One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money

by Harold Morse Dunphy

Promotion

Teaching positions in colleges and universities pay more money, of course, than those in high schools. It is equally true that instructors in high schools are paid more money than those in elementary schools. This difference in salary is largely because of the greater amount of training required for the better paying positions.

In general, high-school teachers, for example, must have pursued an educational course at least four years in advance of the grade of the subject which they teach in the high school. This means graduation from a college, or what is commonly called the A. B. degree. The standards in most colleges have been raised so much the last few years that one must have at least two years of education in the college subject which he expects to teach, beyond the four years’ work of the college. This means at least the master’s degree and, in many institutions, the doctor’s degree.

Any young man ambitious to become a college instructor should recognize that his chances of success in the work are very poor unless he is able in some way to secure the proper preparation. In many cases this is done by graduating from a normal school to teach in elementary schools. Later, by saving his money, the teacher is able to complete an A. B. degree, which makes him eligible for desirable teaching positions in high schools.

A third step for the ambitious man is that the second return to a college or university for the purpose of securing specialized training which entitles him to the master’s or doctor’s degree. He is then eligible for desirable college and university positions.

Any man interested in education as a profession should, therefore, take stock of his native ability, his interest in the profession, his present educational qualifications, the grade of position to which he aspires, and the amount of sacrifice he is willing to make to meet its requirements.

After a few years’ experience in actual teaching one may qualify for a supervisory position or an administrative position. There are many positions of this character. There are positions as supervisor of art, music, drawing, physical training, manual training, agriculture, etc., in the grades and in the high schools. There are supervisors also of certain grades, like supervisors in the primary grades, the intermediate grades and the upper grades. Men can very well do this supervisory work in the intermediate and especially in the upper grades. Sometimes one supervises the teaching of all subjects in a group of buildings. On the administrative side there are opportunities as principals of buildings. Sometimes the work of the principal is wholly that of administration. Sometimes it combines with the administrative work, the work of supervising actual teaching. From principalships and supervising positions one may pass on to the position of superintendent.

A young man of ability and ambition with the proper training can reasonably hope to become principal of a large building, or superintendent of a fairly good sized school system, if he is willing to pay the price of hard work for 12 to 15 years.

Administrative positions on the strictly business side of schools, such as superintendent of buildings, or of supplies, are open to men of course, who have not had teaching experience at all. Generally, however, these positions are filled by men who know something of the teaching problem itself. More and more there is a tendency to bring the business administration and education administration nearer together.

In the future, therefore, promotions even in the business field of school work will doubtless take place more and more through the avenue of the educational field. In both of these fields, the business and the educational administration of school work, there is a distinct future for fine vigorous men, who have the power of arranging their thoughts and facts in an orderly way when they are taking up matters for discussion with their associates.

The soldier who enters the field of education has a far wider horizon, and therefore a better opportunity for promotion, than one equally well equipped in other respects who has not borne arms.

Essentials of the Ideal Teacher

It is difficult to judge in advance one’s fitness for teaching. Probably the biggest single element determining success is love for children or for youth. If a man can play with them with pleasure, he has a pretty strong evidence of an understanding of child nature that will be helpful to him in teaching.

Prof. George Herbert Palmer, in his monograph “The Ideal Teacher,” says that there are four essentials of the successful ideal teacher. These may be briefly indicated as follows:

1. So long as a teacher is content to keep in his possession information or facts he is not a teacher at all. He must transfer these facts to minds of others in order to be a teacher. It goes without saying that the teacher must have knowledge, a wide range of information about various things, before this knowledge can be passed on to someone else. The teacher’s duty is that of taking a thought out of his own mind and putting that thought into the minds of others. It goes without saying, therefore, that he must have possession of the thought in the first place himself.

2. The teacher must have a passion to lead others to learn. This eagerness must be accompanied by imagination which leads the teacher to put himself in the place of the pupil. This means that the teacher has to take facts and wrestle with them until they are lodged safely and permanently in the minds of the pupils. The teacher must see the things that confuse the pupils and after seeing these difficulties must clear them away. There is always the temptation for the teacher to blame failure on the dullness of pupils rather than to ask whether the teaching has been adjusted to the conditions of the pupil’s mind.

3. In addition to the intellectual wealth and the sympathetic imagination above mentioned, the ideal teacher must make the pupils like to learn. Too often school work is offensive and results in arousing a rebellious spirit on the part of pupils.

4. The ideal teacher must be willing to be forgotten—to have his kind acts overlooked—to be generous, even in the absence of praise. If praise and recognition are essential to him the prospective teacher may as well give up the profession.

Test Questions for Self-examination

The discharged soldier can decide to some extent what his teaching chances are by asking himself questions like the following: Have I attended evening school or taken instruction work, or gone to lectures, or enrolled in correspondence schools, or done anything previous to entering the Army which would lead anyone to suppose that I was ambitious to advance in my vocation? When in the Army, did I obtain recognition for capacity for leadership and for teaching others? Have I in the past looked upon teaching as a desirable profession where one could render service at a fair compensation? Have I “Stick-to-it-iveness” to attend a teachers’ training school and adapt myself to classroom work with books, catalogues, reports, and lectures on the theory and practice of education?

One looking forward to a position in vocational education should ask himself such questions as the following: Have I actual technical knowledge of some trade or am I only capable of practicing a few operations connected with the trade? Have I ever been interested in social and economic life that lies behind the vocational life? Did I ever join any organization connected with an occupation or pursuit which promotes the economic and educational welfare of its members?

Each prospective teacher should ask, Have I a strong personality? Nothing awakens within a child sleeping moral qualities so well as contact with a strong attractive personality. The problem of the school is to find the teacher inspired with patriotism, filled with zeal, and favored with intellectual interests.

Teaching not Easy Work

The question of health, also, is an important one for the person who is looking forward to teaching. Many people feel that school hours are short, and that, therefore, a great amount of physical endurance is not needed in the work of teaching. Because of the particular strain of the teacher’s work it is a mistake to think of the workday at all in terms of hours. It has been said that one hour of teaching is equivalent as far as fatigue is concerned to two hours of ordinary study done in quiet without the necessity of speaking. The four or five hour teaching day, therefore, becomes the equivalent of an eight or ten hour day, and on top of that must be added two hours a day for correcting papers, preparing lesson plans, etc.

It is said that teaching is hard on the eyes and the nerves and the lungs, so that people suffering seriously from either eye, nerve, or lung trouble should hesitate to go into teaching as a life work, unless there are prospects of early recovery. It is further stated that a higher percentage of deaths occurs from tuberculosis among teachers than among persons in other occupations, although the mortality from this disease is higher for female teachers than for male teachers. Teachers, especially beginning teachers, frequently suffer from nervous strain. Almost 50 per cent of the nervous cases are said to appear during the first 5 years of teaching, while during the first 15 years of teaching 87 per cent of such cases occur. Nevertheless it is to be noted that insurance companies class teachers among their good risks.

Training Required

Men who have gotten no farther than the eighth grade in their general education might be fitted to teach some vocational subjects. Teachers of elementary subjects, either in the ungraded rural schools or in the graded city schools, should have the equivalent of a high-school education, and teachers in high schools should have the equivalent of a college education with emphasis placed upon the subject taught. Teachers in normal schools should have a year or two of work beyond the college course, and teachers in colleges and universities are generally expected to have from one to four years of post-graduate work.

In addition to this general training in subject matter one should have professional training dealing with the methods of teaching and supervising. The demand for men with this special training in the teaching profession is growing. The minimum general education required for a principalship of a school is graduation from a good high school. In addition to this there should be at least two years of study, which is largely professional, such as one would get in a normal school or in the department of education in a college or university. Even further study than that, of course, is desirable, and the best positions generally go to men who have spent several years in study beyond college graduation. Recent studies show that men who have received even a small amount of professional training advance more rapidly than those who have depended alone on their native ability and general education.

For the positions that are largely administrative and supervisory men who have already had experience in the field of teaching may secure the necessary technical preparation by taking a year’s training in any of the numerous colleges of education or normal schools which prepare for these fields. Present-day courses in theory and practice, leading directly to positions named above, offer unexcelled professional training in these fields.

Various States of the Union have different laws governing the certification of teachers. Some of the States require a definite amount of education of a general nature, plus education of a professional nature, plus an examination. Other States depend more upon the examination. The present tendency is to raise the requirement for a general education, to add to the requirement for a professional training, and to lay less stress upon the examination. Anyone who is thinking of entering the teaching profession, however, should before doing so look up very carefully the laws in force in the State in which he plans to teach.

Applicants for teaching positions in educational institutions of any grade must generally show the authorities in control that they possess whatever qualifications may be considered necessary, including education, training, experience, and personality.

In general, the higher the grade of the institution, the higher the requirements. Colleges, technical schools, and universities all practically require for the lowest teaching positions on their regular staff at least a degree equal to that granted by the institution. Schools of secondary grade do not, as a rule, set the standard as high, while schools of intermediate grade set up intermediate qualifications.

The requirements for teachers in schools of secondary grade vary widely. If under private control, no definite statement can be made, since each school sets up its own standards. Good privately controlled schools, however, tend to set up about the same requirements as schools of corresponding type that are under public control.

In the great majority of States teachers in schools under public control must be certified before they can be employed. This certificate is usually granted after some form of examination has been successfully passed and is commonly given by the State educational authorities. Usually certificates are granted only to persons having certain educational and other qualifications. The requirements, examinations, subjects, etc., are usually given in bulletins issued free by the departments of education of the different States. Some large cities have certifying systems of their own.

In most States teachers of agriculture must be graduates of a four-year course in an agricultural college or institution of similar grade, and in addition, must have had a practical farming experience.

In trade and commercial schools and departments the general tendency is to secure for practical or shop instructors men who actually know the occupations that they are to teach. In industrial day schools and in evening courses in these schools, there is generally required proof of a certain length of journeyman experience in the trade to be taught following an apprentice experience or its equivalent, and proof also of an elementary school education or its equivalent.

Teachers of technical or related subjects (shop mechanics, drawing, etc.), are usually required to have had several years of technical training and to have had some contact with industry.