MARRIAGE AND SCHOOL TEACHING

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1523, 28 February 1901, Page 29

MARRIAGE AND SCHOOL TEACHING

Women teachers in public schools (says “Harper’s Bazaar”) face an embarrassment' not experienced by women seeking a career in any other profession. They are compelled to retire from business if they marry. A rule substantially embodying this provision operates in the school system of a great majority of American cities. The manner of applying it alone varies. In some instances the marriage of a woman teacher is taken by the school board as her resignation, which may or may not be accepted by the board at its discretion. In other instances, if the woman teacher marries, the board votes on the question understood to arise thus, and a two-thirds vote is necessary to retain her services. Elsewhere the bill reads, “Whenever a female teacher marries, her position in the school thereby becomes vacant.” In every instance where a teacher having married is allowed 'tocontinue her work, the rule.is that she does so at the option of the board, which' at any time may discontinue her services. The theory underlying this practice supplies a twofold reason in support of it . One is that the exigencies of the married state disqualify a woman for the position of teacher; the other is that the woman teacher who marries, being thus provided with some one to take care of her, should retire from the profession in the interests of men and women dependent upon teaching for a livelihood. This is sound economy, but women teachers, nevertheless, vigorously resist it. In San Francisco recently, a woman teacher was dismissed because she had married. She took issue with the school beard and retained her position on a technicality. Lately, in Norfolk, Virginia, a woman teacher resorted to a secret marriage that she might thereby evade the rule against married teachers, and when the marriage was discovered, she offered to get- a divorce in .order to retain her position in the public schools. She wished to do this, she said, because she had .spent a great deal of money to fit herself for usefulness as a school teacher. The inference necessarily deduced from this is thait her position in the married state represented a smaller money investment. This suggests an important question on which Sunday papers should at once hold symposiums. How much does it cost to fit a woman for a wife ? The case of the Norfolk teacher still pends. The whole matter of marriage as it relates to school-teaching for women is certainly interesting. To men it should bo instructive as furnishing data for an up-to-date conclusion on the economic status of husbamTs.