Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/403

 EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH 389

This necessitates all through the South the maintaining of two school systems side by side, and requires a division of the already inadequate school funds, thus keeping the financial question always the most prominent.

Resting upon the financial difficulty as a cause is the ineffi- ciency of the teaching force, the first source of weakness of the rural school. It is at once evident that a profession which does not pay a living wage cannot attract to it good, or even average, material. The country schools of the South open but three, four, or five months in the year, and, paying from $23 to $31 per month, offer no opportunity to trained teachers. Hence it hap- pens that the school employs "makeshifts" perhaps "a poor relative of a director or the farmer's boys or girls." Since the ones who are engaged in teaching for four months in the year are usually farmers, houseworkers, or followers of some other indus- try for the remaining eight months, it is impossible to class them in the " teaching profession."

There are indications that the South is becoming keenly alive to the fact that the incompetence of the rural school-teachers is due to the inadequate salaries they receive and the shortness of the school year. Very little can be expected of teachers receiving on an average but 40 cents a day 8 a sum less than is paid to unskilled labor in any industry. When these two conditions low salaries and short terms are corrected, a third change becomes necessary and for the first time possible a movement toward barring from the teaching force the untrained teacher, and a consequent elevating of the plane of the profession. At present 75 per cent, of the children are taught by teachers unable to obtain a second-grade certificate. The states provide normal schools, but it is evident that without sufficient compensation the teacher cannot take a course of long and expensive training for her work. The whole situation reduces itself to one of financial support. The school can demand no better service than it will compensate. The ability of the teacher will not rise above the level of the low salary. This condition is not peculiar to the South. It is a general law in every department of education that

'Southern Education, March 19, 1903.