Our Common Country/Chapter 8
My mind runs back to something like thirty-eight years ago when I was in attendance as a teacher at a Marion County Institute. I had come from college only the year before, and I did what was very much the practise of that time—turned to teaching in my abundant fulness of knowledge, merely as a temporary occupation.
It is a very inspiring thing to be a teacher of American youth. In our modern life we have shifted some of the responsibility which I think should accrue to parenthood over to the teachers in our public schools. So school-teachers have much to do with making the citizenship in this Republic of ours, and they ought to be the best rated profession, the best cared for profession in America. I believe that our teachers should be compensated as liberally, if not more liberally, than any other profession. I do not try to give you the impression that the federal government can do that; but we do have a Federal Bureau of Education which has only a relative influence on educational work. Some day we may have a much larger and more important Department of Education; but in any event the federal government can exert its influence in behalf of a becoming recognition of the teaching profession.
I do not believe that all which has been placed on the shoulders of our teachers ought to be taken from the American homes. I will not discuss that at length, but I do think teachers ought to know the home a little more intimately, and ought to have the cooperation of the parents and the home.
I am not sure I was a very good teacher, but I was at least ambitious to be a good one. I taught in a country school. If you have never done that you don't know the real pleasure of teaching. We had all the branches of elementary teaching, up to the heights of algebra and general history. One day I put on the blackboard the forms for addressing and closing a letter. After explanations, I erased the blackboard form and asked the pupils to address me a letter on their slates. One obstinate youth refused, and I was obliged to discipline him. He happened to be a son of one of the school directors who compensated me for my unusual interest in his boy by writing me that I was engaged to teach what was in the textbook, namely, reading, writing, and arithmetic, and not to go beyond. So he declined to sign my pay warrant! That actually happened only about thirty-eight years ago.
Our teachers represent the great army of those patient soldiers in the cause of humanity upon whom rests one of the most profound responsibilities given to any man or woman. And yet the disadvantages that beset their profession indicate a serious menace to our national institutions. It is, indeed, a crisis in American education that confronts us. If we continue to allow our public instructors to struggle with beggarly wages we shall find ourselves with closed schools; our education will languish and fail. It is a patent fact that never have our teachers, as a whole, been properly compensated. From the days when the country teachers "boarded around" to the present hour the profession has never been adequately compensated. Requiring, as it does, a high degree of mental equipment, a long preparation, severe examination tests, the maintenance of a proper state in society, and giving employment only a part of the year, with compensation too meager, the wonder of it is that we have had the service of these devoted persons employed in educating our youth.
I have a personal recollection of the old-time estimate of school teaching, because I taught one session of district school. For the autumn months I received twenty dollars per month, for the winter double the price, not that I taught better or more, but probably because I built the fires and had more sweeping to do. But then, and earlier, teaching was not a life profession, but rather a resort to youth's temporary earnings, to help prepare for something else. To-day teaching is a life work, a great profession, a life offering on the altar of American advancement.
Education is recognized in our organic law, but it did not need that declaration. America's greatness, her liberty, and her happiness are founded upon her intelligence. They are founded upon that wide dissemination of knowledge which comes only to the many through our educational system.
This subject touches every individual in America. All of us are concerned in our common schools. We ought to be as interested in our teacher's pay as we are in our own. We can't be confident of our schools unless we are confident of our teachers and know they are the best that a great work may command.
Whatever the cause may be for failure to recognize the value of the teacher, measured in wages, it is a lamentable fact that the teacher has done his patient service improperly rewarded through all the years. The burdens of the teachers have increased, greater exactions as to fitness have been imposed, the cost of living has gone up, but we have failed to meet the change.
We have now reached a crisis, when it is imperative that something must be done. I know with what difficulty our public schools have been operated during the past two or three years. Teachers have left the schools for more promising employments and their places have been left unfilled with new enlistments. This condition is not only fatal if continued, but it reflects discredit upon every citizen who has not demanded correction of the evil. We make drafts upon our public treasuries, we are taxed, sometimes unnecessarily, for almost every other conceivable purpose. Let us support adequately the standards of our schools. Let all Americans recognize the necessity and determine upon relief. When the facts are known, America and Americans will respond.
It is fair to say that the federal government is not responsible and can not assume to trespass, but it can give of its influence, it can point out the peril which ought to be clearly evident to every community, it can emphasize the present crisis and make an unfailing call for the educational preparedness for citizenship which is so essential to our continued triumphs.
It is a rather curious indication of the trend toward federal control that at this very moment not less than four or five new Cabinet officers are being proposed—and not without argument, let me say. Some feel there should be a reorganization of the Department of the Interior,—they want to create this and that—and not without reason, too, because it has become a tremendous government within itself. There is one call for a department of engineering—another for a department of health, and thus I might run on. I can not pretend to say to you what ought to be done in each instance, but I can say that I am concerned just as deeply as you are respecting this question of bringing American education up to the very highest standard.