The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-05-15
"Anyone Can Teach School"

"AnyOne Can Teach School,"
Apparently no inconsiderable number
of the present adult inhabitants of this
city came from remote rural districts
where the impression once prevailed
that anyone can be a teacher; anyone
good for nothing else Is fit for that
work, and brought that notion with
them. Where they came from girls
sought escape from housework or earn
ed pin money in the occupation OF
teaching district school, and thought
themselves we'll paid If they could earn
wages a little higher than paid for
homework. Ambitious boys, too. look
ing ahead to a term at some academy
or getting together a little money for
the accomplishment Of some other
cherished project. sought employment
as teachers, as blissfuliy ignorant as
We're their sisters that teaching was
something more than hearing a squad
of urchins repeat by rote the lessons
they had conned. Transplanted to the
city, these bucolics bring their back
woods ideas of teaching with them, put
themselves into antagonism to the diff
sneeringly about "fads" and reveren-
TALLY of the three Rs, and are positive
that teachers are overpaid who get
higher wages than shop or office girls
earn. Once in a while it happens that
one of these back numbers gets en-
ployment in an editorial capacity ana
delights to make his fossilism conspic-
uous.
Another notion these recruits from
the backwoods bring with them and
tenaciouSly stick to is that teaching is
an easy occupation, which requires only
six hours of the twenty -four, which
are filled in with the rather pleasing
exercise of absolute authority, a sort
of regal rule with switch for scep
ter and textbooks for codes, the
rostrum a throne and the school and
it's yard the boundaries of an empire.
If there is an inadequacy of compensa-
ton in the form of money, the titilla-
ton Of this eXaltation, these privileges
of brief authority over the young ideas,
make up the deficit. To them teachers
get into and out of their days work
as in and out of a garment, going to
without thought of the coming days
task when the clock strikes four. All
the other waking hours are hers to do
with as she will, free from any de-
mandS of her vocation. Sufficient unto
each day is the work thereof and she
takes no thought of that of the NOR
row.
Still another notion that sticks in the
crops-or what they are pleased to call
their minds-of these ancients of days,
one that is a logical projection on the
primitive one that anyone can teach,
is that there need be no special prepar-
alton for the work. To have gone to
school, to have "gone through" the
arithmetic, coming out of the array of
miscellaneous examples at the end of
the book without serious impairment;
to have parsed portions of Pope's Es-
say on Man, and learned to conjugate
glibly the verb to love through all its
phases of moods and lenses, persons
and numbers-though still unskilled in
the fit use of "Shall'' and "will"-to be
able to pass the examination. consider
ately tempered to the shorn lamb; this
was all that was needed in the way Of
mental equipment. For such work done
by person thus fitted the fifteen or
twenty dollars a month was unques-
t1onably very poor investment for
the public, but an excessive compensa-
ton for the teacher" Notions have
changed somewhat since our back
numbers left the country districts, and
the teachers they knew and the quail
fications then expected and the wages
then paid have risen to a higher plane,
but the genuine backnumber knows
nothing of that and measures the
teacher of today and her work and
compensation by the antiquated notions
he brought with him and clings to with
such pitiful tenacity.