The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-05-26
THE NEEDY scHooLMA'AM.

Our present laws against the mar riage of school teachers-no, I am too
 sweeping-against the marriage of
 women school teachers, on pain of off,
 cial decapitation, are historically anus ing. We shall laugh at them, few
 years hence as we now laugh at the sumptuary laws of the past. For in stance the worthy Zaleucus, 445 B. C., ordained that no woman should ap-
 pear in the street attended by more than one maidservant,- she were drunk" Edward III, of England, strove
 to keep his subjects down to a menu of two courses only; and our own more recent forefathers in New England pro- hibited such personal decorations as they chose to consider too expensive for common citizens.
 Why should not school teacher have a husband if she chooses? The mar ried state does not detract from the ability of an educator. Indeed, as all teaching originated in motherhood, and
 as that experience it is hard to see why school children should be debarred from the advantageous society of the married teacher with her calm happiness or of | the mother-teacher with her new depths of love.
 Are any instances given of falling | off in efficiency in teachers after mar miage? Is it claimed that happy wife can not give as much attention to her
 work as a hopeful damsels or a resigned
 spinster?
 Not at all
 The contention is that the teacher who marries has got another job, and should give up her former position to one who needs it more than she does IL has been wisely and conclusively answered that the married women who elects to continue her school work does so either because of especial devotion to that work, or because she continues to lneed the salary. So the upholders of |spinster schoolma-ams are caught on either horn of the dilemma-if the mar lried teacher wants to teach because of lespecial interest in the work, she has a |Iight to it on the ground of fitness; if Ishe. wants to teach because she needs the money" she has right to it on grounds of necessity. The essential err TOT in the whole discussion lies in our Ieommon misuse of the term need ' which implies that the schools of our Ecountry are maintained at great public |expense for the purpose of providing food and clothing to a number of single women. A school is an institution for the education of children, and all its processes and standards are to be Judged and measured as they conduce to that end
 If a woman is q good school teacher, though married to a millionaire,-we have as much need of her service as we should have if her husband should die and take his fortune with him, or if she should be dependent on her salary for bread.
 What the woman does with her mon ey is no concern of the school board. Whether she needs" it or not is no business of theirs.
 The child needs the good teacher, and that is the only question of need" which belongs to this subject.
 It is the business of the school sys- tenn to select, develop and secure the best possible teachers; not to consti- ute itself an arbitrary court to con- demn our children to an endless suc- cession of inexperienced girl-teachers, who only do the work for pay and drop it as soon as they get better situation.
 The public school is not a young