Apkil 20, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



373 



education generally throughout the state. 

 To change this condition the obstacle pre- 

 sented by the method now in vogue for 

 choosing the chief state educational officer 

 needs to be eliminated, with a view to 

 opening up to the state a chance to go into 

 the markets of the whole country with the 

 money the state feels able to pay to secure 

 the services of the best prepared person 

 available for the work at hand. The office 

 of state superintendent of public instruc- 

 tion is, potentially at least, a much more 

 important office than that of president of 

 the state university ; actually it is far from 

 being so. It is not difficult to imagine what 

 would be the condition of our state univer- 

 sities if we had continually selected the 

 presidents of these institutions from among 

 the residents of the state and by the same 

 methods that have prevailed for so long in 

 the case of the chief educational officer of 

 the school system of the state. An impor- 

 tant line of progress for the near future, 

 then, in the ease of both state and county 

 superintendencies of education, is the open- 

 ing up of these offices to educational com- 

 petition, as is now the case with high-school 

 principalships and city school superin- 

 tendents. That such a change would give 

 much encouragement to the study of the 

 important larger problems of national wel- 

 fare which surround the proper organiza- 

 tion and administration of state and county 

 systems of public education, there can be 

 little question. 



Turning now to the city school district 

 we find much better conditions prevailing 

 in the matter of the selection of educa- 

 tional executives. City superintendencies 

 and high-school and elementary-school 

 principalships have for a long time been 

 on an open competitive basis in all our bet- 

 ter managed cities, and in such a prohibi- 

 tive protective tariiff against brains and 

 competency from the outside has not pre- 

 vailed. The selections by city boards of 



education have not always been of the 

 best — frequently otherwise — but the possi- 

 bilities of a career and a chance for con- 

 structive service have in general been kept 

 open, and these have made their appeal to 

 certain types of minds. As a result, it has 

 been the problems of school organization 

 and administration as they relate to cities 

 which have awakened interest and been 

 studied most carefully. An examination 

 of our educational journals will show that 

 it has been the problems of city school or- 

 ganization and administration that have 

 filled their pages, and the announcements 

 of courses in our normal schools and col- 

 leges of education show that it is the city 

 problems which are being studied by their 

 students. These are offered everywhere, 

 but the number of institutions offering 

 courses for the study of the principles 

 underlying the proper organization and ad- 

 ministration of state and county school 

 systems is limited indeed. The city has 

 offered the prizes for administrative com- 

 petency and adequate professional prepa- 

 ration, and practically all who have trained 

 for school administrative service have 

 trained with service in the city as the end 

 in view. 



Yet even in city educational organiza- 

 tion many obstacles to educational prog- 

 ress still remain. The most of these are 

 survivals of the school district or village 

 stage in our educational evolution, or they 

 are obstacles that arise from the lack of any 

 proper conception as to the fundamental 

 principles underlying proper educational 

 organization and administration on the 

 part of the public. The proper organiza- 

 tion and administration of a city school 

 system has become a highly expert piece 

 of administrative service, and adequate re- 

 sults are no longer possible if proper 

 administrative procedure is continually 

 interfered with by the well-meaning igno- 

 rance or the personal-friendship ideas of 



