School management; a text-book for county training schools and normal schools

Preface

If any apology is thought to be due for adding to the number of books on School Management now in print, it may perhaps be found in the statement that this is the latest one, and possibly the further fact that it represents the fruits of a lifetime spent in the schools and in the training of teachers. School conditions have greatly changed in recent years, and books on s.chool economy which were excellent twenty years ago are now antiquated.

Much more is now demanded of teachers than formerly. The growing tendency to devolve upon the school responsibilities which were once recognized as duties of the home has greatly changed the relationship of the teacher to his charge. And the progress of sanitary science together with the movement just mentioned has tended to make him a more important and responsible personage than ever before. He has, in fact, become an official of the state, with larger functions and greater need for intelligence concerning those functions than the old-time pedagogue.

"While endeavoring to recognize this newer conception of the teacher 's office, and the greater burdens which it imposes, it has been the desire of the author to make a small book rather than a bulky

4 PREFACE

one; and there has been a resolute purpose to exclude padding and time-honored commonplace.

The work has not been written throughout on the same scale in the matter of compactness. Many of its paragraphs are texts, rather than discussions, the purpose being to leave room for the instructor to exercise his proper functions by way of amplification, even to the point of making his pupils do a part in supplementing the text. In other cases, as in the chapter on Moral Training, where amplification by the teacher might be more difficult, a more complete treatment of topics has been attempted ; though there has been no attempt at exhaustiveness. The book is intended to serve the needs of young teachers and those in preparation for the work, and clearness has been aimed at rather than profundity.

A word needs to be said perhaps concerning the use of the personal pronoun as regards its gender. While due respect has been paid, in the majority of instances, to the grammatical canon requiring the use of the masculine form where both sexes are considered, there has been intentional deviation from it, with seeming inconsistency possibly, in many cases, the feminine form being freely used in connections where it seemed more appropriate to the conditions under discussion. The critical reader will also find some repetitions, the same thought, in perhaps the same words, being introduced in different connections. This is not accidental, neither is it unpedagogical.

The writer wishes to acknowledge his obligation

PKEFACE 5

to Prof. George C. Shutts for judicious counsel throughout the work, to Prof. W. S. Watson for helpful criticism on those chapters relating to hygiene and sanitation, and to Walter E. Larson, State Inspector of Rural Schools, for many valuable suggestions. A. S.

Whitewater, Wis., November, 1910.

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of. Congress

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introductory 9

II. The Physical Environment 14