If we are to have enough elementary school teachers and continue to
increase the number from the most fit women for the task, we must also
institute a new social backing for the profession. In this connection
one is obliged to deal with the disrespect shown the average teacher
of little children and even of the high school and college instructor
as compared with leaders in other professions. The teacher of little
children is most often a woman, and if a woman away from home and
especially in some rural communities is very nearly a social outcast.
The "teacherage" is just beginning to be called for as the suitable
home for the teachers of a school; a "teacherage" which can become a
social centre if near the school building, and thus be uniquely
useful. The jointure of all the best homes in a community with all the
wisest teachers in that community, not alone for the occasional
discussion of "School Problems" or "Home Problems," but for some
common public work which will link both teachers and parents to the
larger life of the community--this is a necessity if we would have
enough teachers of the right sort.
The attention to the physical details of school housing, school
gardens, school playgrounds, school lighting and seating, all these
the family life which furnishes the children must be keen about in
the interest of each child. The curriculum must not be left to a
school board chiefly interested in other matters than text-books,
except it may be for a business interest in the latter. The supply and
testing of teachers must not be left to a body more concerned in
getting places for relatives and friends than for securing the best
available teaching staff.
In all the things that experts should direct, and in all the things
that mean health and comfort and happiness to individual children,
parents, even if not very learned, should have a voice and seek to
make their convictions work to actual progress.
=Individual Sharing in the Social Inheritance.=--For the last point of
our list, namely, the right of every child to be made a conscious heir
to the social inheritance of his time and place in the world, little
need be said. The tendencies in American life which give thoughtful
people the most satisfaction are the tendencies toward extension of
culture privileges in public libraries, lectures, tax-supported and
educationally supervised playgrounds, in young people's organizations
like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, in summer camps (not all for the
rich), in vacation houses full of the flavor of the best of life, in
the varied clubs and classes of the settlements, in the pageants and
other forms of pictured world-life--all these, and more that might be
named, show an exuberance of effort to share with utmost speed and
fullest generosity the things that seem to the privileged few the most
precious heritage of our race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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