Co-Ordinator, Not Supervisor

Abstract

Within the past few years there has been a marked tendency to develop the field of supervision in the high schools, junior colleges, teachers' colleges, and even in the liberal-arts colleges. Although this movement is laudable and, if properly conducted, may yield high returns in better teaching at the levels at which teaching is reputed to be notoriously poor, the technique and the general spirit of this supervision have, up to the present, been too closely identified with the type practiced in the elementary schools. The long experience in elementary-school supervision and the high degree of success attained have produced a field of endeavor which has its own attitudes, vocabulary, psychology, rules, and techniques. These are often extended in toto to the high-school and the college levels. This extension fails to recognize the essential differences in teaching personnel, curriculum, educational objectives, student attitudes, and subject-matter fields at the various educational levels. For example, the high-school teacher tends, in this day of sharp competition and high academic and professional requirements, to be not only somewhat of an expert in his subject but also a person who has considered the educational implications of his department. He is, as a specialist, keen and eager, not only to advance in his own field, but also to prove the social usefulness and importance of his chosen subject matter. He has considered closely the best methods of presenting his materials and feels himself quite competent in the special method of his study. He has the zeal of a missionary and is usually an intelligent propagandist. To him teaching is an art, challenging the teacher to produce results by capitalizing on the sum total of his peculiar and unique abilities and special aptitudes. He feels that he has long ago passed the stage of standardized mediocrity. Such teachers are not rare in the high schools, junior colleges, teachers' colleges, and liberal-arts colleges. They resent the assump-