July 10, 2014

Class at Park School, 1913. WHC Collections 1979.001.0005.

The Statesman reported today on equal rights for women.

Educators Go On Record For Equal Rights
Woman Suffrage and Equal Pay, Regardless of Sex, Are Indorsed

St. Paul, July 9. Women’s rights were recognized to the fullest extent by the National Education Association, which passed resolutions today indorsing women suffrage, equal pay for teachers regardless of sex, and allotted five of the ten vice presidencies to women.
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The resolutions adopted at today’s business meeting indorse pensions for teachers, increased salaries, vacations to permit teachers to travel, simplified spelling, international peace, physical inspection of children and co-operation between parents and teachers in teaching sex hygiene. . .

Foundations Criticised

Characterizing the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations as menacing true academic freedom and tending to defeat the primary purposes of democracy in the schools, the normal school department unanimously adopted a resolution censoring these funds. The resolutions say:

“We view with alarm the activity of the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, agencies not in any way responsible to the people, in their efforts to control the policies of our state educational institutions; to fashion after their conception and to standardize our courses of study, and to surround the institutions with conditions which menace true academic freedom and defeat the primary purpose of democracy as heretofore preserved inviolable in our common schools, normal schools, and universities.”

In an editorial in the same edition, “Women Teachers,”the editor comments on the role of gender in education:

The federal bureau of education has just issued a report showing that only 21 percent of all the teachers in this country are men. In the public schools the percentage of male teachers must be much less than that.

Many writers are deploring the “feminization”of the schools. Yet the school boards will no doubt say that $40 to $75 a month buys much the better talent from the female sex.

A current writer says:

“It is of course to be regretted that the men are quitting the profession. Women can teach arithmetic, penmanship, and history precisely as well as men. But boys are little barbarians who are best ruled by their own kind.”

He adds: “The average boy is a little prig of sex conceit. He feels that his heritage of masculinity is a privilege transcending any learning of experience possessed by a woman. There are certain fields of activity in which her sage advice is thrown away, simply because she can’t know.”When boys grow up they know better. But at certain periods of life, a man is supremely useful in beating sense into their stuffy little heads.

The Statesman does not wholly agree with the writer above quoted. Boys need also the influence of women teachers; the “mothering”instinct, which is absent from the masculine make-up.

In Europe, Austria begins to draft an ultimatum to Serbia. In Serbia, the Russian Ambassador Hartwig dies suddenly of a heart attack at the Austrian Legation in Belgrade. Austria has composed the basics of its ultimatum to Serbia, including a 48-hour deadline and terms that have deliberately been made unacceptable, intended to provoke war.

In Britain, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey extends the sympathy of Great Britain to Austria-Hungary, in the only mention of the crisis made in the House of Commons until July twenty seventh.