The philosophy of school management

Preface

The nuclcus of the following discussion appeared as a chapter in the lirst edition of "The Philosoph}' of Teaching." 1t is now expanded into a companion volume, with a more fundamental setting than at first given ; and thus with a scope extended to include management from the kindergarten to the university. Those who wish the easier and the more practical discussion will find it beginning on page 67. It is thought, however, that a patient development from the first will be inost satisfactoiy in the end.

The spirit of the book is clearly traceable to contact with \V. A. .Jones, first president of the Indiana State Normal Bühool. Had it not been for the influence of Ins class work and his daily practice in management, this book would, perhaps, not have been vvritten ; and I can but wish it were a more worthy monuinent to the memory of the man whose potent ideas stimulated so many to earnest effort in planting fundamental educational doetrines. For wise counsel in the general treatment of the subject I am ever grateful to L. H. Jones, Superintendent of Schools, Cleveland, Ohio.

ARNOLD TOMPKINS.

Chicago, Illinois,

Contents

PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

Found within the Organism itself 1

Introduction

The teaehing process having been considered in "The Philosophy of Teaehing," it is now in order to consider the school as an organized means in making that process effective.

To make this disenssion of the most practical Service, it must reduce the complex school process to the unity of a single principle, to a universal law of management; hence the "Philosophy of Management." It is impossible, as well as undesirable, to prescribe a complete list of specific duties. The wisest economy is to make clear the oue principle which has power to take care of all individnal cases; and the deeper the principle, the greater the power and the economy. Besides, specific rules deaden and enslave, while a universal law guides and inspires with a consciousness of freedom and power.

A catalogue of "do's" ind "du not's " may serve the mere operative in a factory, where the material conditiuns remain fixed; but the teacher, with whom the conditions are perpetually varying, must be guided by a principle which taet and ingenuity may apply to each new case as it arises. Thus only can the teacher move with certainty

X INTRODUCTION.

and precision; while the application of unvarying rules to varying conclitions is the prolific source of error and confusion. A fundamental prineiple — that is, a principle inherent in all the facts under consideration — has not only the greatest economic breaclth of application by' including the whole System of facts, but insures the greater certainty in dealing with any one of the facts in the System; because universal truth is also the essential truth.

The teacher, therefore, who would seek skill in the art of school management, must ground himself well in the underlying prineiple; for skilful practice implies sound theory. It is unsafe, as well as illogical, to set theory over against practice, as if the more of one the less of the other. School management is a process, and the theory of it is the theory of a practice. The two are organically one, — two sides of the same process, the process in thought and the process in external realization. Theory is practice in thought; practice is theory emerging from thought. The one is the process in idea, the other the idea in process. The idea cannot go forth in process tili it is first formed in mind; hence every one who practices must have a theory of some kind ; and, other things equal, the practice will be goorl to the degree of excellence in the theory. The more perfectly the school is held in mind as an organic process, the more perfectly may the process be realized in the school. And the most perfect form of the school process in thought is that of philosophy, — the form which holds all the

INTHODUCTION. xi

complex elements of the process in the grasp of a universal law.

But souncl theory does not insure successful practice. Taot and common sense have a large, if not the largest, share in the result. Principles cannot apply themselves; there is always supposed to be a teacher who adjusts law to a given case. Tact, the power to touch an instance with a law, is personal and private, and cannot be supplied by a book on theory, — or on practice either, for that matter. This fact is overlooked by those who clamor for the practical in the form of rules and recipes. ÜSTo rule Ran be made to fit the case before it arises. If a teacher could be told how to manage a boy in a given offence, — a boy of given age, disposition, temperament, home trainin g of a specific kind, etc., etc. , to color of hair and eyes, — it would be useless, since this case can never arise again. There is a realm of immediate and personal responsibility touching each new case as it arises, which cannot be shifted to the side of theory; and this is the realm of skill in the teacher. Unsound theory cannot work; sound theory may not, because it may have to work through imperfect instrumentalities. Let those, therefore, who are disposed to condemn certain theories, withhold judgment tili having proved their skill by successfully operating linder other principles. It is ahvays possible for those who fail in following one theory to fail ander all others. Hence this book, while announcing so positively the value of a universal principle, and developing the idea with earnest conviction, does not

XÜ INTRODUCTION.

hope for satisfactory practice from all wlio should be tlius indoctrinated. All that can be done is to supply the indispensable guiding tliougbt, in light of which successful management is possible. After all, tbe individual teacher, knowing his own peculiarities, and the particular circumstances under whicli he operates, mnst work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.

But the saddest admission to be raade is that both theory and art may fail. Given both the science and the skill of management as perfect as could be expected within the limits of human nature, and there are cases which resist all effort, be it ever so wise, patient, and persistent. Some pupils, through heredity, and home and street life, resist to the last the art of the divinely gifted teacher operating on the soundest principles. The school Organization is a power for good, but it need surprise no one that it cannot regenerate on the spot every specimen of humanity that comes within its influence. The State has been operating with imposing machinery for ages; but lo! we have the bad Citizen with us always. The Churchj with its manifold auxiliaries, works with ceaseless industry and inspired zeal to save fallen man, but man is still fallen. Social science, in the vigor, zeal, and hope of youth, has still set the millennium in the distant future. In the long run all of these worthy and heroic efforts are for progress ; but they must tolerate evil a while longer, trusting to the measured, peaceful course of time to prove that "through the ages one increasing purpose runs." The school, as a means of ameliorating

INTKODUCTION. XÜi

the condition of man, is grounded in sonnd faith, distinctly pronounced, and justifiable by its fruits. Social Science, the Church, the State, and the Family, with all their confusion of differences in theory, in creeds, and constitutions, do verily believe the school a power unto righteousness. Tliis Charge let the teacher accept in good faith, and put one more Shoulder to the wheel of universal progress; but not as a contract to bring at once all the discordant elements resisting the other institutions into one peaceful and harmonious school life. The teacher should not be expected to manage what all the other organizations , especially the family, fail to manage.

If any teacher should take the foregoing as an excuse for anything less than the wisest, the most persistent, and the most sympathetic effort to bring the resisting elements into the unity of school life, and thus save the pupil through unity with his own higher life, I should wish the admission had been suppressed. The teacher must accept the largest responsibility, and measure up to it as fully as possible; yet he should not die in despair because all imperfections in the world are not to be buried with him. This admission of the impotency of theory and art to deal effectively at once with certain conditions and pupils generally found in all schools, is made as the saving clause for those intensely earnest and sensitive teachers who feel conscience-stricken because some stubborn blood globule holds out against all wise and skilful effort. Is there not a limit somewhere to the teacher's responsibility? Even the great Teacher was forced to xiv INTRODUCTION.

exclaim, "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a heu gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! " Even so; they would not, and He could not. If they still will not, how can we?

SCHOOL MANAGEMENT.

THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW.

A sciiooL is quite a complex object, for it inclurles teachers, pupils, parents, officers, tax-payers, funds, houses, and apparatus. These diverse parts exist in nnity, since tliey co-operate to one end under tlie moving force of a single idea. All tlie diverse acts of the seferal factors focus themselves in tlie one single act for which all the aets are performed. Hence the sehool is an organic process. It is this procesa which is to be managed, und for which thero must be a fundamental law, — a law which gives unity to the diversity of funetions in the manifold parts, — the Law of Unity.

This is obviously the law of any organism whatever. An organism can have no other ; but this law needs detailed speeification to appear as the working power in sehool management. In defining the law to this end, it must first be observed that the law has its sanetion : —

Within the Organism Itself. — The law of the sehool is inherent in the sehool, and not externally imposed. The butanist may discover laws of growth in the blade of grass, but he cannot legislate for it. The physiologist may aimounce laws for the circulation of the blood, but he cannot dictate those laws. The law of an organism is its own inherent energy moving forward, by variety of functions in unity, to realize the end which called forth the organism. Laws cannot be imposed upon it; external legislation cannot control its action. The solar System moves on in the way appointed by its own Constitution.

This is all piain enough, but it does seem, in the case of social organisms, — objects of man's fixing, — that laws afe injected from without by those who set up the Organization. A second thought will reveal here also the inherence of law, and that what man does is but external manipulation in obeclience to inner law. However much man may fix up plans for any form of social regen eration, things plod on in their own seemingly stubborn way, in obedience to their own nature and destiny. All the learning and legislation of a nation cannot change at will the current of life in a Single city; and all helpfully done must be done in obedience to its own inherent law of development. The State itself proclaims what laws to write in the books for its own governing ; and it is obedient to them because they are its inward laws outwardly manifested. There is, however, a widely extended theory to the contrary, — a theory which Herbert Spencer combats in the following paragraph from his "Social Statics": —

"Practically, if not professedly, they (the disciples of Bentham) hold, with Thrasymachus , that nothing is intrinsically riglit or wrong, but that it becomes either by the dictum of tlie State. If we are to credit them, government determines what shall be morality, and not morality what shall be governmeut. They believe in no oracular principle by whose yea or nay we rnay be guided ; their Delphi is the House of Commons. By their account man lives and moves and has Ins being by legislative permit. llis freedom to do this or that is not natural, but conferred. The question, Has the Citizen any claim to the work of his hands? can be decided only by parlianientary division. If 'the ayes have it,' he has; if ' the noes, ' he has not."

Man may discover, and formulate in Statutes, laws in orgauizations, but the laws are still in the organizations, ready to challenge the fictions of man's ordaining. Laws and Statutes are not the same; they may even be antagonistic, and the law compelled to disown the Statute. The law of the school which concerns us here is not the school law found in the Statute books, but the inherent nature of the school as legislating for itself ; as giving law to all factors and functions, even to school law itself.

But within this large and eomplex organism all parts and phases are not equally authoritative. The law which binds in unity does not inhere in the external, objective, and fixed parts, but must be sought: —

Within the Organism as a Spiritual Process. — The fundamental law of the school is implied in the Statement that "the school is an organic spiritual unity." It is not merely the co- Operation of objective and apparently fixed factors, but a movement of life through external forms back to life again. The law is not to be found in tlie material, obtrusive, objective, and stationary factors in tlie process ; but within the inner life wliich moves the organism to the realization of its purpose, — in the spirit which makes alive to its work the apparent organism, but not in the apparent organism.

Everything exists in idea, in life and thought, before it can exist in objective reality; and the function of such objective thing is to realize the idea which created it. Such is the circle of its life and the law of its being. The idea rapid transit brought forth the railroad, and the railroad in turn must bring forth rapid transit. The railroad must relieve the pressure of life which creates it; but this pressure is a constant force, and the railroad is being perpetually created and held to the work of relieving the pressure. The idea by which it is realized must in turn be realized by it. Hence the railroad is not a fixed, dead, objective something, but a constant going out and returning to life; it is life. The objective thing cut loose from the life process is not a railroad; it vanishes into nothing when cut from its spiritual moorings. A railroad is not merely the external Organization of material parts, but a circle of life, which is its reality and its law.

The idea of developing the child by a systematic teaching process brings forth the objective school; and this in turn must bring forth the development of the child. The objective school must answer back to the life which supports it. It Stands as the middle terra, in a series, — between an idea and its realization; but it takes the whole series to constitute the school. The objective, fixed soniething called the school, is only a phase in the process, and is nothing apart from that process. It exists in and through realizing the idea by which it itself is realized. The real school is the whole process, not merely the objective phase of it; it is the constant outgoing of life through an external mediating agency back to life. This circle, again, and not merely the external Organization of fixed parts, is its reality and its law.

And this school process is still more complex. The idea which originates the school has two phases, — one that of a feit need for soraething to remove the limitations of life, and the other that of Instruction as a means of removing the limitations. The idea originating the external Organization purjjoses the freedom of the individnal through. Instruction. These are the Clements of the school in idea; neither can be oinitted, nor can they arise in any other Order. Instruction cannot be conceived without the idea of an end to be realized; and the idea of an external school cannot arise except under the thought of instruction. Each may exist in thought without the sueeeeding, but not withont the preceding; which shows that the subjeetive school is a movement in the direction named, — purpose, instruction, external Organization.

The foregoing elements of the school in idea reverse themselves in the process of realization; for then the

SCHOOL MANAGEMENT.

external Organization comes first, after which Instruction is given, and then the purpose is realized. Neither can tliis order be reversed. Tlie purpose cannot be realized without Instruction, and the Instruction cannot be given without organized rneans to that end. And tbese three phases of school can exist only on the foregoing three as a basis. Besides, they must exist in the reverse order, — are logically conditioned in that order. The first in idea is last in objective reality. An idea always reverses the order of its elements in the process of becoming external; the beginning becomes the end; "the first shall be last, and the last shall be first," as appears in the following diagram of the school process: —

The

The Idea

1. Purpose, or Need.

2. Instruction.

School ^ 3. Organization — Management.

4. Organization — Management.

5. Instruction.

School ■{ becoming Pkocess. The

Eeal School. [ 6. Purpose, or Need, Realized.

Thus the objective school Organization, both as idea and as objective reality, is the hinging-point on which the ideas, purpose, and Instruction fold back upon themselves as actualized Instruction and purpose. The ideal purpose and method of Instruction form the subject-matter in "The Philosophy of Teaching." The hinging-point, through which purpose and Instruction are turned back realized, is the subject-matter for " School-Management ; "

and the fundamental law of school management is diselosed in the fact that the subject to be treated is a hinging-point in the school process, and not a thing in and of itself.

Thus we are brought to the fact of supreme practical Importance; namely, that the fundamental law Controlling the school as an external Organization cannot be dictated by that Organization, but has its origin in the process taken as a whole. While the law must arise from within, as shown at the outset, yet the law does not get its authority from any part, but from the school as a whole, taken in its entire circle of activity. The part, such as the external Organization, with which management has to do, receives its law from the Avhole. The law of the school is its informing life, its inherent nature, which finds expression in the objective something with which school management has to deal. All the organic factors of the external Organization, including the school law itself, must be tested by an idea which is antecedent to, and which logically conditions, the external and objective school

The external Organization, instead of dictating the law, may even be in Opposition to the law. Even the Statute embodying school law may be antagonistic to the law of the school. School directors, under a false sense of economy, sometimes lower the tax levy and shorten the school term. This is done by permission of the school law but in Opposition to the law of the school. In faithful execution of the school law, it may be necessary to crowd sixty pupils into the care of one teacher; but the idea which creates the school has not its freedom under such conditions. Under substantially the same conditions different States have different laws regulating the supply of books to pupils. These laws cannot all be best; and in so declaring we recognize something inherent in the school by which the school law itself is to be tested. Without such recognition school questions could not be argued. While never agreeing as to what is best in school Organization and law, we do tacitly agree always that there is a best, if we could but discover it, and that this best is determined by something inherent in the nature of the school underlying external Organization.

It thus appears that the established order is not the ethical order. The fugitive slave law is rendered null and void by the inner law. History is a record of conflicts between the ideal and inner truth of things, and external forms which were fixed by custom and law. There is a perennial strife between those who are loyal to forms as against the idea, and those who are loyal to the iclea as against the form. There are those who seem to think that the external condition of things is the law, and therefore unassailable. Especially prone to hold this view are those who are a part of the fixed System. It seems to be the order, when a school System becomes fixed and crystallized, for those who form a part of the System to plead the fixed order as the ethical order, and to brand as iconoclasts or anarchists those who hold that the idea must not be violated.

" Hence every moral and social aclvance has to fight its way not merely against the bad who oppose all order, but against the traditionally good, who believe that the social order is constant, and that what has been the ideal adjustraent in the past mnst remain the ideal of condnct for all time. These conscientious but short-sighted conservatives are always more bitter and powerful opponents of the new ideal than the unprincipled rabble. The worst enemy of the better is the good. It was the constituted authorities, the conservative aristocracy of Athens, not the lawless and irreligious masses, who condemned Socrates to drink the hemlock. It was the Scribes and the Pharisees and the chief priests and the principal men of Jerusalem who crucified Jesus. . . .

"The higher form of this struggle comes between the law as the representative of the existing order, — or rather of the order which existed when the law was framed, — and the individuals who see the vision of the better order that is about to be, and demand institutions, customs, Standards, duties, liberties large enough to meet the requirement of the social order that has come into being since the law was made, or Stands ready to come as soon as the hard crust of the old order can be broken so as to give the new life room. Here society is behind the individual, and is trying to hold him back. Thus the average good man is equally at war with the bad man who is below him, and the progressively good man who is above him. The reformer and the criminal are about equally obnoxious to the man of average goodness and intelligence. The prophets and the betrayers of their country are equally odious, and promiscuously stoned. The Saviour is crucified between two thieves." 1

The forms through which life realizes itself, whether school, family, society, church, or state, tend to fix themselves, and to check the life which grows through them. This is natural and inevitable. A considerable part of man's effort must be spent in readjusting the forms of life to the growing conditions of life. Man lives in advance of the customs of society, the laws of the state, the creeds of the chnrch, and the methods and Statutes of the school. When the tension becomes too great, as it does naturally and periodically, the old forms must be readjusted, or new ones substituted. It will be evolution or rerolution. To avoid conflict and bondage, forms should grow with the growing life. The radical sunders old forms before the life is ready for the new; the conservative clings to old forms after they are outgrown; the serpent shows more wisdom in shedding the old skin through forming the new. One of the serious problems of school management is how to shed modes, forms, and customs through forming the new, that no violence may be done in the transition. The iconoclast would not have to break our idols, and with them our faith, if he would spend his time in preparing us to worship better things. The wisdom of the serpent in these matters would be the harmlessness of the dove.

But in making the change from the old to the new,

1 Social Theology, — Dr. Htde.

wliat is and what has been in externa! Organization, while serving as a basis of action, can never be the advancing light — can never reveal what ouglit to be. The history of education is usually justified in a teacher's course, on the ground that in knowing what has been, it is known what ought to be. But fche history of education cannot be read except in light of the unrealized ideal. History shows how far the idea has succeeded in realizing itself, and this is vital to the teacher; but to learn what has been, in order to find in such external a Standard for Imitation, is the servitude of form, and not the freedom of an idea. The best text-book on a given subject cannot be made by averaging texts already made; and the best one existing cannot be excelled without recognizing an ideal beyond anything accomplished. To study school Systems with a view to finding a Standard in the average best thing, is to keep the Standard from advancing. If progress is to be made, the Standard must be created and set up in advance of anything realized. Not what is, but what ought to be, is the paramount question. The law of the school requires that the teacher struggle against environment and existing forms to a fuller realization of the idea than has yet been attained. The strongest tension possible must be maintained up to the risk of breaking with the forms and environment in which the life is rooted. This law of school life is the universal law of Irving, which holds that the real must continually yield to the ideal as it presses onward to realize itself.

This tension between the real and the ideal reveals itself clearly in the two classes of edncational theorists and practitioners : those who construct the System a priori, and those who construct it a posteriori, — from the causal force of an idea, and from experience. The first, in the extreme type, ignore the concrete conditions, and build an educational Utopia; the second, in the extreme, see nothing but the concrete fixed conditions, and sink below the best already attained. Of the first type there are very few; and even their mistakes are inspiringly helpful ; of the second, and of those tending that way, is the great body of the profession, and with them rests the professional crimes against childhood. The crime of all crimes, so frequently committed by teachers and superintendents, is that of comfortably and safely adjusting to existing conditions and prevailing sentiments among those for whom they labor. Whether a teacher be inspired by the idea, so that he presses onward towards its realization, or whether simply wise in harmoniously fitting into prevailing modes and opinions, determines, more than any other one thing, whether he bless or blight the life he is supposed to save. It is worthy of note that those teachers put down in the world's history for eminent Service have been inspired with an idea which pressed firmly and constantly against existing conditions ; while others have gone into hibernation to spend as securely and comfortably as possible the winter of their professional lives. Of course one must not break with his environment, for to do so would be to lose his usefulness; Imt if he levels to it, he has no usefulness to lose. What needs to be insisted ou is the presence of an inner law, which must constantly re-shape and mould the external condition of things, on the basis of the existing condition of things. Every ideal must rise upon the real to which it is in bondage. Outer forms and laws are but stepping-stones of the living idea, which constructs for itself new stepping-stones as they are needed.

Thus the broadest requirement in ade b} r the fundamental law of the school is that the Organization be adjusted to the demand of the ideal; that it never be regarded as fixed and an end; but that it be a perfect means standing between ideal purpose and Instruction on the one hand, and realized 'Instruction and purpose on the other, — the teaching process in idea, and the teaching process in objective reality. A school Organization is tested by ascertaining how fully the thought and purpose of those in whom the Organization rests has been realized by its agency. Of course it is of first importance to have a high ideal in the teaching process; but this ideal belongs to the philosophy of teaching, and we are here concerned only with its adequate realization through the school as an external means.

Thus the real school, from which law emanates, is mind in effort to unfold mind; and not the school-house and appliances, school officers and school law. This effort binds into a school, Citizens, parents, officers, teachers, and pupils. These minds may not be actively making such effort in order that there be a school, but they must be permanently disposed to make it. The scliool exists during vacation. A university does not vanisli at comraencement. A State university is a certain disposition in the minds of the State, — a spiritual power to act througli extern al agencies in a specified process of Instruction. The whole external Organization falls to pieces in a moment when such disposition is withdrawn. Then the school-house is no longer a school-house; a trustee no longer a trustee; the teacher ceases to be a teacher. Thus again it appears that the objective school, cut loose from its spiritual moorings, vanishes. This cannot be too often insisted upon, for we are so much accustomed to feel that the external, objective, and perhaps material something is the reality; and that therefore laws and principles of Operation innere in it, and are to be deduced from it. We are quite strictly materialists in school management; setting objective and fixed forras and rules harcl ancl fast over against a growing and pulsating life.