Volume 14 , Issue 26

1915 - Is the Teacher A Distinctly Favored, Underworked Member of Municipality?

In the New York Tribune, 11 June 1915, Friday, page 7, there was this mention of The Teacher's Problem more questions asking, "Is the Teacher A Distinctly Favored, Underworked Member of the Municipality?" As a teacher today (21st century), how do you feel about this 1915 teacher's problem?

As to the article about The Teachers Problems -- If the conditions under which the teachers are working are unwholesome, mentally or physically, they should be changed. If the teachers feel nervous and worried under conditions as they are, those conditions are wrong for five hours a day. They should not exist at all.

As long as people are driven by threats and marks they'll do no more than the law requires and will resist every suggestion to change the law.

It is desirable, of course, that the teacher should have time to recuperate. But she has far too much now. Why should she not start in this year and volunteer her services for a short period at vacation periods.

It is a wrong attitude which we have in regard to the teacher and her work. And the person to suffer most from the undue coddling process is the teacher herself.

As to the article entitled, Is the Teacher A Distinctly Favored, Underworked Member of the Municipality, "More freedom and more work" - from the interviewer cross-examined for firsthand information, by Henrietta Rodman.

Henrietta Rodman was interviewed back in 1915 by Controller Prendergast and asked, "You were a teacher. Were you exhausted by working five hours a day, five days a week and forty weeks a year, or were you able to teach in the summer schools and the evening schools for extra pay?" Henrietta Rodman responded, "Sometimes I was and sometimes I wasn't. it depended on the conditions under which the teaching was done. When I was left relatively free to work out my own ideas I was interested in my work and didn't want to stop, but when I was forced to follow a dull routine I was tired and nervous, and ready to become hysterical if I was asked to do extra work."

The Controller replied, "Very well. If the conditions under which the teachers are working are unwholesome mentally or physically, they should be changed. Of course, it's necessary for efficiency that conditions should be right -- that teachers should not feel themselves restricted and nagged."   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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