"That our childhood may pass with the best you can give—
And our manhood so live!"
Men and women both are needed as teachers; education is a social process—not one of sex. Yet the woman is, by virtue of her motherhood, the original teacher; and is more frequently possessed of the teaching instinct. All normal women would naturally marry, circumstances permitting; should marry, and would be no poorer teachers for that new relationship. All normal women should be mothers; and as such, would be better teachers—not worse!
As to payment, so long as we must measure off our services and pay for them, no form of human work is worthy of higher reward than this. To gather the fruit of all our progress, to prepare it for a child's mind, and lead him to eat that fruit, freely, and so grow to his best and highest—this is the human work.
It should be so prized, so honored, and so paid. And the payment should be for great work done—and bear no relation whatever to age or sex, or sex-relation; much less to the pathological condition of irrelevant husbands.
There is now formed in New York City, "The Married Women Teachers'
Association" (secretary, Miss Anna G. Walsh, 22 Harvard Street, Jamaica,
N. Y.), the purpose of which is to resist this unjust and illegitimate
discrimination.
It is unfortunate that more of the unmarried teachers do not cheerfully assist in the work.
They do not yet seem to realize that all women should make common cause against what is not only an injustice, but the most insolent and presuming interference on the part of men, with the private and personal affairs of women.