American Indian Culture and Research Journal

It has long been taken for granted, in these United States, that one of the privileges accorded newly elected presidents and their party leaders is the selection of those who will carry out the work of the incoming administration. Although the high price of dropping competent incumbents is impossible to calculate, the most costly decision for Native Americans must have been William McKinley's 1898 appointment of Estelle Reel to replace William N. Hailmann as Superintendent of Indian Schools. It ended a four year period during which almost all of today's innovations were successfully introduced, and it dealt such a crushing blow to Hailmann that he was never again an effective leader. At the time of his appointment as Superintendent of Indian Schools, William N. Hailmann was one of America's outstanding educational leaders. His career had been one of steady progress, from his arrival as a sixteen-year-old Swiss immigrant in 1852 through the successful adm inis tration of several German-American academies and public school districts. He held top offices in professional organizations and was well-known as a writer, editor, and lecturer. The influential Froebeli an movement of this country during the late 18005 was largely due to the leadership he and his wife, Eudora, had exerted. From 1883 until his appointment by President Cleveland in 1894, he was superintendent of public schools in LaPorte, Indiana, where he had broken with traditional methods of instruction and discipline by developing what he called the "New Education." Based on the philosophy of Friedrich Froebel, a German whose ideas had been adopted primarily for young children, Hailmann was exponent for a system that stressed student self-government, activity learning from kindergarten through high school, the importance of family life and of community involvement in the schools. The system depended upon superior teachers who were facilitators, able to challenge children to advance intellectually, socially, physically, and aesthetically in a supportive environment.