Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/425

Rh would be strange if we could not develop men with initiative to plan and skill to direct, equal to the combined abilities of those who now control our school systems.

An arrangement by which teachers might advance as they prove by their constructive ideas and their efficiency that they are fitted for something else that the service requires, would be of enormous benefit to the educational movement. The certainty that, for example, the supervisor of manual training in a large city would be a man from anywhere who could show from his published contributions to the thought on his specialty that he was a master in it, as well as a teacher and a man of unquestioned quality and ability—this would encourage the young teacher to develop to the limit of his powers. When a career of study and effort carries a man to a position of great trust and responsibility, the individual has obtained due recognition, and the cause profits by having an efficient servant. When the position is obtained without full proof of fitness, the individual gets what he does not deserve, the administration deceives the public, and insults every fit person in the service.

Assuming that the people will in time care enough for public education to want it administered for the best results obtainable, it ought to be feasible to establish a system which would be effective and not become selfish with age. If systems of taxation can be submitted to the consideration of the electors, systems of education ought also to be within the range of the average intellect. We should scorn to employ a board to do our thinking and acting on the tariff question; it is the privilege of our American manhood to do that ourselves. Why should we be so willing to accept continually the judgment of educational "experts," and thus cut ourselves off from greater proof of our claims to social and political freedom.

There are questions of large import in education that could grow into national issues, and be crystallized into shape by the collective thinking of all the people. It is not inconceivable that some of these might occupy the attention of congress to the exclusion of the usual petty private interests of importunate individuals and communities. Other issues of a purely local nature, state or municipal, would fall for settlement to the sections interested.

There could be a member of the President's Cabinet, a Secretary of Education, who would be presumed to represent the judgment of the majority on national issues in education, and with his department could have clearly defined relations to the state and to the municipal or other local officials. The state and inferior boards of education that touch intimately the privileges of parents, teachers and children should be elected, and subjected to the will of the people through the