New-York tribune., 1907-10-28
THE SCARCITY OF TEACHERS.

The scarcity of teachers is as persistent a
difficulty in the New York public schools is
the want of sittings for the children The city's
normal and training schools do not fit enough
young men and women to fill the vacancies oc-
curing annually. Last week there were places
for eleven hundred additional teachers, and as
result of an examination nine hundred were ap-
pointed. Many retrements are to be expected
at this time in the year, for it is only by re-
signing III the fall that teachers can obtain pay
for their summer vacation; so the two hundred
vacancies now existing will rapidly increase in
numbers
As at the recent examination there were six
thousand candidates for licenses. Of whom only
nine hundred passed, the failure to obtain teach
ers must be ascrbed 10 the difficult and techni-
cal character Of the teachers examination The
applicants We're all graduates at least of high
schools with not less than three years experience
in teaching elsewhere: undoubtedly very large
proportion of them had had some professional
training in normal schools and probably not a
few of them were college graduates, and yet
only one in seven could achieve passing mark.
Is there anything gained by making the ex-
aminatiOns so difficult that the city has all of
the time large number of classes without any
teachers at all, or without regular teachers, IN
the hands of substitutes shifting about from
day TO day? The high standard set by the ex-
animation does not keep out the inferior teacher,
for it is necessary 10 appoint hundreds Of sub
stitutes, who, generally speaking, cannot pass
the examination and who find regular and
often practically permanent employment in the
schools.
Educators generally agree that examinations
are a very poor test Of capacity, and they would
certainly seem poor test of all the various
qualities that 90 to make up the successful
OF lrC bc,r~ III,
! pable and experienced instructor from up in the
state, ambitious for the larger opportunities in
| her profession offered in New York, comes here
! TRES the examination and fails, while the young
woman fresh from the training school, who may
nave none of the qualities TO make a successful
! teacher, passes it with distinction She does so
| because all her education has been aimed at
that mark-the teachers license examination
She Is crammed up for it. Her whole course Is
laid out with reference to ii. And the result is
that the examination becomes the test of NO
other capacity than that to cram.
Isn't the pedagOgues tendency to exaggerate
the Importance of examinations carried to an
extreme in devising a rigid examination for
! teachers themselves: President Lyman A. Best
! Of the Brooklyn Teachers Association suggests
! That experienced teachers with q certain mini
mum training and education be eligible to ap-
pointment without examination. Thus. he saws
the city would be able to draw upon the state
for Its best teachers, new blood would be intro
duced into the schools and there would not be
| the persistent lack Of instructors 1t would
seem as If the appointment OF teachers In the
way Mr. Best suggests, but on probation so that
only the best and most successful of them
would be retained more than a year In the ser
wee OF the city, would result in the recruiting
of very high class of instructors, much better
than are obtained through the selection of the
specially crammed graduates of training schools
and the exclusion of the capable and experienced
whose education has not been particularly di-
rected at obtaining a New York City license
we are aware that it will be said that the ex-
animation keeps politics and favoritism out of
the schools and that appointments on probation
would open the way for these two evils. But
Ihe examination we fear, often excludes ca
paGty and certainly now results in an made
Quafp fpachpo foroo