it to be with a resolve that your whole attitude toward the school is to change."

Sometimes in months to come we had troublesome days but the fashion of unruliness among girls went out that morning not to return, and the teacher learned for the first time that girls like to be managed and are quite as amenable to discipline as boys, and like the boys they are most apt in detecting the weaknesses of the opposite sex. The teacher who would succeed in managing either boys or girls must make it possible for them to get along with him. A certain reasonableness is necessary.

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CHAPTER VII

MANAGING THE SCHOOL BOARD

SCHOOL BOARDS can be managed, but they cannot be bossed, and there is a wide difference between managing and bossing. No board will be bossed, but any self-respecting board will be managed. The teacher who desires to manage a board must first of all have well-defined plans. He must know that his plans have merit. The measures that he seeks to carry out must be for a public benefit. The teacher, then, who has certain well-defined, meritorious plans which when carried out will be a benefit to the public for whom he is employed is ready to interview his board.

In addition to this preparation it is necessary that

there be nothing but the best of feeling between the teacher and the board. School boards are, after all, human; and the average human being is swayed more by his feelings than by his judgment. It must not be supposed that a school board who feels right towards its teacher will not be controlled by its judgment. In other words, the average individual will permit his feelings of animosity to control his actions and defeat good measures, but will not permit feelings

of friendliness to influence his vote for a proposition which he does not believe is sound.

The above enunciated human frailty is in evidence in all walks of life. The opposition is always the more active. A man's enemies will make bigger sacrifices to attend the election and help secure his defeat than will his friends to secure his election. The successful candidate is more likely to owe his election to the activity of his opponent's enemies than to his own popularity.

Accepting the foregoing statements as true, it is proper to state that a teacher who has a good proposition can get favorable action on it by a board who are in harmony with each other and with the teacher provided they can be convinced that it is a good proposition.

In convincing a board of the soundness of a proposition, there is often a lifetime prejudice to be broken down. Certain conditions have always existed so far as they know, and so far as they know they should continue to exist.

A friend of the writer moved to town. He cast his first vote against the waterworks and sewer propositions. He had always gotten along with a well, and it was good enough. He never had had running water in his house and did not believe he wanted it. He had always been accustomed to the outhouse that stood some distance from his resi

dence, and he did not believe two dozen such buildings on the alley of the block in which he lived would be very bad.

Later he voted against street paving and electric lights. On each proposition he was defeated, and each time he could see his bank account dwindling.

In a few years the alley outhouses had been removed. The residences had running water, and the back yards were beautiful lawns and gardens. The streets, that had been beds of dust when not beds of mud, were macadam, and his oil lamps, relics of the past, were in the room with his grandmother's spinning wheel, the "hand" sewing machine and the candle moulds.

When he had all these things, none was more enthusiastic over them than he. He said, "I am glad that I have lived to enjoy all these blessings. There is nothing that I have enjoyed more than my modern home." He took a visitor over his little city. He showed him the parks, the boulevards, the court-house, whose bonds he had tried to defeat, and the new $300,000 high school building. He went about the exhibition of this school building in a way that showed perfect familiarity.

First they inspected the heating plant and the ventilation system, then the boys' gymnasium with its swimming pool 40 x 100 feet, then the girls' gymnasium and swimming pool, toilets with run

ning water, lavatories, mirrors and towels, the large manual training room, rooms for domestic science fitted up with every modern cooking convenience, domestic art, physics, chemistry and botany laboratories, large well-furnished class rooms, a magnificent library with comfortable chairs and tables, and last the assembly room, which had all the appearance of an up-to-date theatre.

The old man, for he was old then, with a look of pride said, “It's all very nice, but it cost us taxpayers a lot of money; but," he added, quickly,

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it's worth it. I never had any of these things, and I'm glad to be able to give them to others."

"Do you know," said he, "that this building is a small concern compared with the state educational institutions? We support those institutions and they have gymnasiums that cost as much as this entire building. I understand that only five out of every hundred who go to high schools ever attend one of those higher institutions. I always was in favor of state schools. I always believed in higher education, but I am afraid that I was slow in awakening to the needs of those who do not get the higher education."

He grew reminiscent; "Yes sir, I'm glad to live to see all this, but I'm sorry to think of many lost opportunities. Before I came here I was on the school board. I thought our school was good enough, but I know now it wasn't. Why, we con