THE TEACHER'S DEMAND
Sia,—Just in case anyone should imagine the " Head of Maintained School " is writing on the basis of exceptional experience, and that the point he makes is therefore not generally important, I venture to say that, after having served both in maintained and in independent secondary schools, my experience fully supports all that he said in his letter. Administrators and education committees, except in a few cases, deserve every respect, but so do the heads and staffs of schools. The vital point, however, is that only those who are actually engaged in a school, are really competent to deal with the life of the school.
As Sanderson of bundle used to say, those who are not in harness have quite a different outlook, and are really unable to appreciate the problems involved. It is therefore essential to determine the limitations of administration and stop it from encroaching unduly on the educational
function of the school, which can only be properly dealt with by teachers. The desire officially expressed by administrators for the aboll tion of direct grant schools, shows that administration has a to encroach unnecessarily on the functions which belong properly to teachers. It is sometimes said today that only experimental schools sho be independent. Those who say this do not realise how clearly the are, by this statement, condemning the general tendency towards adminis trative regimentation. If experiment demands freedom from undo administrative control, there should be no such control in education a all, for every school ought, within reason, to be-able to make experiment The present-day tendency of administration must be checked.
Instead of encroaching more and more on the province of the teacher the administrator should strive to keep himself and his administratic• framework as much as possible in the background. He should remem that as far as the real life of the school is concerned, he is merely supervisor of the material means necessary for the running of the school He must steadily resist any desire to act as a super-headmaster, or as social, moral or educational potentate over the lives and services of th teachers within his area. The ideal administrator should seek to increase not decrease, the number of direct-giant schools, because the greater th independence of a school is, the more fully can it perform its pro
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