Coöperation Needed.—Educational movements and influences have spread downward and outward from above. The great universities of the world were established before the secondary and elementary school systems came into existence. Thought settles down from leaders who are in high places. We have shown in a former chapter that the state universities, the agricultural colleges, the normal schools, and the high schools have had a wonderful development within the last generation, while the rural school has too often lagged perceptibly behind. The country districts have helped to support in every way the development of the higher schools; now an excellent opportunity presents itself for all the higher and secondary educational influences to unite in helping to advance the interests and increase the efficiency of the rural schools.
The Supply.—The question is sometimes asked whether the right kind of teachers can be secured, if higher salaries are offered. There can be no doubt at all on this point. Where the demand exists and where there is sufficient inducement offered, the supply is always forthcoming. Men are always at hand to engage in the most menial and even the most dangerous occupations if a sufficient reward, financial or otherwise, is offered. For high wages men are induced to work in factories where mercury must be handled and where it is well known that life is shortened many years as a consequence. Men are secured to work long hours in the presence of red-hot blast furnaces and in the lowest depths of the holds of ships. Can it be possible that with a reasonable salary the strongest kind of men would not be attracted to a calling that has as many points of interest and as many attractions as teaching?
Make It Fashionable.—A great deal depends upon making any work or any calling fashionable. All that is needed is for the tide to turn in that direction. It is difficult to say how much salary will stop the outward tide and cause it to set in the other direction; but one thing is certain, we shall never completely solve the rural school problem until the tide turns.
The Retirement System.—Strong personalities will, then, help to make teaching attractive and fashionable, as well as effectual. There is a movement now becoming quite extensive which will also add to the attractiveness of the teacher's calling. A system or plan of insurance and retirement is now being installed in many states for the benefit of teachers who become incapacitated or who have taught a certain period of time. This plan gives a feeling of contentment, and also a feeling of security against the stress and needs of old age, which will do much to hold strong people in the profession. The fear of being left penniless in later life and dependent upon others or upon the state, induces, without doubt, a great many persons to leave a calling so poorly paid, in order that they may, in more generous vocations, lay something by for "a rainy day." The truth of this is borne in upon us more strongly when we remember that teaching is different from law, medicine, or other professions. In these vocations a man's service usually becomes more and more in demand as he advances in years, on account of the reputation and experience he has gained; while in teaching, when a person arrives at the middle line of life or after, school boards begin to say and to think, that he is getting too old for the schoolroom, and so they seek for younger talent. The consequence is that the good and faithful public servant who has given the best years of his life to the education of the young is left stranded in old age without an occupation and without money. The insurance and retirement fund plan is a movement in the right direction and will do something to help turn the tide of strong personalities toward the teachers' calling.
City and Country Salaries—Effects.—The average salary for rural school teachers in one state I find to be $45 a month. In that same state the average salary of teachers in the city and town schools is $55 a month. Now, under such conditions, it is very difficult to secure a good corps of teachers for the rural schools. If the ratio were reversed and the rural schools paid $55 a month, while the cities and towns paid only $45, there would be more chance of each securing teachers of equal ability. Even then, teachers would prefer to go to the city at the lower salary on account of the additional attractions and conveniences and the additional facilities and opportunities of every kind for self-improvement.
In the state referred to, the average salary of all teachers in the common schools was $51 a month. It is utterly impossible to realize a "profession" on such a financial basis as this. Forty-five or fifty dollars a month for rural teachers is altogether too low. This must be raised fifty, if not one hundred per cent, in order that a beginning may be made in the solution of the rural school problem. Where $50 a month seems to be the going wage, if school boards would offer $75 and then see to it that the persons whom they hire are efficient, an attempt at the solution of the problem in that district or neighborhood would be made. Is it possible that any good, strong, educated, and cultured person can be secured for less than $75 a month? If in such a district there were eight months of school this would mean only 8 x $25, or $200 more than had been paid previously. For ten sections of land this would mean about $20 a section, or $5 a quarter section, in addition to what they had been paying with unsatisfactory results.
This sum often represents the difference between a poor school and a good school. With a fifty-dollar teacher, constructive work was likely lacking. There was little activity in the neighborhood; the pupils or the people had not been fully waked up. There had not been enough thinking and talking of education and of schools, enough reading, or talking about books, about education, about things of the higher life. Under the seventy-five-dollar teacher, wisely chosen, all this is changed.
The Solution Demands More.—Instead of $75, a community should pay to a wide-awake person, who takes hold of a situation in a neighborhood and keeps things moving, at least $100 a month. With nine months' school this would mean $900; and it is strange, indeed, if a person in the prime of life who has spent many years in the preparation of his work, and who has initiative and push, is not worth $100 a month for nine months in the year. To such a person the people of that neighborhood intrust their dearest and priceless possessions—their own children. If we remember that, as the twig is bent the tree is inclined, there need be no hesitation about the value of efficient teaching during the plastic period of childhood. In fact, it may easily be maintained that the salary should be even higher than this. But, if this be so, how far are we at present from even a beginning of the solution of our rural school problem!
A Good School Board.—A good school board is one whose members are alive to their duties and wide-awake to the problems of education. They are men or women who have an intelligent grasp of the situation and who will earnestly attempt to solve the educational problems of school and of life in their community.
Board and Teacher.—If a poor teacher and a good school board are brought together the chances are that they will soon part company. A good school board will not retain a poor teacher longer than it is compelled to do so. A poor school board and a good teacher will also part company, for the good teacher will not stay; he will leave and find relief as soon as possible. Under a poor school board and a poor teacher nothing will be done; the children, instead of being educated, will be de-educated. Quarrels and dissensions will be created in the neighborhood and a miserable condition, educationally and socially, will prevail. If a good school board and a good teacher join hands, the problem is solved, or at least is in a fair way to being solved. This last condition will mean an interested school, a united neighborhood, a live, wide-awake, and happy community.