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Show THE SCHOOLS IN DANGER The American schools are in danger of grave depreciation unless the American people face the school problem squarely, as they have faced every other problem that has confronted them. The schools are suffering from the two all-absorbing problems of the day the war and high cost of living. Wages and salaries in almost every other vocation have risen pretty much in keeping with the cost of living. Still the teachers grind on at practically the same old starvation wages. If the harm done 'were only in forcing a number of people to live on inadequate Wages, the matter would not be very serious. But the harm does not stop here. The impossibility of obtaining living salaries is inevitably forcing the ambitious man or woman out of the profession and into some other calling that is more generous. The natural result must be the filling of the schools with a lot of second rate teachers, boys who regard the school room as merely a stop-gap between their own school days and a profession and girls who view it as a stepping stone between graduation and matrimony nice boys and nice girls, we grant you, but lacking much of being competent instructors. The only possible result :f this condition must be the grievous neglect of the youth of the land. And just at this crisis this country cannot afford to neglect her children. .America has had too hard a struggle to reach her present intellectual plane to afford to yield one fraction of the progress she has made. We have made too many sacrifices in the name of education and culture and intellectual and moral uplift to be willing to take one backward step. We must go on in justice to future generations, in justice to the ideals that have inspired us. Already the complaint comes from many sections of the country coun-try that numbers of the more competent teachers, disgusted with the meager salaries, are leaving the school room for more lucrative callings. Once out. and this talent is forever lost to the schools because the channels of business will quickly and eagerly absorb them. . There is but one remedy, and that is for the people to look the situation squarely in the face, and be willing to levy taxes for school purposes that shall put the teaching profession up and abreast the other professions. More, perhaps, than on any other class is the future of this country dependent upon the faithful work of her pedagogues. We must suit the reward to the magnitude magni-tude of the work. Logan Journal. |
