Table 3.-Cumulative public school classroom needs, 1955 to 1960, as reported by chief State school officers

Projected total for 53 States, Territories and District of Columbia, on the basis of 1950 population. Projected total for 53 States, Territories and District of Columbia, on the basis of fall, 1955, public school enrollments..

378, 211

369, 234

Source: Item 7 of form WHC-F-1 (questionnaire sent to chief State school officers by WHC Subcommittee on School Buildings).

NOTE.-(1) "Junior-senior" high schools are listed in "Senior high" columns; (2) the nature of the data submitted precludes the agreement of totals.

How Can We Get Enough Good Teachers-and Keep Them?

The shortage of teachers is at least as severe in the United States as the shortage of school buildings, but it is harder to see. A dilapidated and overcrowded schoolhouse can be photographed and is quick to arouse indignation. A classroom without a teacher also would be quick to arouse indignation, but few of these are apparent to the public. Instead, there are classrooms with unqualified people serving as teachers. It is impossible to tell a qualified member of the faculty from an emergency substitute at first glance, and so the shortage of real teachers is to a large extent invisible. It is no less sinister for that reason. Tens of thousands of American children are today being taught by men and women who themselves have an inadequate education. Many courses cannot be offered because qualified people cannot be found to teach them.

What Is a Teacher?

Before teachers can be counted, they must be defined. It is always difficult to define any category of human beings. A good doctor or a good lawyer is as hard to describe as a good teacher. A list of desired qualifications is apt to become a compendium of all the human virtues. Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to list all the characteristics desired of a teacher, if only to prove that there is no profession which requires men and women of greater ability.

The subcommittee of this Committee which studied this topic said, "The good teacher must be, first of all, a broadly educated person, a person with a continuing intellectual curiosity, a person prepared to introduce the growing child to a world of rapidly expanding knowledge, one who understands and practices the enduring beliefs of democracy, one who is qualified to lead every child to an appreciative understanding of the complicated problems and relationships that will confront him.

"It is not enough for the teacher just to be a 'nice person,' a person of good habits and intentions, one who ‘has a way' with children,” the subcommittee said. "The time of the 'born teacher' has given way to the inescapable demand for a broad background to be achieved only through an extended program of well-organized study.

"The effective teacher must grasp, understand, appreciate, and apply what is now known about the learning process. This includes the acquisition of knowledge and skills, the development of attitudes and ideals, the evolving of citizenship concepts and habits, the learning to accept responsibility and to respect the rights of others-these and many other aspects of the child's growth respond directly in proportion to the teacher's readiness to recognize, and her trained ability to capitalize upon, the passing opportunities.

"Every parent wants for his child a teacher with good personality, emotional stability, understanding patience, sincere interest in and respect for others, and good health. All these are the marks of a good teacher, but all together these attributes cannot substitute for the scholarship, the educational poise, the confident feeling of being equal to the challenge of teaching that can come only through preparation of the highest order.

"If we are to get good teachers-and keep them-the first step is to get and then to keep an appreciation of what a good teacher is," the subcommittee concluded.

School administrators, often armed with pathetically small budgets, have always attempted to find and employ people of these extraordinary qualifications. In the past, practices inevitably varied widely. Some communities stuck to fairly high requirements, but in others a teacher too often turned out to be merely a well-intentioned woman who would accept a job at a low salary in the schools. Inevitably in some school districts favoritism, nepotism, and petty politics strongly affected the hiring and firing of teachers. There was at that time no national shortage of teachers, for almost anyone could qualify to take the job. As recently as 35 years ago, many teachers' licenses were issued by local and county school boards or superintendents, according to whatever qualification it seemed proper to require.

There were, of course, many excellent teachers at work in those days, but there were also many who kept just a little ahead of their pupils. In 1917 about one-half of all public school teachers had no more than a high-school education. Teaching was not really a profession at all. It was an occupation with few licensing requirements beyond those set by the community. There were competent teachers, to be sure, but the percentage of career teachers of outstanding quality was small.

In recent years, efforts to make teaching a real profession have been intensified. There have been many reasons for this. The great raising of the sights in American education which this Committee has described elsewhere obviously has necessitated even greater improvements in the teaching profession than in school districts and buildings. As the duties of the school have multiplied, more and more highly trained specialists have had to be added to almost every faculty. A

sign of the great social progress made by this Nation in the past quarter-century has been the fact that people demand better and better education for their children. By definition, they also demand better and better teachers.

The very success of the schools in raising the general level of education in America has required a heightening of the standards for teachers. Teachers are generally expected to have more education than most men and women in the community. In most parts of America today, it is taken for granted that anyone who presumes to teach has at least graduated from college. As teachers bring up the general level of education, their own level of education must rise.

This demand for teachers of better and better quality has been reflected in licensing procedures for the profession. Today, each State establishes minimum qualifications for teachers. Thirty-one States require all elementary teachers to have at least 4 years of college, and all States require high-school teachers to be college graduates. In addition, each State sets a variety of special qualifications-both general and professional-some of which are obviously wise, and some of which are often criticized.

Reasons for the Shortage of Licensed Teachers

The great demand for new teachers has occurred in the midst of a general shortage of trained manpower. Because of the low birthrate during the thirties, relatively few young adults are maturing during the fifties. World War II stepped up the industrial pace of the Nation and created an ever greater appetite for highly trained personnel. We are maintaining larger armed forces on a permanent basis than ever before. The 3 million men now under arms increase the general manpower shortage. Women have more opportunities for employment than they used to have; thus, many who might once have become teachers now go into industry. There is a trend toward early marriage, which takes many men and women out of the teaching profession. The Nation has been suffering lately from a temporary decline in the number of people being graduated from college each year. In 1950, when the GI bill of rights was in full effect, the number of college graduates reached an alltime high of 434,000. In 1955, the total had dropped to 287,000, a decline of 34 percent in 5 years. For this relatively small pool of college graduates, competition from business, industry, other professions, and the Armed Forces is enormous. In such a situation, the schools have serious trouble in attracting top people.

The great raising of the sights in the field of education would doubtless have created a shortage of teachers even if there were not an overall shortage of trained manpower. Never throughout all history has any nation had enough highly educated teachers for more

than a small fraction of its children. The American decision to provide enough highly educated teachers for all children demanded a huge body of professional people which had never existed. Just as the American people are trying to build up to their ideals in schoolhouses, they are attempting to climb up to their ideals of teaching by finding and training the kind of men and women they want in charge of the education of their children.

In general, the same things which caused the shortage of school buildings caused the shortage of teachers. As has been pointed out elsewhere by this Committee, the long-range view of increasing school enrollments is astonishing. In 1900, there was a total of only 17,000,000 elementary and secondary school pupils in the private and public schools of the United States. In 1955, the figure was 35,200,000, and it is estimated that in 1965 it will be 47,500,000. Efforts to avoid having classes with more than 25 or 30 students increase the demand for both classrooms and teachers.

Educational requirements for a teaching credential vary widely from one State to another. Required teacher education programs are believed by some in the academic world to be full of unnecessary and repetitious courses and others of little appeal to a high intellect. This Committee emphatically disagrees with extremists who believe that all professional preparation for teaching is unnecessary. It seems obvious that teaching under the supervision of experienced teachers can help a person who wishes to teach. It would certainly be hard to believe that all the accumulated studies of child psychology have not resulted in a fairly large body of knowledge useful to teachers. The experience of teachers and school administrators in operating schools for greater and greater numbers of American children during the past quarter-century certainly must have resulted in a body of systematized information useful to beginning teachers. Much of the criticism which has been heaped upon courses in education stems from the fact that education as such is a new division of knowledge, and all such new divisions go through a period of widespread suspicion before they are accepted by the academic world.

Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that some of the criticism of courses in education is justified. Continued reexamination of such courses by each institution training teachers and by each State department of education should result in many improvements. It is equally true that much of the criticism is not justified. Some of it is leveled by well-meaning people who simply do not understand the problems of education. Every possible way of correcting existing faults in programs for educating and licensing teachers must be examined, and every opportunity for clearing up misunderstandings must be taken. Regardless of other conditions contributing to the shortage of teachers, the biggest single cause is undoubtedly low pay. If the pay for