st to-day. Of
what practical value is all our study of educational psychology or the
history of education, our child study, our experimental pedagogy, if it
does not finally result in the devising of better methods of teaching,
and make the teacher more skillful and effective in his work."--T.M.
BALLIET: "Undergraduate Instruction in Pedagogy," _Pedagogical
Seminary_, vol. xvii, 1910, p. 67.]

~IV~

THE TEST OF EFFICIENCY IN SUPERVISION[10]

I

I know of no way in which I can better introduce my subject than to
describe very briefly the work of a superintendent who once furnished me
with an example of a definite and effective method of supervision. This
man was a "long range" superintendent. It was impossible for him to
visit his schools very frequently, and so he did the next best thing: he
had the schools brought to him. When I first saw him he was poring over
a pile of papers that had just come in from one of his schools. I soon
discovered that these papers were arranged in sets, each set being made
up of samples taken each week from the work of the pupils in the schools
under his supervision. The papers of each pupil were arranged in
chronological order, and by looking through the set, he could note the
growth that the pupil in question had made since the beginning of the
term. Upon these papers, the superintendent recorded his judgment of the
amount of improvement shown both in form and in content.

I was particularly impressed by the character of his criticisms. There
was nothing vague or intangible about them. Every annotation was clear
and definite. If penmanship happened to be the point at issue, he would
note that the lines were too close together; that the letters did not
have sufficient individuality; that the spaces between the words were
not sufficiently wide; that the indentation was inadequate; that the
writing was cramped, showing that the pen had not been held properly;
that the margin needed correction. If the papers were defective from the
standpoint of language, the criticisms were equally clear and definite.
One pupil had misspelled the same word in three successive papers. "Be
sure that this word appears in the next spelling list," was the comment
of the superintendent. Another pupil habitually used a bit of false
syntax: "Place this upon the list of errors to be taken up and
corrected." Still others were uncertain about paragraphing: "Devote a
language lesson to the paragraph before