Page:The school law of Michigan.djvu/9

 

 PREFACE.

Teachers and pupils in the public schools of Michigan should know more of the system under which they are working, and young men and women just entering upon the duties of citizenship should be better prepared to perform the duties that will devolve upon them as officers of the primary and graded school districts.

For several years before the department of public instruction began preparing questions in school law for the examination of teachers, it was evident that many school officers, citizens, and teachers, were uninformed upon some of the simplest questions of school administration, and also that much controversy and litigation resulted from this imperfect knowledge.

The head of the state educational system is authorized by one of the provisions of Act 164 of the laws of 1881, to publish all general laws relating to schools and to transmit the same to school officers having the care and management of the schools. To do this requires an edition of more than 20,000 books, and the department has issued an edition every four years which has been furnished to all the officers of the state. This supply was quite sufficient, until teachers and pupils became students of school law. The department is not authorized by the statute to furnish books to all who