HARET ȘI EPOCA SA: INSPECȚIILE, UN INGREDIENT AL REFORMELOR DE SUCCES
HARET AND HIS TIME: THE INSPECTIONS AS A LESS KNOWN INGREDIENT OF SUCCESSFUL REFORMS

Summary/Abstract: The figure of Spiru Haret (the Minister of Cults and Public Instruction in 1897–1899, 1901–1904, 1907–1910) is unrivalled in the Pantheon of the Romanian School. He has been considered the reformer par excellence. He is still a point of reference in good management models. His contemporaries and successors were amazed, first and foremost, by his legislative work, doubled by a tremendously laborious activity meant to encourage and regulate extracurricular activities. The last one finds an intriguing analogy in the events that occurred in France during the term of Minister Jules Ferry. However, Haret’s success was fuelled by interventions less known to posterity, such as those concerning the regulation of inspections or the selection of control staff, and not as much by the great laws (which were scarce and late). He started his own career as an inspector, and this position allowed him to get a great insight into the raw reality of the country. It also made him used to analyse the overall picture of the school community. Consequently, he relied heavily on the activity of inspectors to increase the number of schooled children, mitigate the apathy of the teaching staff, or disseminate in the territory various practices that were effective for school and citizen education, with a focus on villagers. Overall, he managed to build a typology of the model teacher and school, which lasted for almost a century.

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