These are all first-grade certificate teachers, earning salaries of from $600 to $1,000 a year. Teachers are on duty five days in the week, from 9 a. m. until 2 p. m., and the school year is nine months, with a total of three months’ vacation. The salary schedule is substantially the same as in other communities of this size, but the school day is shorter by two hours than it is on the mainland. The community is paying its teachers for their eighth year of service $75 a month—about the same pay a stenographer receives at the end of her first year’s work, with an even greater scarcity in supply, and a far more urgent need. Teachers here, as indeed they do everywhere, complain of the small pay, and those spoken with expressed a preference for longer hours and more pay.
A number of teachers were spoken to with reference to the wide discrepancy between the social and community aspect of the public and private school work in Honolulu. It was suggested that a teacher’s institute would do much to stimulate such activity, by giving opportunity for the interchange of thought among the teachers in Honolulu and those from other sections of the Islands who have a considerable amount of social activity with their school work.
This would seem to be an admirable plan, and the steamship companies might be induced to grant special rates for such an occasion so that attendance would not be an unduly heavy financial burden. Reduced transportation is usually obtained for teachers’ conferences.
A number of the teachers were interested in the question of getting into closer touch with the children in their homes, and are planning to meet the parents at an early date.
There are only six teachers on the waiting list at present while on the other hand groups of children of school age continue to be seen on every block during school hours. Either the required accommodations are not yet provided, or else the compulsory law is not being enforced.
In the private schools there are forty women teachers receiving salaries ranging from $450 to $1,500 a year, and living expenses. In several instances salaries are not paid for the summer vacation; but teachers have the privilege of living at the school without expense.
While the maximum salary is greater than in the public schools, the private school work includes a comprehensive social program noted in the chapter on “Public Amusements,” which calls for much service outside of school hours.
The Territorial Teachers’ Association could do much if it would interest itself in the social problems of the city. Sociologists are coming to agree that in last analysis the teacher and the policeman are the forces which may be regarded as capable of becoming the strongest bulwarks of social betterment. Some place the policeman’s opportunity first; but in considering Honolulu’s problems I should say that the teacher might at any rate be entitled to equal consideration.
NURSES.
There is a wide divergence of opinion in the community concerning the question of nurses and where the supply ought to come from. At present there are about thirty-five private nurses officially registered at the Sanitorium, who earn $25 and $30 a week. This number, I am told, fairly supplies the normal demand in Honolulu; but the nurses come and go, and not half a dozen have ties which make them an integral part of the community.