The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1911-04-26
About sehoolma,ams

makes a very spirited defense Of the
Vermont school ma'am In reply to
recently published letter of Editor
Frank t. Howe Of Bennington, in
which he mildly critlcizes the young
girls who usually teach the district
schools saying that they are lin
many cases dissatisfied with their
work and their pay, know little or
nothing about agricultural life and in
their dissatisfaction and craving for
more ambitious things, they educate
the children in their charge, to the
belief that theirs 10 not q satisfactory
life"
The Messenger has no disposition
to intrude upon this discussion be-
tween its friends, but II would like
to say, simply, that Editor Howe has
touched one of the most sensitive ner-
yes In our educational system, not
alone in Vermont but in most Of the
country over.
1t Is all too true that most of the
young women that take up teaching
In the public schools do so as a mere
temporary, makeshift occupation and
not as a professional vocation and
life work. They find employment sim
ply to support themselves for little
while until they get married II Is
the natural and one may say highly
to be commended ambition of every
healthy-minded woman to get mar
ried, under most circumstances. But
when young school teachers enter
tain such an ambition, it does more
than any other one thing to knock the
props out from under pretty much
every attempt to establish teaching
as a substantial, well organized pro-
fession with definite and well recog-
nized scope and aims To be sure,
here and there a splendid woman de-
liberately makes teaching her life
work, seriously prepares for 1t and
follows 1t with the consecrated devo-
ton of the home missionary, that she
is, losing no opportunity as the years
go by to improve her knowledge OF
pedagogy and all the arts and scien-
ces to which IL ministers. But they
are largely the exceptions.
So then, young girls that get enough
smattering of an education to hold q
low grade teachers certificate while
they are picking out the material fol-
their wedding gowns, cannot be
thought to be either any great hell
TO the profession or to the cause OF
popular education. And the schools
suffer for 1t, Enthusiastically.
The wage factor also enters into
the question materially. The rate oil
salary paid In Vermont, or elsewhere
for that matter, is not high enough
to tempt the average capable young
woman into making teaching her life
work The few that do enter the pro
fession as a permanent vocation are
ambitious enough to hope for promo
ton to the all too scarce situations
that will pay better, or they come with
an extra scholarship equipment that
puts them into the higher salaried
classification from the start. But
these comparatively desirable posi-
tions are few, in proportion, and not
paid well enough even at that
So. then, when shamefaced pit
lance of wage stands at the door OF
most district school houses and asks
the young women of Vermont TO take
their chances with It for better OF
for worse" who can blame them il
they turn to a more promising lover
This same wage question has q
great deal to do with the socalled
Determination of the schools. 1t is a
decidedly unfortunate thing that SO
few men find it prudent to enter the
teaching profession. The educational
system of Vermont and the whole
country would be far and away i'm
proved If more men were enrolled
among the teachers and the frmer
discipline and in many respects more
practical view of the masculine mind
were parts of the influences in school
government and school curriculum.
And men that took up teaching would
make II a life work and grow in II
and with 1t, and their marriage would
mean only a stronger incentive to de-
serve still better of the profession
and share still more abundantly In
its rewards.
But there is practically no induce
ment to the average ambitious youth
to fit himself TO be a first class teach
err, because there are only few pos
itions that offer anything like living
salary and advancement is slow.
We are making a very serious mis-
take in not encouraging a higher
pedagogical standard here by Offering
more inducement to the better class
of its young men and young women tc
make teaching their work for life. j
we are ever to have a homogeneous
people, II our vast experiment with {
republican form of government is tC
make successful the administration o.
affairs of several hundred million PEG
pie covering a continent. it must b'
because all these people are Caught
young" and their minds tuned to the
same general ideals of life and living
and common notion Of national re
sponsibility and national destiny ,anC
the relation of the individual either
I to them.
4 And this is the mission of the pub
lie schools, which we neglect 81
much. And this is the mission Of thu
school teacher whom we pay star
walton wages and whose tremendousl.
incalulable contribution to the mora
and ethical progress of the race anC
the every day preservation of law ant
order. we almost habitually ignore
st. Adams Messenger.
THE WILT EV