The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1920-01-09
TEN MONTHS FOR TEACHERS

Fons A. Hathaway, superintendent
f public instruction for Duval coun-
ty, and member of the general staff
for Prussainized education in Florida,
proposed to the state teachers asso-
cation at Bradentown that it should
organize to work for ten months con-
tracts for teachers. That is to say,
each public school teacher is to have
ten months salary for five, six, eight
or nine months work.
The legislature is VIGOROUSLY sub
servient to the educational autOcracy,
sc the people may expect to see an at
tempt made at Tallahassee next year
to carry out Mr.. Hathaway's PROPOSE
ton. We don't know how it will be
disguised; it is obviously illegal for
the state to make a contract to pay
any person ten months wages for less
than ten months time. It's true that
a considerable number of our public
officials do no more work in a year
than an energetic man could do in a
monitor a Week-but they have to
be around to punch the clock on pay
day, anyhow. Mr.. Hathaway's plan,
however, presupposes that the teacher
be paid ten months salary for any old
time, even if the teacher be holding
down another job or out of the state
half of the year.
How fair such an arrangement
would be to the people can be seen by
taking Marion county for an example.
The people of this county are as well
abel to pay as those of any county in
the state. But the school board has
great difficulty in paying its teachers
now. A large number of our smaller
schools are taught five or six months
in the year. The remainder of the
year, the teachers of such schools
support themselves by other work. 1t
would be much nicer for the teachers
to have ten months salary, of course
but are the people able to pay it?
That is something Mr.. Hathaway and
other advocates of excessive education
never take thought of.
1t is likely that Mr.. Hathaway in
his proposition did not think of many
country teachers, who have their
homes and other means, and teach
half the year to make extra money;
nor of the thousands of colored
schools taught by men and women
| who are glad to get, and are well paid
with, forty or fifty dollars a month.
These people hardly exist for him or
the other highbrows. tho they out
number them two or three to one. But
| the people of Marion may mark it
down in their memorandum that a
law that will compel them to pay the
principal and teachers in the Ocala
school ten months salary for eight
months work will also compel them
to pay the negro teacher who for five
months in the year presides over
some colored school way out in the
woods ten months salary for five
months work. If such a system is
adopted, the full ten-mill tax won't
meet it. Linked up with the present
compulsory education law, it would
compel thousands of people to aban-
don their country homes and move
into the towns. And it would be the
most rotten piece of class legislation
yet adopted.
We can't understand why teachers
continually mourn about their wages
and try to cozen or compel the state
to say them wages as large as those
drawn by people in more lucrative
callings. If they can't make living
at teaching, why don't they go to
work at something else? That's what
the rest of US have to do.