The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1947-05-01
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be getting in shape to do some
thing important about the pay Of
teachers.
The current rate Of pay in most
communities is scandalous and il
has effects far beyond the realm OF
most of the discussion of today.
By and large the argument being
used is that current pay does moi
permit a decent scale of living ant
that is true. 1t is argued also that
low pay drives good teachers tc
take up other wcrk and stands as
bar to the creation of more teach
ers and that likewise is true.
But there is one more factor
that, in the overall picture, may be
more important to the country
than any Of those reasons.
1t is an argument that the
teachers are not likely to bring
forth, even where they understand
it.
What seems to me to be the most
important reason of all is that
low pay in the teaching profession
is driving our school system to the
wholesale creation of psychiatric
cases among the students.
Low pay begets among teachers,
where they keep on teaching, a
sense of frustration-by no means
universally, but all too often More
than that, it brings into the school
would-be teachers who are not fit
to teach and many of these are
psychiatric cases, which means
mentally sick in one form or an
other.
Now it is true that the psychiat-
ric teacher is more than likely to
bring on cases of mental illness
among the pupils. This doesn't
mean that mental disease is con-
tagious. What it does mean is, for
example, that the frustrated teach
er, on edge and jumpy in her Tor
his) school work, tends to create
nervous tension among the pupils
and there you have the doorway to
mental illness or maladjustment.
Jimmy and Jane go home on
edge, not knowing why generally
and even where parents wonder
why the children are that way, they
too frequently do not know that
anything can be done about it, or
they don't know what to do, or
they don't have the money even if
they do know what to do and it
doesn't occur to them to get busy
with the school board.
X X X
Another thing that low pay gets
US in our school system is too
many women teachers, because
men will take low pay less often
than women.
This is no criticism of the COM
petence of women teachers. Not at
all. But it must be evident that
growing boys need more man in
fluence and atmosphere than they
are getting in most of our schools.
And this is especially true when
too many women teachers are liv-
ing with a sense of Illustration on
the one hand and a constant eco
nomic worry on the other.
If Illustration is not present at |
he outset, low pay can bring it OH.
What person, man or woman, is |
Free from worry when there is a
constant struggle to dress proper
y, to eat properly and to be
housed properly-a constant battle
% make dollar do the work dol
ar did twenty-five years ago?
In metropolitan areas we now
lave psychologists and psychiat-
lists employed in our schools and I
hey are doing good work. But too
many of them are being piled with
ases developed within the school
ystem, largely by reason of under
'ayment Of teachers.
X 4 X
There are few evils that contain
themselves within n themselves.
led to hi-jacking and
ther forms of racketeering. Big
ime gambling brings a fringe of
holsters who branch into almost
very field of crime. Bad sewers
cad to typhoid and rats bring ty-
hus and bubonic plague. Low
yages bring economic squalor and
percentage of mental cases which
ange from the merely jumpy and
idgety to the completely insane.
The law or unframed person may
ever know how many cases of
rental illness exist in our school
OOms, but if we could turn enough
sychiatrists loose in them we
7ould undoubtedly be appalled, by
ne findings.
You can tinker around among
he branches all you want to, with
0 more than pruning effects. Un-
] the root evil of inadequate pay
attacked and remedied the evil
ill proceed, much like the chain
xplosion that wrecked Texas City
nd with results which, though less
oectacular because they are not
lassed in one place, are actually
0 less hellish.