FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 609 



The place to educate the country boys and girls for the farm or for the 

 higher institutions of learning is in comfortable country schoolhouses with 

 pleasant surroundings and enough of the same age or grade so that there 

 will be some inspiration to help them forward. Then with more capable 

 teachers, who will be forthcoming if we will only take the necessary steps 

 to fit our young teachers that have the moral and educational requisite, in- 

 to places where they may develop into better ones. Then give them good 

 homes in which to live and make them feel at home: 



Give faithful and competent teachers the assurance of long terms, so that 

 they may be in reality apart of the community and interested in the general 

 welfare thereof, give them nine months employment each year and a reason- 

 able compensation. 



The wages, for teachers who have demonstrated their fitness for the work, 

 should be such, as to invite life workers to the profession. 



Our State superintendent is responsible for this statement, ''The rural 

 schools suffer more from inexperienced and poorly prepared teachers than 

 from any one cause. " 



If this be true whose fault is it? Largely ours. Our young men and 

 women can today fit themseives for other professions or lines of work where 

 the compensation is equally as good or better, more readily than they can fit 

 themselves for first-class work at the head of rural schools. Then too the 

 successful teachers either want a good home of their own or feel like pay- 

 ing a reasonable price for being truly at home with someone else. 



Is this possible on a yearly salary of from two hundred to three hundred 

 and twenty dollars, where all the expenses must be paid out of this? 



When one stops to consider the demands made upon the successful 

 teacher, the present outlook as a life work is one of apparent poverty. And 

 this is one reason why thoroughly competent teachers are scarce; why young 

 men and women of ability are looking to other fields of effort, where the 

 financial returns are better, with more apparent gratitude for services 

 rendered. Young men and women with ability to become successful 

 teachers invariably have a desire to make their life work count. 



The teacher's efforts are often handicapped by the opposition or by the 

 indifference of patrons. Friends, this is one of the professions where 

 ingratitude for faithful and competent service ought almost to be classed 

 among the crimes. 



Here is another fact one must not lose sight of: Our leading educators 

 have steadily been raising the teachers' standard; much more is required of 

 the person who seeks to become proficient, and this is right, for it should be 

 the grandest of all professions. 



Our State superintendent is responsible for the following figures: " Out 

 of a total of 22,445 certificates issued by county superintendents at last 

 report only 3,321 were first-class; 3,479 to teachers who had never taught. 

 Now, are not too low wages partly responsible? 



Iowa, one of the boasted agricultural States, pays 29,073 teachers $6,101,- 

 036, while the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts pays 13,023 

 teachers $8,516,296; nearly two million more for less than one-half the 

 teachers. Is it any wonder that Iowa ranks along in the twenties in point 

 of school work? 



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