MORE MEN IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



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MOEE MEN IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



BY RICHARD L. SANDWICK. 



AMONG the recent movements in education, none is more worthy 

 of notice than the call for more men in public school work. 

 The proportion of women teachers has grown steadily. Fifty years 

 ago the men engaged in school work outnumbered the women ; the civil 

 war reversed this, and the gap has widened every succeeding year. There 

 are fewer men teaching to-day than there were in 1860, but there are 

 four times as many women. Women will probably continue to do a 

 greater part of the teaching. It is generally recognized that women 

 are better suited than men to instruct young children; and there is 

 certainly a place for them both as teachers and students all the way up 

 from kindergarten to college. Women have exerted a softening and 

 humanizing influence that is accountable in part for the change from 

 the rough school of fifty years ago, from which the teacher was not 

 seldom pitched into the road by his bigger pupils, to the happy, orderly 

 school-room of to-day. Women teachers have accepted a salary of 

 scarcely half what men of like capacity would have accepted. They 

 have thus been the means of extending the public school system to a 

 point far beyond what tax-payers would have borne if equal intelligence 

 had been secured from men. For these and other services in education 

 women are to be congratulated. 



And yet we can not help believing that any further increase in the 

 relative number of women teachers would not be to the interests of 

 education. Women outnumber the men in high schools already; and 

 below the high school they reign supreme. Many large city schools 

 of grammar grade employ no men teachers. A majority of boys and 

 girls never come under the instruction of men. There is danger in 

 this of a one-sided development: both sexes are being educated by the 

 sex whose relation to the political and industrial systems is not usually 

 that of either voters or wage-earners. 



Less than one woman in five is engaged in earning a living. Of 

 these comparatively few are under the necessity of so doing. They 

 seldom have persons dependent upon them for support, and not often 

 would suffer if thrown out of employment. Their earnings are usually 

 additional to the support given them by others and are regarded as 

 supplementary to the family budget. Even when engaged away from 

 home they can usually count on a father's support in case work fails. 

 Marriage relieves most women of the responsibility of self-support, and 



