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Show Nation Suffers Scarcity Of Competent Teachers By BAUKHAGE Vcic.i Analyst anil ('.ommrntntor. WNU Service. 1616 Eye Street, N.W., Washington, I). C. WASHINGTON. D. C Less than a vear and a half after the Question of which would triumph, naziism or democracy, was settled, the United States is being forced to meet a crisis in its competitive struggle to maintain main-tain its way of life. Two years ago the prediction, based on trends nf that moment. pils had never had more than a fourth grade education herself. Low pay Is, as it has always been, one of the chief difficulties. It is a ! strange paradox that the business and industrial groups, who are most anxious that the principles of democracy de-mocracy and free enterprise be j thoroughly taught, are the greatest competitors of the schoolhousc. Here in Washington the minimum wage of teachers is below that of lower grade clerical assistants and tile clerks In the government. In in- 1 dustrial centers, the gap is wider. I In business, there is more of a demand de-mand today for college-trained personnel per-sonnel Many teachers, both male and female, who went into the services serv-ices held college degrees, and when discharged were eagerly snapped j up by businesses requiring higher education. Chambers of commerce, disturbed dis-turbed by the threat of untrained minds in their communities, have appealed to the government to promote pro-mote special teachers' programs as a part of the veterans' re-training programs but here again the federal fed-eral government would be treading on thin ice. That isn't in the law. j Private institutions and the com- i miinity itself are responsible for this type of effort, and congress always puts its foot down when there is any- j thing that even hints at federal ac- j tivity in connection with the public ! school system. The office of edu- I was made that ,. . . Baukhage our school sys- I em faces one of the greatest crises in its history American schools have lost 200,000 competent, well-prepared well-prepared teachers since Pearl Harbor." Har-bor." (That was in June, 1944.) At that time only one out of a hundred hun-dred school teachers held "emergency "emer-gency certificates"- certificates issued is-sued to persons admittedly not in the "competent, well-prepared" class. Today, according to an estimate made In an article in the October issue of Coronet magazine, one out of every eight hold such certificates and out of the 200,000 teachers lost to war industries, the draft and other oth-er wartime activities. Coronet finds cation leans over backward to keep away from anything that might be labeled "interference." Not only poor pay but also lack of social life drives many prospective prospec-tive teachers into other fields. That is something that only the community commu-nity can change. If the teacher's position is not changed for the better and the public pub-lic school system is not restored to its normal place in our democracy we will have lost the one thing without with-out which democracy cannot grow. Democracy cannot renew itself, it must be renewed in the hearts of each new generation. Otherwise, wetdl aplenty will take its place. Slips Over Fast Or.e on Censor , One of the few joys left to a newspaper news-paper correspondent in one of the at least 75,000 of those teachers "lost" for good. Stuart Chase, economist, econ-omist, sets 500,000 as the number needed before the present teaching staff of the nation is brought up to what he calls "adequate." Ralph McDonald, executive secretary sec-retary of National Educational association as-sociation in Washington, who has been busy trying to wake the educational edu-cational world to its danger, quotes reports that Russia today is spending spend-ing 20 per cent of her comparatively low national income on education, while we spend only two per cent of ours for the same purpose. And not satisfied with what is now being done, the Soviets are demanding demand-ing still higher standards of "ideological "ideo-logical and political" knowledge for their teachers. The party pa pi P, Izvestia, announced in a recent article arti-cle that students from Bulgaria. Czechoslovakia and other Slav coun- tries were being brought into the institutions in-stitutions of higher learning in Moscow. Mos-cow. Leningrad and other cities. The office of education of the United States government is fully aware of the danger facing our public pub-lic schools. Its functions are strictly strict-ly limited, however, to the acquisition acquisi-tion and distribution of information. Actual promotional activities are forbidden and improvement of conditions con-ditions rests fundamentally with the states and local communities. The Ollice of Education is doing all it can. Full co-operation in the gathering gath-ering of data is provided and for the last six weeks or so special efforts ef-forts have been made to bring information in-formation on this subject up to date for distribution. Actual statistics of the varying needs of various communities com-munities now are being compiled. National Education association, which began an intensive campaign two years ago to assist in the recruitment re-cruitment of teachers, improvement of working conditions and higher salaries, has renewed its efforts as a result of action taken at the organization's or-ganization's convention this July. A slogan which they have adopted runs: "We must have federal aid before be-fore we can have equalization of op--portunity." But federal "interference" "interfer-ence" in America's school system I has always been a bogey. foreign cities where censorship still prevails is trying to beat the censor. One of the most amusing "beats" of this kind was scored by Drew Mid- . dleton writing from Moscow for the New York Times. Perhaps it fooled many American readers, too. It reads: "Ilya Ehrenburg, writing in Izvestia, Izves-tia, continued his long series of articles arti-cles on the United States, a group of articles which for depth and understanding un-derstanding are superior to anything written on these lines since the works of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. The dispatch was passed by the censor who didn't know that Dodgson Dodg-son was the real name of Lewis Carroll who wrote, "Alice in Wonderland," Won-derland," some of the most delightful delight-ful nonsense ever penned. I do not know whether Ehren-burg's Ehren-burg's articles as published in Moscow Mos-cow differed from those which he published in the United States, but I must say that some of them reflected re-flected life in America as truly as the scene at the Mad Hatter's tea party followed the pattern of an ordinary tea party in England. You remember that there was a table set under a tree in front of the house and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was asleep, and the other oth-er two were using him as a cushion. Cheat Pupils Out Of Proper Education Meanwhile, as Charles Harris says in the previously quoted Coronet Coro-net article, "we are cheating our boys and girls of their right to the kind of an education they desire," by permitting this teacher shortage short-age which has closed more than 7,000 class rooms and over-expanded classes so that individual attention to pupils has virtually vanished Many vital subjects have been dropped. The worst phase of the situation is the turnover. As is evidenced by the number of "emergency certificates" certifi-cates" issued, the standard has fallen fall-en sharply. Harris mentions one school which permitted a convict to be released from jail because no one else could be found to teach the pupils. I was told of a case where a teacher teaching sixth grade pu- resting their elbows on it and talking talk-ing over its head. "Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse," Dor-mouse," thought Alice; "only it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind." The Hatter was the first to break the silence. "What day of the month is it?" he said, turning to Alice. He had taken his watch out of his pocket and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then and putting it to his ear. Alice considered a little and said, "The Fourth." "Two days wrong!" sighed the Hatter. "I told you butter wouldn't suit the works." angrily looking at the March Hare. "It was the best of butter," the March Hare meekly replied. Although Middleton's comparison between Dodgson and Ehrenburg was probably well-chosen, 1 doubt if the censor would have passed the comment had he ever read "Alict in Wonderland." |