Education: Hawkeye View

An example of the nationwide teacher shortage was seen last week in the school system of Laurens (rhymes with The Wrens), Iowa. This prairie town of 1,400 in the northwest grain area of the Hawkeye state has a consolidated school with about 460 kindergarten-through-high school pupils. Although the teachers’ salary budget was boosted 10% for 1943 there have been months of lively candidate-hunting by School Superintendent W. C. Hilburn. These measures have not done much against wartime’s many wage lures:

> Of last year’s 18 teachers, eleven did not come back. One grade-school teacher stayed, eight quit. Six high-school teachers stayed, three quit. The median teaching experience of the ten replacements is one and a quarter years (three and three quarters fewer than that of those who quit); the median age is 22 years.

What happened in the grade school:

> Kindergartner Isabelle Rohrer, 26, became an airplane stewardess, was replaced by Marjorie Zickafoose, 19 (no experience).

> First-Grader Jeanne Ketchen, 23, went to teach at Spencer, which is nearer her home, was replaced by Mrs. Lulu Heiny, 51, widow of a dentist (some years’ experience).

> Second-Grader Ellen Brechner, 25, went to teach at Osage, which is nearer her home, was replaced by Kathlyn Burkholder, 20 (no experience).

> Third-Grader Mary Mather, 26, a local girl, stuck to her job.

>Fourth-Grader Cora Pollock, about 34, became a nurse’s assistant, was replaced by Lois Field, 23 (half a year’s experience).

> Fifth-Grader Marjorie Frederick, 24, married a sailor, followed him to Florida was replaced by Anna Belle Johnson, 22 (three years’ experience).

> Sixth-Grader Marie Hibma, 28, went to Wheaton College to study music, was replaced by Yvonne Peterick, 23 (two years’ experience).

> Seventh-Grader Marian Anderson, 21, went to Washington on an FBI job, was replaced by Edith Benson, 22 (two years’ experience).

> Eighth-Grader Bessie Buchanan, 27, became a timekeeper in a California airplane factory, was replaced by Grace Phillips, 22 (three years’ experience).

Laurens has no mathematics teacher.*

* Last week a Senate coalition of Republicans and northern Democrats, led by Ohio’s Robert A. Taft, defeated the perennially ill-starred bill which would have provided $300,000,000 in Federal funds to help states hold public-school staffs together. The coalition did this by hooking an amendment to the bill: Southern Democrats were forced to choose between 1) putting Negro education on a par with white in order to get Federal aid, and 2) doing without Federal aid The Southerners decided to do without.