Unhappy Teachers

To find the happy teacher lately became the scientific quest of Assistant Director Robert Hoppock of National Occupational Conference. He asked groups of teachers if they were happy in their work, why or why not. One-fourth of the unhappy teachers had been so from youth when they had wanted to run away from home. Thirty per cent of them felt that their jobs made them do things that hurt their consciences, and 40% thought there was too much politics in school work. Happy teachers, on the other hand, were more religious, less troubled by conscience and politics. More of them than of the malcontents were married.. And they averaged 7 1/2 years older, 10 Ib. heavier.

To report his findings on teacher-happiness Researcher Hoppock chose an unhappy time--the 72nd annual convention of National Education Association, in Washington last week. At that meeting N. E. A. members demonstrated that even plump, married, mature teachers can be utterly miserable.

As usual, the educators were most distressed by their financial plight and by the Federal Government's failure to succor them. George Frederick Zook's swansong as U. S. Commissioner of Education was a harsh honk at President Roosevelt for blocking the gift of $75,000,000 which he was sure the House wanted to make to schools. Education's submerged "masses," the classroom teachers complained that many a city was dismissing them wholesale in favor of young, cheap substitutes.

Finally, as the week drew to a close, the whole convention sulked with a plain case of hurt feelings. Pedagogs patted their palms as Secretary Robert C. Moore of the Illinois State Teachers Association blurted out their grievance: "Our meek attitude and mild resolutions must cease. It is all too clear that we have little recognition as a power. We determined to come to Washington in the heat, thinking it probable that the President of the United States would like to address us. We have sweated and we have sweltered but not one single personal or official word has come from him.

"General Johnson, who was to have spoken for the President yesterday, was ill and left town.* We are here. I believe a great national organization fighting for childhood in a time of crisis deserves the attention of the New Deal."

The Federal Emergency Relief Administration has doled out $31,500,000 to pay 50,000 teachers, keep 500,000 pupils in school. Public Works Administration has spent $112,662,151, and Civil Works Administration many another million, on building, repairing and beautifying schools. RFC has earmarked $75,000,000 for loans to school districts with which to pay their teachers' back salaries. But all this, complained the pedagogs, has come under the head of unemployment relief, while they want the Federal Government to acknowledge outright its duty to support schools. That, President Roosevelt apparently has no intention of doing.

N. E. A. Secretary James William Crabtree reported that 140 communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts, 45 school districts in Washington State and scattered communities in 18 other States have restored all or part of teachers' pay cuts. Of 122 city school systems recently reporting to the Association, 44 will have larger budgets this year than last. In Maine 30 out of 44 towns reporting have upped school appropriations. For the first time in its history West Virginia last year gave every child in the State nine months schooling.

Nonetheless, convening educators last week resolved on mass demonstrations throughout the land next autumn "to impress the entrenched interests now attacking the schools." Hopefully they decided to ask the next Congress for half a billion dollars, with no strings of Federal control attached. In this resolution they were going to call attention to $2,000,000,000 Federal appropriations for Army & Navy, but War Veteran Virgil Sturgill of Ashland, Ky. objected and the comparison was struck out.

To keep cool during their sweating, sweltering sessions each arriving delegate was handed a cardboard fan. On its face he found a gaudy chromo entitled "No. 528 Nature." On its back appeared the square, smiling countenance of Henry Lester Smith. 58, Dean of the School of Education at Indiana University (Bloomington, Ind.). At the week's end grateful delegates elected Dean Smith their president for next year.

The offer of a good teaching job was all that gave Henry Lester Smith to Education instead of to the clothing business when he finished college. Last month Mrs. Smith received a Ph.D. at Indiana and next autumn his daughter Martha, eldest of the Smith children, will enter the university at 16. Affable and joke-loving, N. E. A. President Smith plays an occasional round of golf but spends most of his spare time on his single hobby: World Peace through Education.

*Next day NRAdministrator Johnson was found in New York golfing with his friend Bernard Baruch. Said the General: "I certainly am not ill. I came here to get a little rest."

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