The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1920-02-14
new KINKS IN JOB
OF GETTING TEACHERS
Closing of Schools by Thousands
Makes Officials Bid High for
Scarcest Article on the Labor
Market.

Competition for school teachers.
who are now about the scarcest ar
ticles on the labor market, has taken
OF recently some strange and interest
ing phases. 1t used to be that there
were plenty of teachers, and in those
days there was little competition, IL
any, for their services. If they In
quired-and they did In large num-
bers-they were told what salary had
been fixed for a particular position,
and they could take 1t or leave 1t.
Why worry? Some one would be GER
tain to come along in due time and
start to work.
All hat is changed nov From ev-
cry state in the Union, from nearly
every large city, and especially from
the rural community, comes a wall.
Nobody who knows how to teach
school can be found to take any of the
places left vacant by the many thou
sands who have quit teaching in the
past year in order to make a living.
The competent unemployed teacher
has ceased to exist. There isn't any.
The old time supply of young folk
willing to teach for a year or two
while fitting themselves for other oc-
equations Is also a minus quantity.
Young men and young women can
make more money these days at other
work and have more time for further
preparation thar teaching would give
them.
"We'n pay you 5000 a year to start,
and that is 5000 a year more than the
regular salary" one principal in New
Jersey wrote to a young woman re-
Gently graduated from a normal
school.
81 am getting 81, $50 a year now for
easier work and that salary Is not ir-
regular at all. It's what I'm being
paid just while I'm fitting myself to
do a better class of work for a con-
siderably higher salary" That was
the answer SEN back by the graduate.
1t may sound pert, but times have
changed.
Competition has stalked in brazenly
to tangle up that nice old custom Of
ours-grown sacred as well as hoary
with the years-of getting our bright
young Marys and Johns turned into
prodigies of learning at trifing cost.
Here we were able to Undue genera
ton after generation of earnest young
women, and ever a goodly number Of
men for a time, with q willingness to
accept the teachers dole and to live
on it, no matter by how much saving
and skimping, as a part of their per-
sOnal sacrifice in a worthy and diff
cult calling. And now comes the high
cost of living, without the courtesy of
a warning, and wrecks the whole
beautiful structure of salary sched-
ules and pedagogical ideals so care
fully created by our canny f%orefathers
and so revered by US.
"Start In teaching at S14 a week
Not so you could notice it," says the
business-wise high school girl. ST
guess I've got to live-yes?"
That's one of the disagreeable fea-
lures of the present serious teacher
trouble. Competition catches them
coming and going. Because busi-
ness men know something good when
they see ii and are willing to pay the
price their bidding for those In the
teaching profession set up a kind of
competition that has put the makers
of teachers salary schedules In con-
siderable of a stew. Business Is offer
ing more money-a whole lot more.
1t isn't chubby, to be sure, but it
isn't hard to do either, because the
yearly pay of the average teacher is
1898 less than that of the lowest
kind of labor-that of the ''roust-
about"
Still it fuses up the makers of
teachers salary schedules %dreadfully.
1t has caused different localities in
nearly every state to enter into keen
competition for competent teachers,
and there Is even competition as be-
tween the states themselves. New ex-
pedients are being resorted to to re-
tain teachers and teacher material.
One of these is the refusal to give GER
tificates to normal school graduates
until they have taught two years in
the state in which the school is To-
Gated.
And with this competition to meet
and the fear that their schools will be
left without tedchers, local school
boards, the makers of salary sched-
ules, have to work with an eye on che
taxpayer. That kind of worI Is
~disconcerting, especially when all
taxpayers naturally want the taxes
kept down, and not many of them
know that unless the teachers sal
aries are lacked up with a jolt, and
promptly, they will nave to teach their
children themselves, if any teaching is
done hereafter.
The whole trouble is, of course, that
the people generally don't know yet
about the dangerous plight into which
the schools have fallen. The teachers
know it, the school authorities know,