VOL. XXIV

No. 1

THE new educational year which opens this month finds the teachers in the public schools of America enjoying a new economic status. All over the United States legislation has been placed on the statute books looking to the improvement of the financial circumstances of teachers. New York State is perhaps typical of the general tendency. We are looking forward and upward and "AMERICAN EDUCATION" has deep satisfaction in this propitious new year. In New York State the teachers come into the benefits of several pieces of legislation that will contribute largely to higher standards of teaching and should attract correspondingly better talent into the profession. Chief among these are the new salary laws and the new pension law.

The salary legislation affects both the teachers in our state teacher training schools, the State College for Teachers in Albany and the ten State Normal Schools, and the teachers in every public school in the State. The new schedules are sufficiently high to hold the good and attract the best. We have reason to expect that these teacher training schools will be able to draw talent from many Sources hitherto closed to them. Even the large university faculties will be proper recruiting grounds in the future. The new salary schedules in the cities, villages and rural

communities are similarly improved. The improvement is particularly satisfactory in the minima. Teachers with a minimum of experience are now placed at from $1,000 to $1,500, in high schools these same figures extend from $1,200 to $1,800 for new appointees. At these figures teaching should once more draw the best talent away from clerical and stenographic work.

Unfortunately the salaries for teachers of experience are not proportionately attractive. Too many men and women with thoroughly successful experience of ten or fifteen years will this year teach for the same salary that is paid to teachers of no previous experience. This feature of the new law calls for correction. Salaries must be so classified that the growing teacher may hope to double the minimum salary in a period of ten or more years; and even beyond this scheduled increase there should be provision for a further increase of at least 50 per cent for meritorious service and for cases of distinctive professional advancement. Until some legislation is secured the teaching profession cannot rise to its legitimate position as a form of public service. of public service. "AMERICAN EDUCATION" stands committed in favor of a scientific salary schedule.

The new pension law also contributes a notable share to the new status of teachers. With the increased salaries, the retirement allowance of approximately half salary will be equivalent to a substantial annuity in all cases. Each

teacher is now assured a $400 annuity at retirement, and many will receive double that amount. The new law has many very attractive features. Service retirement at age of 60 or after 35 years of service will commend itself to all. The withdrawal value either to those who leave the service, or to the estates of those who die before becoming annuitants, will be a gratifying feature to many. It may be said with pride that no state now has a better pension law than New York's. This magazine believes strongly in the law and hopes all present teachers will elect to become members of the new plan.

The teachers thus come into a small

measure

of economic independence. They are to receive a living wage and their future is safeguarded by a guaranIf teed annuity on service retirement. If this level can be maintained when the general price level recedes, as we believe it must soon recede, the profession will come into an era of great stability. It is now the duty of all who have the good of teaching at heart to contribute in every way possible to raise the standard of professional service, to purge the profession of all that has been unworthy, to bring in a higher quality of teaching talent than has come in during recent years. Let us place teaching in the very first rank of public service. It belongs there. Without skilled teaching, sound scholarship, high grade teaching personalities, the profession cannot command this place of honor. Teachers must be at their best to hold the new economic status in the next ten years, and we have abiding faith that it will be held.

the public schools. Even though it may be conceded that the desire to keep Mr. Gorton as the head of the school system, of that city because of the valued counsel he can give, has had a large share in shaping the policy adopted by the Board of Education, it is nevertheless true that the underlying motive was the wish of a grateful city to show in a concrete way appreciation of the long and useful service it has had from Mr. Gorton. In

doing this, Yonkers has set an example

that will not be without its influence in determining the course that other cities in similar circumstances should follow.

What Yonkers has done in this instance is in keeping with the past ̊educational history of the city. From the early years of the Yonkers school system, there has been an intelligent and broadminded policy in dealing with the problems of public school education.. Nearly forty years ago the Board of

Education of Yonkers had the vision and courage to bring to the superintendency of the public schools Andrew J. Rickoff, who as superintendent of the schools of Cleveland, earned the reputation of being the leading superintendent of schools in the United States. Although Yonkers at that time had a population of scarcely 20,000, the salary of Mr. Rickoff was made $4,300. In those days this was a princely salary for even the largest cities to pay to their superintendents of schools. The readiness of a small city like Yonkers to pay a salary large enough to secure the services of the best superintendent of schools in the United States showed that there were in control of the schools men who realized the worth of a man like Mr. Rickoff as the guiding spirit in their management and development.

The forward-looking policy that gave to the Yonkers schools the rare privilege of coming under the inspiring leadership of Andrew J. Rickoff has continued from those far-away years down to the present. As the successor of Mr. Rickoff, Mr. Gorton has carried on the Yonk

ers schools in a way that has held the confidence of the best citizenship of Yonkers. A second-rate man could not have maintained his place as the head of the schools of a city that had once known supervision of the quality that had won for Andrew J. Rickoff the first rank among American school adminis

trators.

With a community demanding the best things for its schools and ready to provide liberally for their maintenance, Mr. Gorton was soon able to make the Yonkers schools known far and wide for their excellence. During all his years of service Mr. Gorton has brought to the management of the Yonkers schools a thorough understanding of educational principles, an open-minded attitude toward new things in educational practice, and a readiness to adopt any policy that seemed likely to improve the usefulness of public school education.

An important element in the success of Mr. Gorton in Yonkers has been the freedom from the hampering restrictions so often placed upon superintendents of schools. Few superintendents have been so free to administer their schools in accordance with their own views of what is best to be done as Mr. Gorton has been. This freedom of action has enabled him to carry out his plans with a free hand. The high standing which the Yonkers schools have enjoyed for so long is in no small degree the result of the policy of non-interference by the Board of Education in the

administrative details of the school system. The large liberty Mr. Gorton has always had is in itself evidence of the confidence which the Board of Education has from year to year had in his ability and judgment.

Mr. Gorton is to be congratulated on having had the opportunity to spend all the years of his career in a community so favorable for the achievement of lasting results as Yonkers has proved to be; Yonkers is no less fortunate in having had for so long a period in the develop ment of its school system a leader like Charles E. Gorton.

Good Manners

IN the course of of study for the Schenectady, N. Y., public schools, provision is made for the teaching of good manners in the several grades. A limited amount of time each week is devoted by the teachers to calling the attention of the pupils of their respective grades to the importance of the cultivation and practice of politeness, courtesy, and good manners. Unfortunately this phase of training and education has received only incidental attention in many of our public schools. Visitors from foreign countries have noted the contrast in the general conduct of the American youth compared with that of children of corresponding age in their own lands. Criticism has been made that our American youth lack in respect for parents, teachers, elderly people, and frequently for those in authority whose business it is to enforce law and order.

The surest way to overcome these defects is to inculcate respect for others and good manners in general, both at home and in school. Parents as well as teachers have a duty in this important matter. Much can be accomplished by direct teaching but probably more by suggestion, example and the daily observance and practice on the part of adults of the refinements of daily in

tercourse.

The school authorities of Schenectady report that splendid results have at

tended the efforts of the teachers after a year of continuous attention to this There has phase of child training. been a marked difference in the general conduct of the school children of all ages and grades. It is eminently worth while for superintendents and principals who determine the course of study in our public schools to make adequate provision for this line of work and see to it that our children are well grounded early in life in the daily prac tice of politeness, courtesy and good

manners.

The far-reaching changes in the political, social and industrial life of the past decade have impressed every active and alert mind. Thrones have crumbled into dust, states have been shattered in pieces, power has changed hands, wealth has been redistributed. These startling phenomena have arrested the attention of the civilized world so that the minds of men have been concentrated upon them to the exclusion of the less dramatic forces that silently shape humane destiny. In the heyday of Napoleon men watched with eager eyes the fluctuating fortunes of that great adventurer, seeing in their rise and fall the changing fate of Europe. Yet far from pride, pomp, and circumstance of the battlefield and remote from the solemn sessions of the council chamber was be ing enacted the Industrial Revolution, which was to change the foundations of social life. So at this moment, while the eyes of men are turned on the readjustments of political power caused by the Great War, a revolution fraught with greater significance to humanity is slowly taking place unnoted. I refer to the down throw of opinion and the rise of science in the schoolroom, which has been made possible by the development of Educational Psychology. It is no exaggeration to say that since 1909, when the first pedagogical measuring scale was published, there has begun a movement which marks a turning point in the history of mankind. In the application of measurement and the experimental method to mental functioning as it proceeds in the schoolroom, we have a new departure as remarkable as the birth of physical science. The latter gave men increased control over the material universe; the former has given control over human learning. This fac

tor in efficiency, the human factor, which is the latest to come within the compass of scientific measurement, is likely to yield the richest harvest of all. Few, however, realize that this most significant event has taken place. The majority of parents and teachers now are like their predecessors in the Fif teenth Century, who failed to sense the magnitude of the occasion when clairvoyance and divination were replaced by the inductive method of experimental science.

That changes in our public educational institutions are desirable is, of course, generally admitted. Even to the untrained observer it is clear that existing educational procedure is not uniformly successful. It is not generally realized, however, that such advances have been made in Educational Psychology, that the efficiency of American education could be greatly increased, if only such scientific knowledge as we have were put in application. We all know that it takes long for new information and improved methods, which have been established by experts in medicine to be applied by the general practitioner; nevertheless, public opinion and professional pressure exercise potent influence in that direction. In the field of education, on the contrary, the first step has still to be won, namely, to convince the public and the profession that education has at last been emancipated from the domination of opinion and has taken to the highway of science. The urgent task that confronts us is to persuade the teachers that their work has altered and is altering in character, and that rule-of-thumb workers in education will shortly be regarded with the disdain that is bestowed upon the quack doctor.

Not that all teachers need this inform