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Show U.S. School System Faces r; Greatest Crisis in History W&t Selective Service Auxiliary Branches Make Jjfnl Heavy Draft on Teaching Personnel; Til Higher Wages Necessary. i 'pat g! Dy BAUKIIAGE News Aiudyst and Commentator. O'NU Service, Union Trust Building Washington, D. C. Recently, the fate of the Churchill government bung on school teachers' teach-ers' salaries. The opposition threatened threat-ened to defeat a government-sponsored measure because it didn't provide pro-vide for making women teachers' salaries equal to men's. The opposition opposi-tion finally yielded for the sake of harmony but the issue is not dead. Today a report outlining what are described as "revolutionary changes to raise the social status of teachers in Great Britain and make their profession attractive" is before Parliament. Par-liament. Any informed Englishman admits that the American public school system sys-tem offers far more to the general public than the British system. At the same time, our own school system faces one of the greatest crises in its history and, likewise, some of the greatest changes, One simple reason for the crisis can be stated in a sentence: American schools have lost 200,000 competent, well-prepared teachers since Pearl Harbor. Selective service and voluntary enlistment have made a heavy draft on the men, and you have no idea how many WACs and WAVES, Marines Ma-rines and SPARS stepped out of the schoolroom Into their natty uniforms. uni-forms. Of course, high wages in industry lured many a teacher from the three Rs, too. And why not? The average aver-age teacher's salary is only about $1,550 a year. This year 44,000 teachers were paid less than $260 a year. That wouldn't buy slacks and "old fash-lcfieds" fash-lcfieds" for a new-fashioned lady war-worker. Two hundred fifty-four thousand teachers received under a hundred dollars a month. My figures are from the Journal of the National Education association. "Already many classrooms have been closed," says this periodical, "and thousands of others are so overcrowded that effective teach ing is impossible." If these trends continue much longer, the magazine predicts, education will be cut off at its source right at a time when it has a tremendous job ahead reeducating re-educating a generation which has been subjected to highly abnormal surroundings and educating another which will have to help recreate a normal, if a somewhat altered, world. Higher Salaries Needed In this country, as in England, the first step in the solution of the problem is higher salaries, the next is better working conditions, thre third is an active campaign to attract at-tract young people to the profession. profes-sion. But before these steps are accomplished, accom-plished, an interim effort is necessary, neces-sary, and it has already begun an organized effort urging capable high school seniors to prepare for the teaching profession. Many state groups have begun be-gun campaigns of various kinds, and the National Education association, associ-ation, itself, has appropriated $8,500 for this purpose. Hundreds of thousands thou-sands of pamphlets and leaflets have been prepared and distributed. Realizing that those attractive posters post-ers of girls in uniforms had a lot to do with recruiting women for the armed services, one of the artists who helped lure private, sergeant or lieutenant Smith out of the school house, has been hired to try to lure her back when the war is over, or attract her young civilian sister. I haven't seen one of these posters yet, but I hope they do the job, for the task ahead for the teacher and the opportunities that the profession profes-sion will offer are both bound to expand tremendously due to the situation which will follow the war. This will spring from two causes. The first is a part of a universal demand which is already being heard abroad as well as at home, when any group, formal or informal, gets together to talk over postwar conditions. Plenty of ridicule is hurled by the so-called hard-headed citizens at the postwar planners whose name is legion. But congress has already learned that there is one brass-tacks phase of war-planning that can't be labelled as amiable day-dreaming and ignored. I That is exemplified in the so-called "GI bill of rights" which includes the "billion dollar program" for education for returning veterans. Educational Demands The bill will pass congress and will be signed. The soldier, far more vocal than he has ever been before, and representing the greatest great-est group of voters with a singleness single-ness of purpose on the subject of "GI rights" that congress has ever faced, is going to get what he wants. And the demand for greater educational edu-cational opportunities will not be limited to the veteran. Careful estimates indicate that, to carry out the postwar education program for veterans, non-veterans and their children, the present personnel per-sonnel will have to be increased 50 per cent. This, of course, includes besides teachers, administrators, librarians, li-brarians, clerks, nurses, janitors and bus drivers, nearly a million and a half persons. These figures give you an indication of the number num-ber of persons who will be drawn into the profession and its allied activities ac-tivities if the plans go through. The second reason why we can expect a stimulation in the whole field of education is because there is a very strong feeling that the opportunities op-portunities or learning must be greatly broadened. As a result of the social changes preceding and during the war, the strong voice of the common man has been raised, demanding that cultural as well as economic benefits be more widely distributed. The thoughtful educators educa-tors realize that a wider background of knowedge must be furnished to everyone, that technical and professional profes-sional courses must be grounded on a firmer base of general knowledge Already there is a feeling of reaction re-action against the emphasis wbtcb the war has placed on purely material mate-rial subjects, on a purely technical techni-cal or scientific education This is bound to call for a greater share of what might be called spiritual culture. And at the other end of the spectrum, also a demand for train ing in health and physical development. develop-ment. Educators themselves have their troubles from within as well as from without. Of late, there has been pressure by certain groups, like the National Association of Manufacturers, Manufac-turers, anxious to see that nothing is taught that might endanger what they define as the "free enterprise" system, although not all businessmen business-men agree on what free enterprise is or that they like it too free. There have also been many conflicts con-flicts within and among institutions of higher learning, like the one in my own alma mater, the University of Chicago, where President Hutchlns and his followers want to get back to "first principles" with an emphasis on the philosophers; and others lean toward a more utilitarian utili-tarian training. The so-called "experimental" "ex-perimental" colleges like Antioch, stressing individual development and social responsibility, do not agree with Hutchins nor even among themselves. But it would seem that the trend of the times agrees with the recent edict of a well-known well-known educator who said that concern con-cern with the development of the individual and concern with society must be the twin goals of education. In any case, it is clear that never before in our history have the school teacher and the professor been offered such a challenge. Never before has the proverb which says "wisdom is the principle thing, therefore, get wisdom" been more widely heeded; never has the rest of the abjuration of King Solomon Solo-mon been more important: "and with all thy getting, get understanding." under-standing." . FORTY ACRES AND A JEEP It never rains but it pours. With the sheep in the meadow, the cows in the corn, and even the scarecrow alone and forlorn for want of manpower to help out, the department of agriculture now sends out the warning that after the war there won't be enough farms in the country to hold all the people who will be crying for 40 acres ond a jeep. Omcials say that five million war-workers war-workers alone, a lot of whom don't know a spade from a club, may try to get their living from the soil when peace comes. |
