The Forerunner Part 148

We who have grown Human--house-bodied, cloth-skinned, Wire-nerved and steam-heated--alas! we forget The poor little beasts we have bandaged and pinned And hid in our carpet-lined prisons!--and yet Though our great social body be brickwork and steel, The little white animals in it, can feel!

Humanity needs them. We cannot disclaim The laws of the bodies we lived in before We grew to be Human. In spite of our frame Of time-scorning metals, the life at its core, Controlling its action and guarding its ease, Is the little white animal out of the trees!

It is true that our soul is far higher than theirs; We look farther, live longer, love wider--we _know;_ They only can feel for themselves--and their heirs; We, the life of humanity. Yet, even so, We must always remember that soul at its base Looks out through the little white animal's face.

If they die we are dead. If they live we can grow, They ply in our streets as blood corpuscles ply In their own little veins. If you cut off the flow Of these beasts in a city, that city will die.

Yet we heighten our buildings and harden our souls Till the little white animals perish in shoals.

Their innocent instincts we turn to a curse, Their bodies we torture, their powers we abuse, The beast that humanity lives in fares worse Than the beasts of the forest with nothing to lose.

Free creatures, sub-human--they never have known The sins and diseases we force on our own.

And yet 'tis a beautiful creature!--tall--fair-- With features full pleasant and hand-wooing hair; Kind, docile, intelligent, eager to learn; And the longing we read in its eyes when they burn Is to beg us to use it more freely to show To each other the love that our new soul can know.

Our engines drive fast in earth, water and air; Our resistless, smooth-running machines still unroll, With brain-work unceasing and handiwork fair, New material forms for each step on the soul; But that soul, for the contact without which it dies, Comes closest of all through that animal's eyes.

WOMEN TEACHERS, MARRIED AND UNMARRIED

We have still active and conspicuous among us, saying and doing foolish things about women, men, both eminent and ordinary, whose att.i.tude in this matter will make them a shame to their children, and a laughing stock to their grandchildren. We are proud to exhibit name and portrait of the great-grandfather who signed the Declaration of Independence, but our descendants will forget as soon as possible those asinine ancestors who are to-day so writing themselves down--in their att.i.tude in regard to women teachers, married and unmarried.

For long women were kept out of the schools altogether--education was for boys. They were not allowed to teach, save in a small way, in infant schools, or schools for girls; teaching was a masculine profession. Now they have equal educational opportunities--in large measure, and const.i.tute the majority of pupils; and, what is more alarming, the majority of teachers. The "male mind"--essentially and hopelessly male--sees in this not the natural development of a long suppressed human being, but the entrance of females upon a masculine province.

In her relation of pupil, there is a large body of eminent educators clamoring that girls should be taught female things; that, whether our universities are turned into trade schools or not, the women's colleges and "annexes" should teach girls "the duties of wife and mother." By this, of course, they mean the duties of house-service, and, perhaps, of nursing. Nothing would scandalize these Antique Worthies more than to have girls taught the real duties of wife and mother!

Also, in the relation of pupils, a man of as high standing as Professor Barrett Wendell of Harvard claims that teaching girls lowers the mentality of men! In coeducational colleges the "male mind," seeing in the violent games of young men a profound educational influence (and large profits!), considers that the presence of the purely studious element--the girls--is an injury to the college, and is even now endeavoring to eliminate them.

But it is in treatment of women teachers that this s.e.x att.i.tude of mind is most prominent to-day, most offensive, and most ridiculous.

The first effect is, of course, to give to the woman teacher the lowest grades of work and the lowest pay. Even when she has forced her way into high-grade work, and won a good position over all compet.i.tors, her pay is still measured by her status as a female--not as a teacher. The "male mind" can never for a moment forget or overlook the fact that women are females; and is rigidly incapable of admitting that they are also human beings as much as he.

In spite of this absurd limitation, women teachers have increased in numbers and in power; and are pressing steadily up into the higher positions reserved for men. An enormous majority of our teaching force is now composed of women; and, in our public schools, they naturally teach boys. Upon this point has arisen, and is still rising, an angry protest among men. Women teachers are, they say, unmarried; to be unmarried is an unnatural state, productive of various mental and physical morbidities; and as such does not form a suitable atmosphere for growing boys.

Recently President Hamilton of Tufts College goes even further than this, and objects to the influence of unmarried teachers upon girls!

To the "male mind," viewing the woman as first, last and always a female, and marriage and motherhood as her only normal relations, these crowding thousands of calm, respectable, independent, unmarried women are in a condition of unrest, of acrimonious rebellion against fate, of a contemptuous dislike for their unattainable "sour grapes." They are a.s.sumed to have been queer in the first place, or some gracious protector would have married them; and to grow queerer as life drags away, leaving them eternally unsatisfied, bitter and perverse. This deadly influence is supposed to have some poisonous effect on the pupils; just what is not defined. The unselfish, tireless service of the "maiden aunt" in the home we all know; but set her to teaching school, and some strange evil follows from the contact.

President Hamilton says college girls need to have their outlook on life broadened, not narrowed; and thinks these limited ladies, the teachers, are fitted only for work in the lower preparatory schools, or in "homes"

and "settlements."

Just how the average male teacher in a college is to broaden the outlook of his pupils is not explained. It does not need explanation. It is broader because he is a man!

Most of our men teachers are still young men, by the way, and unmarried.

Is the influence of the unmarried male on cla.s.ses of girls an unmixed good? Is a man by nature a better teacher? More subtly sympathetic, more capable of understanding the difficulties of each pupil and meeting them, more patient and tender?

No--but he is "more methodical," and "a better disciplinarian." In other words, he is more male--and therefore a better teacher! All this is absurd enough, and injurious enough; false, unjust, pitifully ignorant.

But the crowning feat of the "logical male mind" is in its exclusion of married women from schools. This is what the living children of living men will laugh at and blush for--that their fathers should have made themselves thus lamentably conspicuous in present-day history. Here in this city of New York, where a system of compet.i.tive examination ensures the required degree of learning and promotion follows on proved efficiency (or is supposed to); some women teachers, following "that inexorable law of nature" which so many others successfully evade, have presumed to marry. Surely now the stock objection to women teachers is removed.

All that "narrowness," that "bitterness," that "morbidity" is transformed by this magic alchemy into breadth and sweetness and all health. Now we have for our children the influence of "normal womanhood"--of "the wife and mother."

No. Married women are not desired in our schools; not allowed; they are specifically discriminated against.

Some years ago a woman teacher of New York married, and refused to give up her position. There was no reason for discharging her--she fulfilled every duty as competently as before. But these historic school officials withheld her pay!

They had no right to; she had earned the money--it was hers. But they had the power, and used it. After many months of this high-handed withholding of her legitimate salary, this woman, and another similarly placed, sued for their back pay, making a test case of it.

They won. It was a perfectly plain case in law and equity.

Then the Board, naturally displeased, pa.s.sed a by-law prohibiting the appointment, or reappointment, of married women. One woman, already in, and married, a very efficient teacher, and candidate for promotion to princ.i.p.alship, was not promoted, for this plain reason: they do not wish married women to teach in our schools.

Now, why?

What injurious influence exudes from previously competent teachers merely because they now know this personal, as well as their former professional, happiness!

Then with bated breath the official male mind suggests that they might become mothers.

Well? So they should. Is there anything about mothers which renders them unfit persons to teach children?

"You do not understand!" says the official male mind, a little nervously. "They would be--about to become mothers--and the children might notice it!"

Here we have Justice Shallow, Mrs. Grundy and King Canute rolled into one. What gross ignorance, what narrow conservatism, what petty and futile resistance to progress, as well as a low coa.r.s.eness, prompts this objection! If our system of education allows children to grow up in such neglect that they neither know nor reverence motherhood, it is high time that the system was changed.

And it will be changed; by women--who are mothers.

Aside from this, and admitting that most married teachers who are in this dreaded "condition" do rapidly remove themselves from school, and do not come back for a year or more, the next objection is "the continued absence" of the married woman teachers.

Since there is a long array of subst.i.tutes, excellent subst.i.tutes (often married women, these!) who are paid less than the salary the absent one does not draw, it is difficult to see the evil of this. Unless indeed the merits of the married teacher are so supreme that even her temporary absence is a real loss. If that be so, then she is worth keeping, it would seem, at any cost.

In all this tissue of injustice and absurdity is there no thread of explanation, no reason better than these for such arbitrary interference with personal rights? There is a veritable cable; enough to hang the whole case on. It is shown in this provision:

If the married woman teacher can bring a doctor's certificate showing that her husband is sick--_then_ she can hold her place and draw her pay, undisturbed!

The plain ordinary un-male mind will say, "What has that to do with it?"

It has nothing to do with it. The position in question is that of the teacher; the relation one between the teacher and pupil on the one side, and teacher and governing officers on the other side. Whether teacher, pupil or official is married or unmarried had nothing to do with the case, unless it can be shown to interfere with the legitimate work involved. Are we to suppose that the unseen extraneous husband has, when well, a malign influence on his wife's proficiency as a teacher, and, when ill, a beneficent one? Not at all; there is no such subtlety involved. It is not in the least a question of professional efficiency; it is a question of money.

Money is for men--who should use some of it to take care of their women.

When a woman marries, she has a claim for support, and no further use for money of her own, no right to it, in fact!

Now let us temporarily admit that this is so--what has it to do with the action of school boards? Is our public school system an inst.i.tution for the regulation of married women's property rights? Does it make inquiries as to the family relations of men teachers and pay them according to the number of dependents they have to support? Among the unmarried women, are those who are putting brothers through college, or maintaining invalid sisters or aged parents, paid more than the young lady living at home and not "having to work" at all? If there is no discrimination made in this matter among men teachers, nor among unmarried women teachers, why does it instantly enter into consideration in the case of married teachers?

All "systems" grow stiff, case-hardened, difficult to change; but in America we have the newest and most pliable, and we are bravely used to altering things. It is high time we altered our system of education.

The very crown and flower of our best minds and n.o.blest characters are called for to bring up children:

"That our childhood may pa.s.s with the best you can give-- And our manhood so live!"

Men and women both are needed as teachers; education is a social process--not one of s.e.x. Yet the woman is, by virtue of her motherhood, the original teacher; and is more frequently possessed of the teaching instinct. All normal women would naturally marry, circ.u.mstances permitting; should marry, and would be no poorer teachers for that new relationship. All normal women should be mothers; and as such, would be _better_ teachers--not worse!