Bisbee daily review., 1920-01-28
STATE TEACHERS ARE UNDERPA|D

1 Depicting conditions in the teach | ing profession and in schools of the 1 United States, a recent bulletin oi the National Educational association throws an interesting light upon the claims of teachers for better condi tions. The bulletin, in part, follows:
 "At the present time. more than one-half of the public school teachers of the United States are immature they are short lived in the work of teaching; their general education is | inadequate; their professional equip ment is deplorably meagre.
 Out of approximately G00,0O0 pub. lie school teachers in the United States, it has been estimated by com. petent authorities that 100000 are seventeen, eighteen and nineteen years old; 150.000 are not more than twenty-one years old, and 300, 900 are not more than twenty-five years old. As to length of service: 150.00O serve in the schools only two years or less; 300,000 serve in the schools not more than four or five years"
 "As to education: 300,00O have had no education beyond the eighth grade of the elementary schools: 100. 1000 have had less than two years educa- tion beyond the eighth grade: 200, 900 have had less than four years educa- tion beyond the eighth grade, and 3O0,000 have had no more than four years education.
 Three hundred thousand or 50 per cent have had no special professional preparation for the work of. teach ing.
 Tn the aggregate, the boys and girls now having their schooling at the hands of immature and untrained teachers will constitute at least fifty per cent of the next generation of American voters.
 "Of the twenty million boys and girls in our public schools today, it may be conserVatively estimated that 100000 are being taught by teach CTS whose education has been limited to seven or eight years in the ele- mentary schools; 7,0OC,000 are being taught by teachers who are scarcely more than boys and girls themselves,
  sponsibiliSies must, in consequence of their youth and inexperience, be extremely slight, and 10,000,000 are being taught by teachers who have had no special preparation for their work and whose general education is quite inadequate.
 Most normal schools training rural teachers require eighth grade gradua- tion for admission to their rural courses. Some require completion of the ninth, tenth, or eleventh grade; and some high school graduation. None are known that require more than high school graduation and only a very few that require less than completion of the eighth grade.
 "it is futile to speak of our public schools as the bulwark of American democracy when tens of thousands of our teachers in these schools are only sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old; when more than one hundred thousand are less than twenty-two years old; when more than a quarter of a million have not passed the age of twenty-five.
 "In a typical state-a state that is perhaps midway between the most progressive and the most backward educationally-e per cent of the rural school teachers this year are boys and girls freslf from the eighth grade of the common schools-and even under these inadequate stand ards, this state reports shortage in teachers, so keen is the demand for their services in other occupations.
 More than half of the nations children are enrolled in rural schools taught for short period of years by untrained, poorly paid, peripatetic teachers, in poor buildings, poorly equipped"