STATISTICS COLLECTED BY THE BUREAU OF EDUCATION IN 1873.

The following summary is a recapitulation of instructors and pupils in the various public and private schools included in the statistical tables of the appendix.*

The importance of intelligent oversight of schools finds continually increasing recognition with our people. In some form, almost every State and Territory in the Union has now both general and local superintendence. The system abides where it has already found a lodgment and steadily makes its way to points beyond. Arkansas has in 1873, exchanged its former circuit-supervision for the closer inspection of countysuperintendency. Indiana has put county-superintendents in place of the county-examiners it had before. North Carolina is calling for a kindred change and Maine desires the restoration of the superintendency it had. Tennessee, after abolishing it, has restored it. And although, from false ideas of economy or from discontent with the imperfect work which small salaries secure, there have been mutterings against it in some quarters, good supervision abundantly justifies itself by its effects, wherever a judicious liberality provides salaries sufficient to secure the proper kind of men and enable them to give their undivided time to the performance of the duties of their office. A universal adoption of the system on this liberal plan would probably do more than another single thing to promote the interests of education in the States.

That there shall be some sort of supervision is decided by the general suffrage above ndicated. Headship and oversight, in one form or another, are, indeed, essential to every organization. Order comes constantly from settled law; and law, men perceive, must not only have an authoritative source, but also some executive direction. Hence heads for every household, engineers for every machine, officers for every society, and governments to enact regulations for communities and see that these regulations are enforced. No farm without some head farmer; no factory without its foreman; no commonwealth without a line of associated agencies to look after the administration of the laws. The idea of experienced supervision meets us every where; that of abandonment of valuable interests to mere blind impulse, nowhere.

*This summary does not include pupils in city-school-systems, as they are presumed to be included in the State-systems.

And in the case of the public schools such supervision is called for by peculiar circumstances. Our educational systems are yet comparatively new and need skilled watching to prevent friction in their working and bring all parts in harmonious accord. Our territorial limits are immense; and, without this skillful watching, incompetence, mismanagement, or petty tyranny may easily be hidden in the remoter country schools and in the intense life of cities, and work out miserable issues. We have, moreover, in our States and Territories, upwards of 200,000 teachers. These are of all degrees of qualification for their work; some especially and laboriously educated for it; some with but just the ordinary training of elementary and grammar-schools. Great numbers of them have had little opportunity for witnessing the best methods of management and teaching; others, whatever their natural or acquired capacities, enter the ranks each year as raw recruits, to take the places of retired or dying veterans. With such material, some oversight and guidance, in the great task of forming the minds, manners, and morals of our youth, are obviously a necessity.

Of course, this necessity existing, the more experienced, able, active, and continuous the oversight and guidance can be made, the better it must be for all concerned. A man that undertakes a superintendency of schools with little preparation for it duties, and gives these only such time as he can spare from more absorbing occupations, can hardly exercise a permanently beneficial influence. The flutter excited by his hasty entrances and hurried examinations soon vanishes, and schools sink back into the old routine, with a sigh of relief or of exhaustion. But let one, energetic, scholarly, judicious, with thorough knowledge of the subjects to be taught and of the happiest methods of instruction, give his whole time and heart to this great work, and there will be a leverage beneath the schools to lift them to a higher elevation. Moving continuously, among the teachers and pupils, in thorough sympathy with them and with their work, he will animate the despondent, stimulate the slow, enlighten the inexperienced, show this one how to manage, that one how to teach, and, cheering skill by kind encouragement, aiding uncertainty with wise advice, will infuse a life not previously existent, bring order out of whatever confusion may have reigned, and mold the various elements beneath his influence into an accordant and harmoniously-working whole. His worth with parents and citizens is equally effective. The general securing of such men for superintendents would introduce a new era in the school-history of the United States. To get them, however, to anything like the extent that is desirable, there will need to be, in many quarters, a large increase of salaries and greater care in the selection of the men. Men of high character and liberal culture are too much in demand in other lines to give themselves to the superintendency of schools, without the means of such comfortable livelihood as will relieve them from oppressive family-care and enable them to give to the employment sufficient time to make it a success. But, except in cities, the offered compensation is now below $1,000 almost everywhere. New York alone appears to actually reach that rate throughout her counties, though Pennsylvania approaches it with her least salaries and in many cases goes beyond it. In Texas the rate has been nominally $1,200, but in fact much less. In Kansas it comes down to $900; in New Jersey the average is below $800; in California, about $620; in Nevada, $575; in Arkansas, $400; in Illinois and Kentucky, apparently about the same; in Iowa, $390; in West Virginia, $254; in Tennessee, $228; in Virginia, $217, with the possibility of increase from the county-treasury, of which increase as an actuality there appears no trace. In almost all our older States such sums are wholly insufficient for effective family-support. As long as only such continue to be paid, the superintendents must either be unmarried men, (which is not generally desirable,) or must have private means to supplement their salaries, or must devote their main time to other business and give just occasional spare hours to the schools. Efficient, energetic supervision is hardly to be hoped for in these circumstances. A first requisite in order to this is an extensive increase of salaries, enabling men of proper character to make the superintendency their only work and stimulating them to the bestowment on it of their highest powers and energies. The larger towns and cities wisely bid for the best talent with salaries of $2,000 to $5,000 and find it pay to do so.

A lengthening of the term of office would be another means to the same end. In by far the greater portion of the States the superintendents are chosen to serve for only one- and two-year-terms. This may be long enough for men that have other occupations to fall back on, and doubtlesss seems to good school-teachers too long to endure the mismanagement of ignorant or tyrannical incumbents; but it is too short to win from more permanent employments a sufficient number of really first-class men. Such can make more at other work than can be made from a superintendency of schools, and, though they may be willing to forego prospective gains for the sake of exerting an influence for good, must have more time than just a year or two for the exercise of a far-reaching influence. They must have this time to form full acquaintance with their fields, to sow in them the good seed of a thorough education, and to develop from it the harvests they desire. They must have it to weed out incompetent schoolteachers, to bring those of higher qualifications to the front, to thoroughly test any new system of instruction, to accomplish from it the best possible results, to see the completion of large plans for school-improvement, and to leave some permanently visible impression of their having lived and labored in these fields. And since this cannot be, with such short terms, unless through frequent re-elections, of which one always must stand painfully in doubt, a large proportion of the scholarly and able men that ought to be in the superintendency of schools drift off from this useful and honorable occupation to others that give prospects of more settled homes and more visible reward for their exertions. To remedy the loss which hence ensues and to secure the most valuable style of service, will it not pay-besides increasing salaries-to lengthen out the term of office generally to the three years of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virgina, or the four years of Florida, Georgia, Illinois, and Texas, with such prospects of a re-election upon good behavior as shall encourage hope of a still greater permanency?

Till something like this comes to be the case, the counties will have to be content with less than the highest measure of efficiency-with service snatched from other occupations and sandwiched in between engagements here and there with men, too, who, however conscientious and inherently able they may be, still must quite often lack the rounded education, finished culture, and well-proved powers which only long terms and fair salaries can command.