Paying the Teacher
We may talk as we like about progress in education, but if
we fail to spend money for teachers there will be no progress. School boards
who take a complaisant attitude about teachers’ pay should read the National
Education Association report on teachers’ salaries. They will find there solemn
words about the “threatened collapse of the teaching profession,” sensational
words used by men accustomed to weigh their utterances carefully.
In the new world of freedom and democracy that is emerging,
intelligence, knowledge, and skill will count for more than in the old.
Education becomes the chief business of legislatures and congresses
representing the people.
Our Standard
In America we measure values in terms of dollars and cents,
and men and women have formed the habit of selling their labor of whatever kind
in the highest market they can command. It is only through increase of pay,
therefore, that we may hope to improve to any large extent the character of the
personnel of any profession or trade. It is only by very large increases in pay
of teachers that we may hope to improve our schools appreciably. Small
increases of 5, 10, or 20 per cent will not avail, for they will not be
sufficient to hold in the schools men and women of superior ability. Teachers
are now paid less for their work than any class of workmen, and the increase in
their pay in the last few years has in nowise been in keeping with the increase
in pay of other workmen, or with the increase of the cost of living. While the
cost of living has increased approximately 80 per cent—food, 85 per cent;
clothing, 106 per cent; drugs, 103 per cent; fuel, 53 per cent; and house
furnishing goods, 75 per cent—the salaries of teachers have increased only
about 12 per cent. The purchasing power of the salary of the teacher in our
public schools is, therefore, only about 62 per cent of what it was four years
ago. Mail carriers, policemen, unskilled laborers, cooks, telegraph messengers
are paid much higher wages than are teachers. As a result many of the better
teachers are leaving the schools and their places are taken by men and women of
less native ability, less education and culture, and less training and
experience. Many of the places are not filled at all. As an inevitable result
the character of the schools is being lowered just at a time when it ought to
be raised to a much higher standard.
Students now entering the normal schools to prepare for
teaching are not of as good quality as formerly, which means that the standards
of the schools must continue to fall. In some normal schools the enrollment is
far less than in former years.
The Remedy
The only remedy is larger pay for teachers. If school
boards, legislators, and county and civil councils would immediately announce
the policy of doubling the average salary of teachers within the next five
years and of adding not less than 50 per cent more within the 10 years
following the expiration of this period, so that at the end of the 15 years the
average salary of public school-teachers would not be less than $1,500—about one
and a half times larger than they receive at present—and then take steps for
carrying out this policy, much good would be accomplished thereby at once. Such
a policy and such a prospect would attract to the schools more men and women of
superior ability and would hold them, working contentedly and, therefore,
profitably for the children and the public welfare. Such increase in salary should
carry with it an increase of not less than 25 per cent in the average length of
the school term, which is now less than 160 days.
The Cost
To those who are not acquainted with past conditions and who
have given the matter more intelligent thought, the increase recommended may
seem large, but in fact it is not. It would in most states mean a range of salaries
from $1,000 to $3,000. No person who is fit to take the time and money and
opportunity of the children of this great democratic Republic for the purpose
of fitting them for life, for making a living, and for virtuous citizenship
should be asked to work for less than $1,000 a year in any community or in any
state. No one who is unworthy of this minimum salary is fitted to do this work
and no such person should be permitted to waste the time and money of the
children and to fritter away their opportunity for education. At present the
teachers in the public elementary and high schools of the United States are
paid annually something less than $400,000,000. An increase of 150 per cent in
salaries of teachers on the basis of the present number would make a total
salary expenditure of less than $1,000,000,000. On the basis of the number of
teachers that will probably be required in 15 years from now it will be less
than $1,500,000,000, which is less than the annual expenditure for purely
Federal governmental purposes before the war, and probably much less than half
of what these expenses will be 15 years from not.
For the Children
It is not for the sake of the teachers that this policy is
advocated. Schools are not maintained for the benefit of the teachers. If men
and women of ability are not willing to teach for the pay offered them, they
can quit and do something else of a living, as hundreds of thousands of the
best do. It is for the sake of the schools, the children, and the prosperity of
the people and the strength and safety of the Nation that the policy is
advocated.
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