PARTICIPATION OF TEACHERS IN THE

ADMINISTRATION OF SCHOOLS

BY HARLAN UPDEGRAFF

Professor of Educational Administration, and Director of Bureau of Educational Measurements

In common with many other elements of our political and social life the administration of our public schools is hardly beyond the early stages of its evolution. Previous to the late Civil War it had been determined that our schools should be free and that they should be administered through Boards of Education, which should have the full responsibility for the control of the schools in accordance with the laws of the State subject to the check of the people in each community as expressed in the regular elections. It was not until after the Civil War that the large growth of cities on the one hand and the enactment of compulsory education on the other produced the great city school system of today and in consequence the large administrative problems involved therein. Concomitant with these movements we have had the development of the science of education and great improvement in the training of teachers including the expert in school management and school administration. The lay superintendent of the earlier period has been transformed gradually into the expert engineer. The administrative relationships between this expert and the Board of Education and through the Board to the people were slowly worked out before the opening of the recent world war and the rules and regulations of many of our city school systems were shaped in accordance with those principles which were recognized as most fruitful for the efficiency of the schools. They had not, however, been given the permanence and stability which necessarily comes with their enactment into the laws of the states.

The fourth personal factor in the scheme of school administration, namely, the teacher, had not before the war received the attention that it should by way of giving it a place in the management of schools, altho forerunners of the new era have appeared in a number of places. It remained for this world conflict to bring forcibly to the attention of the teachers themselves and also of the people the problems that are involved in the determination of the relationships of teachers to each of the three other factors the expert or superintendent, the school board, and the people.

Our public schools are intended to serve the ends of society in the education of children. Ideally, they serve the needs of individuals by giving every child that education which is best for him, but if as a matter of fact, service were the main spring of action, few difficulties would arise in their administration.

Unfortunately, perhaps, the running of schools requires money. And the better the service the more the money needed. In consequence, throughout our entire land we have a clash between two opposite parties in the administration of schools-the liberal progressive, which supports the view that the schools should be made to render the largest possible service to society by affording the best means for individual development, and the conservative party which believes in restricting the schools to the narrowest practicable limits. It is the appearance in another form of the world-wide clash of ideals which we are now so keenly expressing in the commercial and industrial world-service vs. profits, and which has been pointed out by the expert in industrial and commercial management, H. L. Gantt, in his recent monograph on Organizing for Work. Some enterprises, on the one hand, take pride in the service they render the public and seek to extend it and improve it, asking only a reasonable profit; other firms make profits their first aim and endeavor to make them as large as conditions permit. Indeed they often refuse to render service badly needed by the public until the desired profit is forthcoming. This clash between profit and service

is becoming acute in our nation. Organized industry and business in pursuit of profits rather than service just now have the upper hand. Many persons think, unless they are brought under control and unless the owners of enterprises are led to realize that they have a social obligation which is superior to their selfish ends and that they must seek to render service primarily, and to develop it and to extend it and in return therefore receive a profit proportionate to the service they render, our country is very apt to experience in the next few years a social revolution which will be characterized by extreme action and great waste but which will put business and industry under such social control as will compel it to render service to the common good.

This opposition between service and profits has existed in the schools from the very beginning in the form of a struggle between service and taxes, which are profits in a negative form. The conflict for free schools continued over half a century or more. After it was legally established that the wealth of the nation should be made to pay for the education of the nation, the party opposed to rendering the service for the common welfare has sought to confine expenditures for schools to the minimum. The advocates of public education have had to fight their way year by year and although they have on the whole succeeded and although our public schools have during the past quarter of a century had a remarkable growth, nevertheless we have now reached another crisis in their history. The development of the social sciences, of psychology, and of education, the incoming of the education expert, the wider and deeper interests in social betterment among the masses of our people-all have set higher standards for the public schools. Greater service must be furnished in order to satisfy these demands, which the outcome of the war has established as not only just, but peremptory for the best interests of society; this means that larger amounts of money should be raised at once through taxes. Very often the same forces, which at times seem stronger than the Government, and able to exact what profits they choose are striving to

limit the taxes to such amounts as to prevent the schools from rendering adequate service. The struggle between the progressive school party whose watchword is service and the conservative reactionary party whose shibboleth is low taxes is in progress and should become even more intensive than at present. I have no doubt the result will be favorable to the ideal of service but just from what sources these taxes shall be secured and in what amounts, for taxes must be reasonable just as profits should be reasonable, and how teachers may be adequately paid, additional teaching and supervisory force provided, and new departments established constitutes one of the most important educational problems of today.

But the crisis in our public schools today is not wholly economic. The same democratic spirit which seeks to use the wealth of all in the form of taxes for the good of all likewise favors the participation of all in the control of enterprises in which each has a part. And just as the world war has brought out more clearly than ever before this struggle between profits and service so it has emphasized the struggle between autocratic and democratic control of enterprises of every kind. Just as in business and industry certain enterprises have had as one of their first aims the promotion of the well being and happiness of their employees and have, in some cases at least, provided forms of organization which permit their participation in management, and certain other enterprises have given little or no consideration whatever to the good of the workman or his opinion regarding the operations of the plant, so in the schools we have, on the one hand, examples of careful consideration given to the happiness and welfare of all employees and of their participation in management, and, on the other hand, cases in which teachers have received little regard either concerning their individual welfare or their value to the school in the shaping of its procedure. There are autocratic boards of directors and managers in schools as well as in business.

The parties in this two-fold crisis-economic and administra

tive naturally have common lines of differentiation. The man who is undemocratic in his attitude toward supporting enterprises for the common good and who seeks to conserve his wealth for himself tends to extend his individual control to the widest bounds and to oppose participation of others in control; while those who believe in the common support of public enterprises developed to the highest efficiency naturally tend to approve of cooperative control. The latter are promoting the ends of a democracy in producing the widest range of shared interests and social contacts; while the former are conservative, autocratic, reactionary, and oppose cooperative endeavors and favor the preservation of an order which leaves each to work out his own salvation.

It is in the welter of this two-fold social crisis that the teachers of the public schools now find themselves. Many different propositions have been submitted as possible ways for dealing with the situation, some of them reflecting vision, sanity and true patriotism; others are narrow, biased and selfish-unworthy of the profession of teaching.

Some managers of schools and boards of education have sought to allay the unrest by increasing pay, in the belief that if workers feel they are well paid, they will then follow directions. Some teachers, on the other hand, seek merely increases in salaries and are quite content to do whatever they are told and to do as little of that as possible.. And oftentimes those that receive most, give least. It is also just as true that many managers of schools wish to secure large pay for their teachers but do not wish their advice and assistance in the management. We have had in the past few months many examples of abortive attempts to solve the existing situation due to a lack of understanding and appreciation of the principles of efficiency management, as well as of forces that are working irresistibly in the social life.

It is the administrative aspect of this two-fold crisis that we are to consider particularly today. While the economic is more immediate, it is not more important for the welfare of the schools. In fact they should both be solved in the light of