MARRIAGE AND SCHOOL TEACHING

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4291, 26 February 1901, Page 3

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. Tho manner of applying it alone varies. In some instances the marriage of a woman teacher is taken by the school board as her resignation, winch 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 ques. tion 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 pc comes vacant.” In every instance when a teacher having married is allowed to continue her work, the rule is that she does so at tho option of the board, whicu 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 aml women dependent upon teaching for t 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 board and retained her position on a ti ctmicality. Lately, in Norfolk, Virginia, a woman teacher resorted to a secret marriage that she might therein evade tho rule against married teachers, and when the marriage was ’discovered, she offered to get a divorce in .order 1 r retain her position in the public schools. She wished to do this, she said, became she had spent a great deal of money tc fit herself for usefulness as a school teacher The inference necessarily tieduced from this ft that her position in tho married state represented a smaller money investment.

This suggests an important question on which Sunday papers should at once hold symposiums. How much does ii ccst to fit a woman for a wife? ihf case of the Norfolk teacher still pends. The whole matter of marriage as it re lates to school-teaching for women is certainly interesting. To men it should he instructive as furnishing data for in up-to-date conclusion on the economic status of husbands.