The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-11-06
PAY OF THE TEACHERS.

ed the controversy over the salaries to be paid the teachers in the public schools. For one thing it demonstrates anew the truth of the fact that thing badly done at the outset re- mains ito bother and irritate until it has been undone. The controversy has been carried on, so far as the Board of Education is concerned, with such a lack of tact that where indif- ference has not been encouraged among the teachers resentment has been set up. Commissioner Moran Is wise in undertaking to settle the diff ference of opinion for once and for all
 There is difference of opinion be- tween MT. Moran and his supporters on the board as to the policy to be enforced and the teachers. The reply which the Teachers league has made to MT, Moran's defense of his sched- ule is a model of effective debate and goes a long way to vindicate the con- tention of the teachers that if they are not competent to be entirely trust ed with the determination of the sal- ary question they are worthy to be listened to. The attitude of some of the members of the Board of Educa- tion that the teachers should submit meekly to whatever crumbs of com fort the commissioners see fit to brush from their table is an indefensible attitude. The teachers have perfect right to discuss the matter of salary and to argue their case as they have done. They have a perfect knowledge of what the requirements of their duty call for, what it costs them to live and what general rules apply in fixing the value of labor of this char acter, Their Judgment should in fact be sought by the board, not spurned as If they were the employees of that body who must take what they can get or seek a livelihood elsewhere There has been no evidence from the first that the teachers were unreason- able in their demands. They have not sought to stick their arms and hands into the city treasury to take there- from all they could get away with. They have sought a principle of com pensation which is recognized else where and which obviously corre- Isponds to the ability of the city of l New Haven to adopt People may diff
 fer as to the propriety of certain acts
 in the more heated moments of the
 controversy, but these have nothing
 to do with the justice of the demands. They are perfectly right, too, in re-
 minding the members of the Board of Education that they are not as well | NQSllllGA u 0SllhlellO llID NdlhC OL q
 teachers services as a teacher is. They
 have never had the experience of teaching 0 room full of restless chill
 dren, as they might. claim to have
 had experience as employers of labor
 in their own businesses which would justify the estimate they put upon it. A positive injury in fact Is done the
 school system when itss needs arc judged from the counting room point
 of view, and that the counting room point of view has prevailed more
 than 1t should have done is apparent
 That is the point of view which ob-
 viously leads the board to apply one principle to the treatment of the
 teachers in the grammar schools ant
 another to the teachers in the higf
 schools. The argument advanced by
 the Teachers league in this connec, tior is unanswerable. The fact tha
 the advanced schools are frequently
 lucky in being able to command tht
 services of students in the graduate
 department of Yale University at sal
 aries which are inconsiderable anC
 based on no definite principle at all
 while it may aid the counting room view of things, ought not to affect th
 value of high school teaching a sec ond, unless it is understood that al high school teaching will be recruit ed from the graduate departments 0 the University. So long az one teache in the high school is employed as on teacher is employed in the gramma schools the principle of the wage sys , tenn should remain fixed and not b permitted to be influenced by the ac cldenta1 presence in the city of grad , Iuate students who see the chance t i make an extra penny without carin for the exact amount earned. In shorr } it becomes palmer and plainer ever 2 day that the teachers are competen . Judges of the salaries to be paid. The . have proved their case. All the Boar t of Education has done is to prov S that it has no definite policy.
 
 a FOOD OR POISON AGAIN? s By and by if the scientists and tn