions should be discharged by passing 
 resolutions to be entered in full upon its published journal. 
 It must have no appointments, at least it must not have the 
 initiative concerning any appointments beyond its clerk and 
 the heads of business and instructional departments. 
 
 3. The actual doing of things must be left to executive 
 officers. At least two executive departments are necessary, 
 one to manage the business affairs and the other the instruc- 
 tion. The two must be sharply separated. These two de- 
 partments must each have a strong and experienced man at 
 its head, and he must have free and ample powers and must 
 be held responsible. 
 
 4. The head of the business department must be charged 
 with the appointment of all clerks, janitors and employees, 
 with the care of all property and with the making and exe- 
 cution of all contracts. He should have nothing to do with 
 passing resolutions and the board nothing to do with exe- 
 cuting them. His term of office should be a long one and 
 the law should amply protect him. He should get his direc- 
 tions from the law and the resolutions, and he should never 
 be able to plead that he lacked authority or means to execute 
 the high functions of his office. He should be directed by 
 law to make all his appointments wholly irrespective of po- 
 litical, official or other influence and wholly upon business 
 
 14 
 
principles. His appointments should be for an indefinite 
 time. For any acts or any neglects which violate his direc- 
 tions he should be removable by the three-fourths vote of the 
 board and punishable by the courts. 
 
 5. The Superintendent of Instruction should be chosen 
 for his learning, his special knowledge of good pedagogy, 
 his intellectual forcefulness, his steadiness, his rational outlook 
 and sense of justice, his good nature and stout backbone, 
 his experience in administration, his gifts for construction 
 and his ability to make himself the best representative and 
 exponent of common school interests of a cosmopolitan com- 
 munity. Few men meet these specifications ; but there are 
 some who do. The man who comes nearest to it and who 
 is available should be found, and the conditions should be 
 fixed so as to bring him to the high opportunity and the 
 great service. The fact that he was not so fortunate as to 
 have been born or to have lived in the city of Philadelphia or 
 the State of Pennsylvania should not be an insurmountable 
 obstacle to his appointment. 
 
 6. The Superintendent of Instruction must have his 
 status fixed by law and not left to the caprice of a board. 
 Up to this time he has been left almost wholly without legal 
 protection against conditions which must wear his life to the 
 breaking point and surely overwhelm him if his physical or 
 official life lasted until the situation grew large enough. He 
 must have a definite and long tenure of office with free pow- 
 ers and full accountability. The members of the board must 
 know that they are not expected to have his expert knowl- 
 edge or wide experience, and that they are not to appoint or 
 meddle with or redress the grievances or aid the personal 
 interests of teachers. If they are not large-minded enough 
 to help him make his success possible they are to be pro- 
 hibited by law from doing things which must humiliate and 
 in the end overthrow him. 
 
 7. The Superintendent of Instruction is to be charged 
 with building up a competent, right-spirited, enthusiastic 
 teaching force. If there is a bad spirit or worthless teaching 
 
 15 
 
in any public schoolroom in the city he must be made to 
 answer for it. To enable him to bear this great responsibility 
 I think he should have the absolute power to appoint, assign 
 to work and remove teachers. If a community will not go 
 to this length it may compromise upon appointments being 
 made by a board of examiners or assistant superintendents, 
 or probably by the Board of Education upon the recommen- 
 dation of the Superintendent, but I think experience amply 
 shows these compromise expedients to invade a sound prin- 
 ciple and provide only partial remedies of a rampant evil. 
 At all events there is no hope at all unless the right of 
 initiative concerning appointments upon the instructional force 
 is clearly with the Superintendent and the power of removal 
 is his absolutely. When one man has the responsibility of 
 appointments he will guard admissions to the teaching ser- 
 vice. A teacher, no matter how unfit, who has not com- 
 mitted some overt act positively criminal or immoral, can 
 never be removed when it is left to the affirmative action of 
 a board. No one finds pleasure in removing a teacher, but 
 when one experienced man must take the matter upon his 
 conscience and answer to the high interests that are at stake 
 he will let judgment and conscience have their way. 
 
 8. There must be recognition of artistic teaching in all 
 the lower as well as in the upper grades. There must be 
 promotion on the basis of merit. There must be advance of 
 pay with length of competent service. Self-respecting inde- 
 pendence must be encouraged. There must be opportunity 
 for the play of individual genius through freedom in the 
 teaching. The point of equipoise between individualism and 
 safe general results must be found. Self-seeking must be re- 
 pelled and self-improvement exacted. There must be a lead- 
 ership which commands respect and carries the whole mass 
 into the very heart of a community’s regard. There is not 
 much hope of real excellence unless every teacher is proud 
 to be associated with the system and unless every true citizen 
 feels like removing his hat to one who is. 
 
 9. There must be publicity about all that is done. The 
 
 16 
 
purposes and the plans for attaining them must be published 
 and declared. For example, the Superintendent will make no 
 appointment unless fixed standards of intellectual qualifications 
 are reached. He must also exact pedagogical training. A 
 city which would have a school system of marked excellence 
 must be training teachers for its own service. This much 
 must precede a trial : then a continuing appointment must 
 wait upon proved success. It must all be explained again 
 and again. It must all be kept in print ready for convenient 
 distribution. The system must have policies of its own and 
 be assertive, even aggressive about them. Of course its poli- 
 cies must be open and above board, and it must adhere to 
 them without any exceptions. There are men who think that 
 published policies are only to throw dust in the eyes of the 
 public ; that there are to be secret passages and dark-lantern 
 processes to gain selfish ends. If there are any, the whole 
 system will know it, and the w r hole enterprise will be stranded. 
 If there is complete integrity about it, the teaching will have 
 new life in it and the spirit of the force will rise with a bound. 
 
 io. The city must treat its teachers with full justice. It 
 must not provoke movements for self-protection among the 
 teachers. It must leave no excuse for organizations to in- 
 crease pay and control the policies or the officers of the sys- 
 tem. Organizations for self-improvement are all right ; 
 organizations for selfish ends are all wrong. There should 
 be no just ground for them, and where there is none, they 
 should not be allowed. With a weak administration, honey- 
 combed with favoritism and injustice, they will germinate 
 naturally and have to be allowed. All these things are ear- 
 marks of the soundness or of the decrepitude of a school system. 
 
 CENTRALIZATION 
 
 Some will object that there is too much centralization of 
 power in all this. There is much, but no more than condi- 
 tions demand and experience makes imperative. Moreover, 
 we have had some very confused notions about the rights of 
 the citizen. He has the right to good schools, not the right 
 
 17 
 
to organize and superintend them in person. If all were to 
 have the right of superintendence the schools could not be 
 good ones. The making of courses of study, and the appoint- 
 ment and supervision of teachers, cannot be done by popular 
 vote. Is democracy to be put to harder tests than more con- 
 solidated forms of government, and still expected to succeed ? 
 A democracy determines through its established and repre- 
 sentative assemblages what shall be done. It may have to 
 leave some things to the discretion of its representatives. It 
 will leave no more to discretion than the circumstances re- 
 quire. When it has decided just what shall be done, it will 
 set one man to do it if one man can do it. It will not set 
 more than one man to execute its will, or more than one man 
 to execute such part of its will as one man can execute, be- 
 cause it wants to give credit for doing things well and it wants 
 to hold someone responsible if the thing is not done at all or 
 is not well done. We have learned, out of abundant expe- 
 rience, that the citizens’ rights in the schools are not secure 
 unless they have a legal organization suited to conditions 
 which they have developed, unless specified things are to be 
 done, and unless, in case those things are not done in the 
 way democracy has directed, the citizen may go down street 
 and point his finger right at the man whose dereliction is 
 overthrowing the popular will, and robbing him of his citizen’s 
 right. 
 
 APPOINTMENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 
 
 In all this discussion I have not yet touched upon one 
 point which is perhaps crucial in the whole matter. That is 
 the manner of choosing the Board of Education. What is to 
 be the method of appointment which will ensure good men 
 who are adapted to such a service ? I am sure I do not 
 know. The best intelligence of a community will have to 
 settle that and sue at the bar of the legislature and take its 
 chances. 
 
 Yet much will depend upon the declared functions of the 
 school board and the common thought over the whole matter. 
 
 18 
 
If the board is not to make any appointments the mere 
 patronage hunters will lose interest in it. If it does not have 
 the making and execution of contracts the mere plunderers 
 will have small use for it. If it is to be a small body and do 
 its business in quiet tones while sitting around a council table, 
 the oratorical nuisances who are everlastingly talking to the 
 galleries are hardly likely to gravitate to it. If it is not 
 charged with managing teachers or with the review of the 
 acts of superintendents up to the time when they are put upon 
 trial for incompetency or malfeasance, then the disgruntled or 
 the degenerates are not likely to assail the members much, 
 and if they do the board is hardly likely to fall down and 
 worship them for the only reason that they have votes. 
 
 The men who draw statutes are lawyers. Lawyers are 
 too apt to regard only the bone and sinew of the law. They 
 are not much given to sentiment and too often lose sight of 
 the spirit of the law. At least they are too prone to think 
 that it is unlawyerlike to say much about that in legal forms. 
 I think if there were more in school statutes to express the 
 spirit and purpose, that spirit and purpose would be carried 
 out more fully in their execution. This would more certainly 
 be so when their execution depends upon people who are not 
 lawyers. And accordingly I have the idea that if the law 
 should express with some fulness the qualities which are ex- 
 pected in a school board and place the responsibility of ap- 
 pointment upon a single officer who in some sense represents 
 all the interests of the community, better results are likely to 
 be attained than will be reached in any other way. 
 
 This much I do know, a city school system needs peace 
 and quietness and stability and steadiness. It is sensitive to 
 excitement and uproar. If it cannot call to its highest service 
 men who can bring substance and confidence to it there is 
 small hope of very exceptional results. 
 
 19 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 Coming to a conclusion, the thought comes to me that 
 possibly I have assumed too much knowledge of the school 
 work of this great city. I know, only in a general way, of 
 the more important facts touching the school organization of 
 the city. This little knowledge may have proved a dangerous 
 thing. But I did not begin to think of such matters only a 
 day or two ago, and I have never known a case where the 
 general plan of organization was anything like what it is here 
 without finding much demoralization and dissatisfaction in the 
 teaching force and much worthless work in the schools. The 
 plan of organization is far from being everything in a great 
 school system, but a system of government which is vicious 
 or one which is weak because outgrown is prohibitive of the 
 best spirit and of first excellence in the work of the schools. 
 Not much in the way of better things can be accomplished 
 until there is a plan of school government which will give to 
 good and experienced administrators the power to drive out 
 the plunderers and place seekers on the one hand, while on 
 the other they may lay out work which is balanced, teach it 
 scientifically, and give the community’s commendation to the 
 men and women who render it an unselfish and a meritorious 
 public service. 
 
 And I may add that even when such a form of govern- 
 ment is established not much will be accomplished until it is 
 in the hands of men and women who have the experience 
 and the moral strength to execute it without fear or favor, but 
 with full justice, with a sane outlook, with a comprehensive 
 grasp upon the heaviest and most imperative task of demo- 
 cratic government. 
 
 It is upon this knowledge that I have proceeded. And 
 I prefer to say specifically that I should grieve to think that 
 the Superintendent of Schools of Philadelphia, whose learning 
 and character I have respected and whose pleasant acquaint- 
 ance I have cherished these many years, or any of the good 
 and conscientious teachers of the city, should construe any- 
 thing that has been said into a reflection upon them. What 
 
 20 
 
they have done, and surely it has been much, should be 
 doubly to their credit because accomplished in spite of the 
 many influences which have hindered rather than helped the 
 always burdensome work of the schools. 
 
 This is a great, a very great city. It has a high and an 
 honored place in the esteem of all Americans. It has great 
 business enterprises. It has noble institutions. It has end- 
 less streets of comfortable and beautiful homes. It is rich, 
 very rich in historic reminiscence and significance. Com- 
 merce and wealth and art and letters and song and story 
 abound here. But I know, and you know, this is but a one- 
 sided view of the city’s life. Indeed these very things keep 
 the best men and women of the city from seeing and knowing 
 the other side, or from doing what they might do very effect- 
 ually to help all sides find the greatest good in our demo- 
 cratic and cosmopolitan life. 
 
 The largest interests this thrifty city has center in its 
 boys and girls. They will, before we know it, be giving sub- 
 stance to its business, and tone to its spirit and character to 
 its public life. They are entitled to be studied scientifically, 
 and managed with gentility, and inspired to ambitious and 
 noble things. Men and women with small realization of a 
 teacher’s responsibility, with an exploded and outlawed notion 
 of a teacher’s functions, are not to terrify them with fuming 
 and strutting and scolding and thrashing. Their self-activi- 
 ties are to be encouraged and directed. They are to have 
 the best in literature, and their imagination is to be excited. 
 Companionship is to be sought and confidence established. 
 They are to be given work they may like to do. Their 
 pleasure is to be studied and their enthusiasm rewarded. 
 They are to do things with their hands and learn the satisfac- 
 tion of actual accomplishment. They are not to have all the 
 facts it may ever be well for them to know stuffed into them ; 
 the taste for information, the power to do are to be started 
 and the rest will take care of itself. The slow are to have 
 special help ; the bright are not to be kept eight years doing 
 things which they might just as well do in six. What they 
 
 21 
 
know is not to be settled by a superintendent’s written exam- 
 ination alone. They are to have false notions of the worth of 
 the individual man and of the relations of the individual to 
 the mass taken out of them. They are to be taught tolera- 
 tion, the great and imperative lesson of religious, political, in- 
 dustrial and social toleration is to sink deep into their souls 
 through an association which is wholesome and a competi- 
 tion which calls out the best they have. Shams are to be 
 ridiculed. The truth is to be sought ; if it can be brought 
 out through the agency of the child so much the better. 
 Culture is not to be put above truth and strength. Culture 
 alone does not make for accomplishment. Work is cultur- 
 ing. Character grows where truth is the criterion and where 
 labor is dignified. All these things go to the enrichment of 
 the city. They are all imperative to the stability of the State. 
 
 It is all to be done by teachers, by thousands of capable 
 and right spirited teachers. The highest rights of citizens are 
 ignored if there are some who cannot manage and others who 
 cannot teach. Ah ! school administration is not a pastime. 
 Perhaps we shall never gain our ideal, but we shall go to the 
 bad unless we have it and work for it. The burden is upon 
 constitutional government. Kings may bear it, through the 
 exercise of arbitrary power and having in view only the nar- 
 row ends of the kingship, very easily. But the people of a 
 democracy must expect to find it the most delicate and exact- 
 ing and imperative responsibility which weighs upon their 
 public life. And it is not too much to say that the people of 
 one of the great cities in such a democracy must come to 
 know that the way in which they meet it will be proof of the 
 power of the democracy to do, and perhaps the proof of the 
 right of the democracy to be. 
 
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