The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1877-03-23
NEED OF WOMEN ON SCHOOL
BOARDS,

BOARDS.
One week from next Monday occurs
an election that is of greater moment |
than many that attract much more
comment and discussion, and enlist |
much more effort. The educational in
terests of any district are measurably u
the hands of the School Board, and
are dear alike to fathers and mothers,
and of vast Importance to the common
wealth. That women should be ex-
cluded entirely from school boards in
this State is not only an insult to their
intelligence, but an injury to the cause
of education. Some of the States, among
them steady-going and Puritanical Mas
sachusetts, and more independent Illi-
nois, Iowa and Michigan have awakened
to their own interests sufficiently to ad-
NIT women in this capacity as public
servants, and the experiment has been
successful wherever tried.
And why, indeed, should it not be so ?
Surely every one will admit that the
mothers of the land have as vital inter-
ests at stake as have the fathers; that
women, as educators, Outnumber the
men very largely, and that women
teachers, as class, apply themselves
with earnestness and assiduity to their
tasks. And all of this in the very face
of the glaring injustice that pays to the
man laborer by woman's side a salary
double her own. In none other of the
callings in which both men and women
are engaged is the injustice which, be-
cause of her sex, is forced upon woman
more apparent than in this. Subordina-
tiOn in woman begets tyranny in man,
and this tyranny is no more endurable
or pleasant when it takes the form of
pocketing two-thirds or three-fourths of
the money paid by district for teach
ers inferior in number and not superior
in attainments, than when it enforces
unquestioning obedience of the "Ask
your husband at home," order.
Women, and especially women teach
ers, make up your minds to this: So
long as men alone are in authority in
school matters, so long as sex is consid-
cred a necessary qualification for MEM
bers of school boards, so long will your
brother teachers appropriate all the
honors, both of your labor and theirs,
and pocket two-thirds of the attendant
salaries. And another thing: So long
: as you pocket with humility, that is
considered virtue peculiarly feminine,
the pittance doled out to you by men in
authority and make no effort for equita-
BILE division of the public moneys paid
to teachers in public schools, just so
! long will men, chivalrous as they are,
: allow you to do so and praise your wom-
, anly dependence aloud, while in their
hearts they contempt your folly.
That the great army of women teach
ers will tamely submit to the wholesale
, robbery that takes their hard earnings
and adds them to the already larger sal
aries of their brother teachers, and then,
with patronizing "you are woman,
you know" air, doffs its beaver and
=, presents the remaining pittance to
them, is one of the wonders of the nine.
teenth century. Year after year school,
boards composed solely of men are
f elected to preside over the financial in.
terests of the school district; year aftel
year these directors pay teachers &C.
E cording to their sex instead of their la.
Dor, and year after year women submit
. to the outrage. This financial distinc
ton is the same, whether the school i!
taught in the log school-house of tht
backwOods, the batten door of which
was for time adorned with motto,
!, written in the cramped chirography
!, and execrable orthOgraphy of the heaC
n committee man himself mo gurl neeC
e apply for this skpIe. Wee want a NAL,
e man teacher" to the gentlemanly Pres
g ident of the City Board, who smile
y blandly as he signs the order presented
b by the hard-worked city teacher, call
d ing for but a moiety of what she earned