New Ideals in Rural Schools

by George Herbert Betts

The salaries paid teachers in general in different types of schools are one measure, though not a perfect one, of their efficiency. Salary is not a perfect measure of efficiency, (1) because economic ability to pay is a modifying influence. When the early New England teacher was receiving ten or twelve dollars a month and "boarding round," he was probably getting all that the community could afford to pay him, although he was often a college student, and not infrequently a well-trained graduate. The salaries paid in the various occupations are not (2) based upon any definite standards of the value of service. For example, the chef in a hotel may receive more than the superintendent of schools, and the football coach more than the college president; yet we would hardly want to conclude that the services of the cook and the athlete are worth more to society than the services of educators. And within the vocation of teaching itself there is (3) no fixed standard for judging teaching efficiency. Nevertheless, in general, teaching efficiency is in considerable degree measured by differences in salaries paid in different localities and in the various levels of school work.

Based on the standard of salary as a measure, the teaching efficiency of rural teachers is, as we should expect from starting nearly all of our beginners here, considerably below that in towns or cities. A study by Coffman[6] of more than five thousand widely distributed teachers as to age, sex, salary, etc., shows that the average man in the rural school receives an annual salary of $390; in town schools, of $613; and in city schools, of $919. The average woman in the rural school receives an annual salary of $366; in town schools, of $492; and in city schools, of $591. Men in towns, therefore, receive one and one half times as much as men in the country, and in cities, two and one half times as much as in the country. Women in towns receive a little more than one and one third times as much as women in the country, and in the cities almost one and two thirds times as much as women in the country.

The actual amount of salary paid rural teachers is perhaps more instructive than the comparative amounts. The income of the rural teacher is barely a living wage, and not even that if the teacher has no parental home, or a gainful occupation during vacation times. Out of an amount of less than four hundred dollars a year the teacher is expected to pay for a certificate, a few school journals and professional books, and attend teachers institutes or conventions, besides supporting himself as a teacher ought to live. It does not need argument to show that this meager salary forces a standard of living too low for efficiency. It would, therefore, be unfair to ask for efficiency with the present standard of salaries.

Nor is it to be overlooked that efficiency and salaries must mount upward together. It would be as unjust to ask for higher salaries without increasing the grade of efficiency as to ask for efficiency on the present salary basis. It is probable that the eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boys and girls starting in to teach the rural school, with but little preparation above the elementary grades, are receiving all they are worth, at least as compared with what they could earn in other lines. The great point of difficulty is that they are not worth enough. The community cannot afford to buy the kind of educational service they are qualified to offer; it would be a vastly better investment for the public to buy higher teaching efficiency at larger salaries.

No statistics are available to show the exact percentage of increase in rural teachers' salaries during recent years, but this increase has been considerable; and the tendency is still upward. In this as in other features of the rural school problem, however, it will be impossible to meet reasonable demands without forsaking the rural district system for a more centralized system of consolidated schools. To pay adequate salaries to the number of teachers now required for the thousands of small rural schools would be too heavy a drain on our economic resources. Under the consolidated system a considerably smaller number of teachers is required, and these can receive higher salaries without greatly increasing the amount expended for teaching. In this as in other phases of our educational problems, what is needed is rational business method, and a willingness to devote a fair proportion of our wealth to the education of the young.

Supervision of rural teaching

Our rural school teaching has never had efficient supervision. The very nature of rural school organization has rendered expert supervision impossible, no matter how able the supervising officer might be. With slight modifications, the office of county superintendent is, throughout the country, typical of the attempt to provide supervision for the rural school. While such a system may have afforded all that could be expected in the pioneer days, its inadequacy to meet present-day demands is almost too patent to require discussion.

First of all, it is physically impossible for a county superintendent to visit and supervise one hundred and fifty teachers at work in as many different schools scattered over four or five hundred square miles of territory. If he were to devote all his time to visiting country schools, he would have only one day to each school per year. When it is remembered that the county superintendent must also attend to an office that has a large amount of correspondence and clerical work, that he is usually commissioned with authority to oversee the building of all schoolhouses in his county, that he must act as judge in hearing appeals in school disputes, that he must conduct all teachers' examinations and in many instances grade the papers, and, finally, that country roads are often impassable, it is seen that his time for supervision is greatly curtailed. As a matter of fact some rural schools receive no visit from the county superintendent for several years at a time.

A still further obstacle comes from the fact of the frequent changes of teachers among rural schools. A teacher visited by the county superintendent in a certain school this term, and advised as to how best to meet its problems, is likely to be in a different school next term, and required to meet an entirely new set of problems.