rseauanv ' 21. 1950

THE so UCA TI0NAL'H0R§-IAZOIIV

PRESENTING NEW AND VIEWS or INTEREST 'ro rsscnsns 'AND ‘ALL orllsas -sllsxmo mraovsusrrr IN EDUCATION .

THE 1'llANKI.!l8S PROFESSION (sy noon suau:NNsN)

(Reprinted iron The Canadian Home .3

real ior the

P. E. 1. Teacher! Federation)

The most exploited. mllbvtﬁd mg underprivileged class in Can- ada are not people the comfortable classes never see. whey are not ‘bu-our-uppers, migrant fruit pick- ..a, sweat-shop girls or nsnermenl gn oucports. '.llhey are the nation's eohooltoechors.

my years 0lll'.nOWSPI,-we have ‘med with pleas irom ‘he teacers, ior some kind oi concrete help. and‘ just as persistently we have rel'used' to listen. ‘dost of us don't even. know that our whole system of public education is in danger or! collapse. We close our eyes in this! reality because in North America we’ reiuse to accept the idea oi‘ tr-u.gedy—ths kind of wrongdoing which is inevitable as a result oil the character oi essentially good. peopio,and oi the situations in} wmch they iind “iemselves. when-! ever a tragic situation shows its‘ face, we instinctively turn our} backs. 1

Last spring in Montreal the lay teachers in the Catholic schools were driven to a despair which sent them out on strike to face the wrath of the Duplessis govern- ment In hundred: oi communities gu over the country. schools have been closed down because teachers cannot be iound to work in them. Ontario, by no means the most backward of provinces, admits a shortage oi at least a thousand teachers tor the coming year. and authorities see no hope of the situ- guon improving. Yet, when the atholic teachers went on strike in Montreal. I heard a prominent citizen bemoaning the tact that the, strike might «well mean an increase in taxes, and I heard a wealthy iriand console him with the sput- uring rejoinder: "Mark my words, Isey'll come to heel in twenty- lour hours. 11 they had any guts. they wouldn't have become teach- es in the iirst place."

when 1 say that the piisht 01 teachers in Oanada today is a tagie one. I mean tragic in the way a playwright or a psychologist would mean it. I mean that the wrong we do our‘ teachers. and the wrong they permit themselves to suﬂsr. mines iron the 9530110‘; logical relationship between our-. selves and them. it results largely: from the psomptiﬂcl 01 Oil!‘ N5‘. . scious resentments, combined. with the excessive pride | with which teachers cover up their. own deienceleasness. Ii we were rational about our attitude towards the teaching profession. the pliﬁm or our teachers would not be on conscience. and somethina

Meanwhile, the majority oi those ers who remain in the 91'0- ie-icn -are iindlng it increasingly Hundreds oi thorn have had to iine menial yobs out- sideiheirregular-workin ciderto balance their budget against ris- ieg costs. In one Ontario city there I a sdiool principal who washes bakery £211 Saturdays. and

E E‘

ssdaioilereheld menandwo- mnwhedenot anyonewhat Ileyasetorcedtodoasriﬂ 1?

moiety. -

None of us. can ‘plea ignorance‘ as an excuse ior our reiusal to act. The essential iaets oi the situation

sli‘the provinces except and Newioursdlend. Let me give a law of them here.

At the present time. nearly 16 Dar cent of Canada's teachers re- ceive less than‘ 01.00.) a year.

Only 5 per cent or the teachers- ihese figures are all for teachers In public schools; they do not touch on high :schools—are paid Mine and over a year.

In 1940-47. when the average Danadisn wage scale was about I0 per cent above the 1000 level. the salaries oi teachers-already Mil below the norm earned by all Iillo workers over ten years or shown an average in-

ihis relatively paltry increase uni- C in accordance with merit

whining. In city schools it was as per cent. and generally the increase went to those teach-

era with superior training. Holders of post-graduate degrees -were in- creased on the provincial median by only 0 per cent. and the median od provincial salaries to holders or any kind oi a university dqres was 81.0% a year. 0 O 0

It is diiilcult for any of us to grasp the true signliicance of those ilgures. What they mean is this: the teachers oi Canada. economic- ally speaking, have sunk to the bottom or the population. In gen- eral they are paid less then un- skilled workers in industry. In some communities their wages are lower than those oi semi-literate odd-lob men. In the words or the report, "salaries are such that. in general. an ambitious man can- mlts his family in a life 01 general poverty if he embraces teaching as a liie work."

Worse than the mere iact oi hardship—worse because it covrades the spiri is the necessity_whlc.h compels e poverty oi teachers to be "genteel." It is the coldest, most bitter. most humiliating kind oi’ poverty known to man. The teach- er not only pays iar more for his

original training than an industrial worker; he must slso—because oi the nature

of his work—associats with “gen- teel" people, live in a “genteel" neighborhood and dress in a “gen- teei" fashion. He would lose his

job if he tried to save on his bud- ads

get by going to class in overalls.‘ If he has children, his liie be- comes a thremdbare war oi surviv- al. iilled with petty humiliation: which gnaw at his self-confidence. because association with his intel- lectual equals means that he must associate with men far better oil than himself. He is condemned for life to the humiliation of never be- ing able to return in kind the hospitality oi his friends.

A common belief held by the public is that teachers are recom- pensed for their low incomes by a greater degree oi security than the business man or the industrial worker enjoys. In many countries this is the case. but it is not true in most parts of Canada.

I O I

At the present time. minimum pensions in three provinces are only mo. $900 and was a year, while maximum , ‘ are no more than so per cent to as per cent of the pittance which had previously constituted an annual salary. In some provinces teachers have so little security oi tenure that yearly contracts are still in use. In many communities. especially in small towns and Villages, it is assumed that teachers will undertake a great variety of extra -work for no- thing, such as teaching in amday schools, supervising sports dra- matics and clubs for the young. It is also the practice of many small towns to exact from the teachers a standard or behavior more purit- anical thsn that demanded ll-om anyone else. 'lhere are places where a male teacher would be tired if it were known that he drank a glass od beer, and a iemale teomer would be run out or the proiession it she smoked cisarettcs eta brides .

These are only a portion oi the iects which underline the insec- urity. the hlsniliations. and the economic hardship which teachers in Canada must endure. There are many other aspects oi the problem. Is our educational system demo- cratic? Do all oi our children have an equal chance"

At the present moment in Can- edaachildwhogrowsuplnaisw or our larger eities—and not all oi them by any en ‘“- a chance oi attending a iairly good school. one who grows up in a village 01' a srnail town practically never has such a chance. while in many dis- tricts there are simply no schools at all. It is idle, therefore, to pretend that we are a truly democratic nation when there is no equality of opportunity in our schools.

Take another aspect oi the prob- lem. Are our teachers. on the whole. competent to teach the young of a nation with great future r-esponsibilitesii Considering how deeply -we are in debt to the teach- ers oi Canada and‘ how little we have done to discharge that debt, it seems a gratuitous insult to accuse the profession as a whole oi incompetence. Yet such a charge must M made. not against the good teach . certainly not Ieninst

mguymuplg, but against .ourselvcs ‘

i r permitting a situtation to de- vglcp in which low standards are inevitable. _

We would regard it as unthink- able to permit a man to practice medicine unless he was qualiiled to do so. and e minimum qualif- eation we of a doctor is that he possess a degree irom a reputable medical school. But no

such inhibition prsvusts us been letting untrained people into the teaching proieasion. At iho present time only lb per cent od our gn- tire teaching personnel in the pub- lie schools of Oansdahave complet- odasrnudtas threctoicnlryears oi university training. while ap- proximately W per cent hsvo never been to college at all.

We are an eiiicient country in most . pects. Our industrialists spare no expense to guarantee that the mechancisl In; ‘ t ed their factories is supervised and man- aged with the maximum or expert skill. Yet we have no hesitation in turning over the education or our children to unqualified ,

many oi whom enter teaching only as a stop-gap while waiting ior something better to turn up. It is a truism that a good teacher can so inspire a child that the whole course oi the child's life is chang- ed. It is also I. trusim that a bad teacher can lniect’ his pupils with a hatrgd oi learnlns. can stiile their imaginations and give them such iaulty habits of work that they will never have a chance oi gaining even material success.

0 O I

For this whole situation—ior the shortage or teaching personnel, for the hardship oi the teachers themselves. for low standards with- in the proiession—-there is a single concrete remedy. We must care enough to pay enough. A simple sum or arithmetic shows clearly that until we consent to pay our teachers, on the average, at least three times -what we pay them now we will never have a satisfactory system of public education in Can-

This statement seems unreason- able, recollect certain key. iscts re- ported by the Cansdian Education Association. Both laymen and ex- perieneed teachers agree that the main reason why standards within the profession are low is that most oi the‘ teachers are insuciicientiy educated. These two groups also agree. in the main, that all teach- ers should have college ‘ ,, . And yet at the __ nt- osnent the average salary we pay a canon graduate teaching in Canada is only $l,6$ a yearl How many college graduates can be expected to choose teaching as a liiework at that price?

0 O 0

Suppose we multiply that sum by three and get a salary or app;-om- mately 845002 Assuming that the average age of a teacher lies some- where betwe s thirty-five and forty. a salary at 34,600 1g_1n com- parison with salary scales in busi- ness and other prciessions—the bare minimum with which we can expect an able college gradugta to be satisfied as he enters middle life with a growing family. To be 8189. this fisure has already been approached as a standard in a iew Canadian cities, but those cities contain only a portion or our teach- 1n8 WPIIIANOH. and those cities also. add their high salaries to the absurd lows or other towns to give us the average oi these.

It is my conviction that ii the Canadian public would use this fig- ure as a touchstone—¢4,5oo on tho minimum wage ior an experienced

eoiieeedeheebythe

....;r..-...u. time he rn:id—career. vat;

Canada would solve itself within ' e -e e e

At the present moment there are thousands oi able young men and women who would like to take up teaching, but they cannot bring themselves to enter a profession which condemns them to poverty, humiliation and low standards. Able people who want to teach are not in search or wealth. They are not looking ior an easy lob. They are not. as one man called than in a letter to the investlga‘ s at the Education Association. “the more mediocre men. those who lack con- fidence in themselves. (who) go a.irald to compete for liies best rewards." 'lhose who choose to en- ter the teaching profession are, al- most unlversaliy people who are fond oi children, who believe.them- selves able to do the work well and are convinced that the teaching oi young children is one of the most important professions in the world. But they are also lndivid-usls with full lives oi their own to lead; ii they were not‘they would be less valuable as teachers, While pre- pared to sacriilce mud). they are not prepared to sacriiice every- thing. They want to be able to buy books, to travel within reason, to undertake iurther study, to play a full part in social and community life and to raise a iamily with some degree oi security and well- being.

Many such persons enter the teaching prodeseion today, but in Canada most of them leave it after a few years service has convinced them that Stephen Icscock made an understatement when he call- ed teaching "the most thankless and underpaid profession in the world." Conclusions to be dmwn irom such facts are inescapable. To entice good people to enter the proiession. and furthermore to keep them there. we must spend at least three times as much on teacher‘: salaries as we do today. 11 we wanted to. we would.

0 O O I

it last this pointthatthe tragedy of the teachers situation in relat- ion to society as a whole most clearly reveals itself. Teachers. as a irloup, are unpopular. If anyone

ts this statement. I recommend th t he study carefully. with an ear for overtones, some of the answers to questionaires submitted by the Education Association to re- presentetlve munbers oi the gener- al‘pu’blic. Though probably none of those who made the answers knew it, the reason for the un. popularity oi teachers lies deep in our subconscious.

Three tloups of human beings combine to form any educational system: the children, the teacher and the parents. on the suniacc all three groups appear to work in harmony toward a common goal. Under the surface no natural antl- pathies so nroiound that iew oi us are aware of them. Further- more. in any relationship or three,

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one must inevitably be esteemed less in the eyes oi the other two, and so in this relationship of three it is against the teacher that these human antipathies are concentrat- ed.

Most children desire to be taught. As they grow into adolescence. am- bition is born, and combining with fear or what may happen to them

if they grow up in total ignorance, spurs them on. But under this con- scious level their nature rebels, to greater or less degree according to the individual concerned, against the iorced restraint of learning diiilcult subjects. Regardless oi what some modern theorists claim, Plato was ri t when he remarked that there is no royal road to geo-

metry. Mathemstics, the basic structure oi language. even ear- pentry and cooking cannot be mastered without hard work and discipline, and it is a pernicious falsehood ior any teacher to tell either pupil or parents that they can be.

In spite of a child's desire to be taught, it is unnatural for him to

mas‘ y or a subject‘ hsvior to the needs oi" his conscious mind be e_ '

to realize that these ’ necessary, but not all thgji ' in the world can prevent his conscious

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