Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1920-04-23
FOR THE FUUTURE OF THE
 NATION.

In the matter of securing and re- taining capable and efficient teachers ' in our public schools, the city of Memphis is face to face with sit uation that is gravely menacing says the Commercial-Appeal. It will be- come even more serious unless some thing is done at once to provide a Y standard of pay that will allow the teachers to live. The existing stan ]. dard is so ridiculously low when compared with the cost of living that the only result can be the loss of all < good teachers, consequent decline < in teaching efficiency and the wreck < ing of the whole educational system of the city.
 z Someone has said that the teacher is the most useful citizen in any Z country and the least regarded He $ referred, of course, to good teacher. is equally true that the person $ who trains the minds of the young boys and girls can be of the greatest
 
 menace to nation if that person be inefficient or untrue to his or her sacred obligations to truth and good citizenship. More directly than any < other agency, in many respects more so even than the parents themselves, does the teacher hold the future of the nation in his or her hands. The present unrest and disorder through out the world are largely the result of false conceptions of life held by < those in the highest and lowest strata of life. They have retained these ideas because they were not corrected in their youth.
 ss The low pay given to teachers in Memphis already has driven a num- &ber of the most capable educators into other employment where they can be self-sustaining. Their places have been filled with young girls who themselves are but half edu- cated. The point has been reached swhere the unpaid teacher is bring ' ing about the untaught child. In this connection a certain distin- guished lady of the city remarked the other day that her daughter was being taught by young girl still fin her teens who had not "drunh dceply of the Pierian spring" Some aof the ideas advanced by this child
 the mother says, were so foolisf < that she was questioned as to where she had learned them. The reply < was that she had been taught sucf
 views at school. Anyone can readily
 see even from this instance that i
 would be better even to be not edu
 cated at all than to be badly O.
 wrongly instructed.
 As the situation stands, the boart
 raise of $25 month, to become ef fective on May 1. This will mak' the minimum pay in grade schools
 $900 year and the maximum S1,32O &Under the advance the minimum fo
 high school teaching will be LAO . @ ca rand the maximum $1,740. Hov
 satisfactory this advance is ma,
 by clearly seen by a comparison witt
 the wages of common illiterate labor
 The man who performs the mos
 menial tasks and who cannot read O.
 write in many cases is pa.d grea
 deal more than the teachers wht l. hac of
 life preparing themselves for theil
 duties. The truth is that when w allow such situation 10 exist W' Ssput a premium on illiteracy.
 The teachers of the city are asklnt nothing more than the standard O
 pay that has been recommended by { xs,federal survey that was searching but faid in it's investigations. Th'
 survey schedule provides minimum of $1,00O year and maximum o s{<2 900 for grade teachers, with ; minimum of $1,200 and maximum < of $2,OOO for teachers in the higi xehools. A comparison of thes' ' figures with those that will prevai after May shows great discrepancy especially in the maximum pay. oueht to be obvious that this vii destroy any incentive to continou' . service, and by so doing will lesser the efficiency of the teachers an' ( Inc educational standard
 The supreme court of the state hai { ruled that an addition of 10 cents t the tax rate to provide better pay fol 5 the teachers is permissible. Nov thig amount will more than meet al 7 financial requirements of the survel $ Isrhcdulc. This being 90, there ough