The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1903-02-26
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9e, 1908.
BETTER PAY FOR TEACHERS.

As in Maryland, so in our neighbor-
ing State of Pennsylvania, the ques-
ton of better pay for teachers is an
acute one. The effort now being
made in Pennsylvania to secure
minimum monthly salary of $50 for
school teachers for ten months is,
says the Philadelphia Record, regard
ed as great munificence by those who
advocate it. "This munificence, -
says the Record, "amounts to
trifie more than S. a week for the
drudgery that is necessary to earn it
during part of the year" Out of
this must come from 81 to So a week
for board and lodging, save for few
of the more fortunate teachers who
can live at home. From what is left
must be paid the cost of decent cloth
ing, besides many necessary in
cidental expenditures. Squeers him
self would have been almost ashamed
topay such starvation wages to teach
ers. For the commonest unskiIled
labor, the wages are better than this
minimum of Pennsylvania school
teachers, as the laborers generally
have enjoyment throughout the year,
whilst the poor sehoolmistress, who
is unemployed during a considerable
portion of the year, must live in the
vacation as best she can. She certainly
cannot live on her savings.
The Record then advocates mini
mum salary of not less than $50 per
month, and says: lit is said as an ex-
cuse for niggardliness that some
teachers are not worth half the mini
mum that is now paid them-which
is likely enough under a system that
affords SO little encouragement to
merit. But let the minimum salary
of teachers be raised to what it should
be in order that they may decently
live, and the result will be to still
further elevate the standard of in
structors, to the great gain of the
cause OF education in Pennsylvania.
1t is miserablY false liberality that
expends large sums for commodious
school buildings and costly educa-
tional apparatus and then half starves
the teachers. Nothing short of $50 a
month for teachers comes within a
fair minimum salary; and this would
not amount to more than the earn
ings of unskilled labor throughout
the year,
The Record is right; $50 per month
is nothing more than a fair minimum
salary for teachers. We may have to
wait some years before justice is done
TO school teachers in Maryland, but
the time will come. Everyone is look
ing more and more to the public
schools as the source Of the education
of the children of the State, and
everyone is interested in having capa-
BILE, competent, self-reliant and self
respecting teachers, and it is becom-
ing more and more apparent every
day that the schools cannot command
WIG ooA u VI tcdCAoIo Guey suOulu nave
for the small pay they offer.
Fortunately the big daily papers of
Maryland, like the Record, of Phila-
delphias are all on the side of the
schools, as are most of the other pa
pers of the State. Public sentiment
is being aroused in every section and,
If the patrons of the schools will join
earnestly in the movement which is
now on, it is not too much to hope
that the next Legislature will do some
thing which will materially raise the
standard of our teachers and thereby
greatly improve and better our
schools. The State is well able to
provide more generously for its schools
and to do justice to teachers. All
that is needed, we believe, is the
friends of public education to be up
and doing, to be active and earnest in
the cause of their schools and the ed
ucation of their children, and when
the next legislature adjourns a new
day will have dawned Cor the cause of
public education in Maryland.