Evening star. [volume], August 06, 1944, Page 4, Image 68

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
YOUNGSTERS like these demand the best in public instruction. In some schools, such as the one pictured
Your Kids Are The Victims BY DOROTHY DUCAS
This Week went to “Key
City,” U.S.A., and came
back with this startling
story of our schools . . .
A million American school kids who never
heard the scream of a bomb are already
the victims of war. I learned this on a recent
trip to a typical war-boom city — let's call
it Key City. This Week sent me there to sur
vey the public-school problem. I interviewed
supervisors, teachers, students; attended
classes; watched the creaking wheels go
* around.
I walked into one representative school to
see for myself. It was shabby for lack of
paint; it was laboriously cared for by an aging
janitor and some of the boy students. In
charge of the fourth-grade room was a gray
haired woman of 45, worn and a bit cross,
although the morning session had just begun.
She had taught country school briefly
in her youth, but for the past 17 years
had been selling in a department store.
“It’s been pretty hard,” she said. “Schools
have changed so much! I’d rather be back in
the store on bargain day than trying to hold
down this gang of young Indians!”
Miss Williams is not unique. Ask her how
she happened to get a teaching job in a
modern school system and she says, simply,
“They needed me.” And she is better than
no teacher at all.
The U.S. was short more than 70,000 teach
ers when school closed in June. One out of
every 30 students had either no teacher at all
or an incompetent substitute. The situation
has grown worse over the summer. It was
critical in June; it will be acute in the school
year just ahead.
Teachers Wanted — Desperately
Key City has more than 1,000,000 people,
about 110,000 school children, 3.000 teachers.
In the past, its educational standards and
rating have been among the best. Its school
officials are conscientious; they have struggled
with such problems as fuel shortage, dwin
dling supplies, overcrowded buildings, lack of
maintenance help, budgets, juvenile delin
quency. "Supply and maintenance were real
problems, at first,” said one harried official.
"But they are trifles compared with the
teacher shortage. A teacher could hold classes
in a barn, if she had to; but what are you
going to do when there is no teacher?”
The city's school superintendent put it an
other way. "One out of every ten of our
teachers is a 'special substitute,’ so inexperi
enced or untrained that she could never hold
a job in our permanent school system. About
eleven thousand children have such teachers.
Unless things change materially, in another
two years there will be a gap in our young
sters’ education that cannot be remedied.”
Typical of special substitutes was a slim,
blonde girl from New England in charge of the
fifth grade in another school. ”1 taught in a
one-room rural school back home,” she said.
“Then I heard they needed teachers here and
I thought this was my chance to learn in a
big city school. Well, I’m learning all, right.
I never heard of some of the things they teach
here. Like social studies instead of plain his
tory and geography.” Whether or not the
children were learning was open to question. A
third of her class “flunked” mid-year exami
nations.
A motherly woman of 65 presided in a first
grade room. When I went in she was trying
to persuade her six-year-olds, who normally
are allowed to roam about the schoolroom, to
sit quietly with their hands folded on the
desks. “It's hard to keep these little chatter
boxes from running all over the room,” she
said. "Twenty-five years ago boys and girls
used to sit and listen to a story every morn
ing. It’s good for them.”
It's Tough to Interest Them
This school, the principal told me, opened
last September with only one regularly elected
teacher in a staff of 12; all the others were
special substitutes. “When one of our teachers
is ill,” she said, “we have to divide up her
class and send it to other rooms. If two
teachers are ill, I have to take a class. We
have no ’day substitutes’ at all."
I sought out that one fully trained
teacher, in the sixth grade. The attitude
and the work the pupils were lining testi
fied to her uhility. She was reluctant to
criticize, but finally she said, “My big prob
lem is getting capable children to do capacity
work. I have to spend too much time ‘review
ing,’ teaching fundamentals that they didn’t
get in lower grades. The problem is compli
cated by the children from schools where
standards are rather low. Many of them are
war-workers’ children, who want to quit