AMERICA'S WOMEN TEACHERS.

Evening Star, Issue 12982, 19 June 1908, Page 5

AMERICA'S WOMEN TEACHERS.

In 1870 there were 77,528 men and 122,795 women teaching in the elementary and secondary public schools of the United States. Last year the number of men had increased to 109,179, but, as the number of women had risen to 356,884, the preponder- ! arce of women teachers is greater to day ! than ever before, and there is every indi-1 cation that it is destined to be greater stil'. Already, of every group of ten teachers in "cities" with a population of 25,000 and over, eight are women; women number seven of every group of ten teachers in smaller •' cities," towns, and villages; an* throughout the whole country, of every four teachers three are women. If any man suddenly addresses any American boy who is under eighteen years of age, he is likely to be styled "Warn" in reply. I tried the experiment hundreds of times, and gave it up lest I should become confused as to my own sex. Women are the teachers of the Amei-ican youth. This may be as it should be in elementary schools; and perhaps American sentiment is right in depreciating a man who is willing to spend his time aud strength in the details of the primary school, where a woman's patience, discrimination, and sympathy can best understand and train the fickle fancies, moods, and impulses of a child. But in the high schools boys of eighteen years of age, whose physical nature needs the most careful development, are taught by women who sometimes are not many years their seniors ; and men have told mo that they now recognise that serious injury was wrought upon them at that period of their school life when, lonely, shy, and sullen, they were left to fight through their crisis, not konwing that it was a crisis that came to ail and was necessary in the development of life. I have met few serious teachers of either sex who did not deplore the excessive preponderance of women on the teaching staffs of secondary schools and the higher classes of elementary schoolg.-r-Times' correspondent.