senting evidence from sources previously supposed to be dependable.*

Except incidentally, the purpose of this article is not to call attention to that report and the interesting reception it is said to have met with, but to make exhibit of certain additional facts, relating to some of the same schools, but like those of the report, having a far wider application; and suggesting that from the familiar hypothesis that anybody can teach English, some administrators are turning back to the much older one, that English will take care of itself-that it does not need to be taught at all.

It is possible to defend the thesis that, in an English-speaking country, the responsibility of an English teacher includes pretty nearly everything not specifically assigned to somebody else; that it is his duty to take care of remainders after everybody else has been helped or has helped himself. Were this proved or admitted, it could hardly make the position of an English teacher more uncomfortable than it is now, nor would it greatly increase its responsibility, but it might bring it some part of the recognition and honor due. Perhaps if there were no mathematics teachers, it might be considered the duty of an English teacher to include certain essentials and fundamentals of mathematics in the field of his training, merely because somebody ought to do it. Could a much better reason be assigned for requiring vocational guidance of English teachers? So the indefinite number of things that English teachers are called upon to shoulder, whether related to English or not, may be received at the English foundling hospital temporarily, even if under protest, while demanding for them proper asylum elsewhere, and for English the emergency aid needed to care for them. To regard the odds and ends of "outside" things as part or parts of the English teacher's work, to consider that English comprises everything that needs to be done, less what others happen to have in charge, is a tacit and probably

The incident cited recalls another at an N. E. A. meeting, when a speaker had stated that the average assignment of pupils to an English teacher in schools representing the entire country was 130. A school administrator rose and forcefully denied that in his state a single case of that sort could be found; whereupon a furious teacher from that state sprang to her feet and gave testimony to a personal assignment of 165 pupils. So the war between fact and administrative assertion goes merrily on; the facts do not seem to win, but their vitality remains unimpaired; among them the fact that assignments of 200 or 250 pupils are still made in cold blood.

unintentional recognition of its supreme importance and dignity. "Oh, let the English teacher do it," while usually meant otherwise, is really a compliment, as when gamins throw mud at a boy whose clothes are clean; though, evidently, if such compliments are too numerous, the English teacher will have to call for help.

Of course, the preceding reasoning would apply to janitor work, if there never had been any janitors; and many teachers can testify that it does sometimes so apply. But as mathematics is now, by common consent, not in the English field, so is "janitoring" outside the teaching field altogether. What then of the authorities of any school, otherwise fully and normally equipped, that employ no janitor, but divide the janitoring among the teachers-incidentally assigning a disproportionate part of it to the English department-and consider any questioning of the arrangement as "insubordination"?

The purpose of this article is to ask such a question regarding something of about the same educational rank as janitor work, very useful and necessary, of course, but not requiring professional training and skill,—it might be called school bookkeeping. In certain large schools of New Jersey, as perhaps in other states, the complete list of teachers' prescribed duties, almost all of them requiring the filling of blanks, or the making of reports upon printed forms or otherwise, include no fewer than sixty items, the printed forms varying from ordinary cards and card sizes to sheets of fifteen by twenty inches.*

Some work of this character may, of course, be part of the necessary duty of every teacher in the organization and administration of any school; but in this day of scientific study of school problems, if a school executive knows little of teaching, as sometimes happens, but assumes to be an expert in "educational measurements," or merely in devising additions to administrative red tape, it may easily be so increased as to become insupportable when added to regular teaching duty.

Even then, if such details of administration or survey were handled by administrators in person or through special assistants,

In some schools, to send lists and sample blanks out for examination and criticism is an offence against discipline.

employed for their special duty as janitors are, no objection could be made, unless by taxpayers; or if such work really is necessary and must be required of teachers, because only teachers are competent for it, it would be both fair and easy to make allowance for it in time or in pay. If such allowance be not made, then fairness would require that such work, when obligatory, should be equally distributed among all teachers-the extra burden shared by all alike; and so doubtless it would be in most schools. But, unfortunately, equal sharing is not the rule in ali; though why in unfair schools teachers of English should be singled out for special unfairness is another question. The only answer thus far suggested is that as English teachers have repeatedly proved that their teaching load is far heavier than that of the teachers of any other subject, they ought, for attempting more or less fruitlessly to make that fact public, to be punished by making their labor heavier still.

The possible extent of this extra labor, even when properly distributed, may be shown by incidental illustration from a school for teachers. In this school was a skilled and experienced supervisor for English, as for other subjects, at all times charged with the direction of all the details of all the teaching of all the English classes by all the student-teachers. Here also was a highly inventive principal, whose theoretical knowledge of teaching was severely limited on the side of English, who presently invented a report sheet eight and one-half by twenty-one inches in size, to be copiously filled out in duplicate by the English supervisor for each student-teacher for each recitation each day; one copy for the student-teacher, the other for the principal's office. To prepare these reports would have required practically all the attention of the supervisor during every recitation, to the exclusion of all other duty. The story ends more happily than some, for no reports were filed, though they would have served a good purpose if it had been physically possible to use them.

While a single report is not commonly sufficient, as in the instance cited, to stop all regular business, that instance may afford some hint of the dangers latent in sixty varieties of reports

and duties in a single school. Here are a few of the sixty items, to show character and variety:

Filling out

Quarantine cards,

Record cards for office and superintendent,

Record of transfer to other schools,

Registration cards, several forms,
Three forms of attendance reports,
Inventories,

Seating charts,
Duplicate schedules.

Keeping records of—

Absence excuses,

Term record sheets,

Duplicate attendance slips,
Library cards and library service,
Correspondence duty,
Telephone duty,

Patrol duty,

Meeting parents,

Care of lockers and keys,

Returning lost books to pupils.

The sixty items of duty happen to include teaching, holding conferences with pupils, and attending teachers' meetings; and some of the other fifty-seven are almost equally essential; but most of them call for the making of some sort of written report, and each of them requires a more or less considerable share of attention, multiplied by the number of pupils concerned, ranging under the various items from one to several hundred each.

How much time may be needed for a single item may be shown by a single library or text-book card, three by five inches in size, containing ten full lines of matter to be written out in duplicate for each of the pupils in charge of a single teacher. For one person merely to fill one card without pausing to ask questions or examine data might require about five minutes, ten minutes for each pupil, 420 minutes, seven full hours for the pupils of a single section. While this particular card need be filled out but

once each semester and devices may be employed to save time in doing so, one teacher may have charge of six sections.* More intricate and time-consuming are the "schedule cards," handled by a special committee of about three members, assisted by ten or twelve volunteers. The members of the central committee devote all their time to this work for the first two or three weeks of each semester, while their classes "wait"; so that, in their case, it is easy to determine just how much time is lost to teaching because of this single clerical duty.

Requiring not special skill, but the most extreme care and accuracy is the checking up of assembly-room slips. For each pupil in a section of forty, an average of eight slips is received by the teacher of that section, more than 320 for the section. Each of the eight slips must be checked in its proper compartment on the individual pupil's room card, which is ruled for fifty compartments, and the check must, of course, be accurately placed. No time allowance whatever is made for this item of duty.

The filling in of from forty to nearly one hundred separate items on each of the room cards is another operation that will account for many additional hours of every teacher's time for each section, as is also the making of as many as seventy entries, each the full name of a pupil and his assembly-room number, on the seat chart of every recitation room for each recitation hour and subject-perhaps fifteen or twenty of these for a single teacher; a possible total of almost fifteen hundred separate items.* Of course, in all these cases-and fifty-seven others-it is not the number of entries that matters, but it is the necessary time and mental effort, and the fact that all of these things must be done, whether or not any time is left for teaching—that is, what is called teaching by the authorities who require the reports.

Since the publication of Professor Osgood's report, a certain New Jersey high school principal, after his attention was called to it, made six sections of from forty to sixty-five pupils each the regular assignment for each of his regular English teachers. In addition to this, certain teachers carry continuation work for some small extra pay, while the remaining teachers carry, presumably without pay, besides their usual "extra" duties, part or all of the extra duty from which continuation teachers are excused.

It may not be wholly irrelevant to note that, besides making innumerable entries in a multiplicity of cards of the exact place where each pupil should be during every period of the school day, teachers are required to hunt for and correct or report pupils who are at any time not found in their places, à detective service that may be called for several times a day and consume unlimited time.