Women Teachers Flayed

In Leicester, England, last week, met the National Union of Schoolmasters. As had been expected they flaunted their masculinity with loud pride. The Schoolmasters Union is the male offspring of the National Union of Schoolteachers which once was composed of both male and female members. After the War the male members seceded because they felt that male teachers, in general, should receive higher wages than female. Since then, they have met once a year and usually said unpleasant things about female teachers. Last week, therefore, English women schoolteachers listened nervously for a scathing male pronunciamento. They heard several.

Said one male: "It is notorious that women are weak in teaching subjects like mathematics or science, from which human interest is absent. Men alone can attune their minds to the minds of boys."

Male Brooke of Liverpool hinted darkly that "certain masculine women dare do all that may become a man. . . . Pupils of both sexes should be vigorously protected from the influence of persons of that type."

Male Freeborough of Banstead said: "Women manage boys by a system of bribery and corruption. Out of the six leading nations in the world, the nation in which bribery and corruption are most rife is the nation which has the most women teachers. America is loaded with bribery in its very vitals, its Parliamentary [Congressional], its municipal, its commercial and financial life. It is more than a coincidence that in that country teaching is feminine."

Many a hearer of the schoolmasters' bitter words was indignant. But some were startled to thought. Was it true that women bribed, corrupted? Are any U. S. educators ever amenable to bribery?

Inevitable were thoughts of the still-brewing public utility propaganda scandals. That public utility men had bribed and teachers accepted was made patent last year when the Federal Trade Commission, investigating public utilities, discovered the extent to which propaganda in behalf of private as against state ownership, control and operation of light, power and traction companies, had been slipped into public school texts and lectures by paid publicists and conniving teachers (TIME, July 16). The National Education Association shortly after appointed a committee of ten to uncover propaganda-spreading teachers and public utility bribers. The committee, headed by able Dr. Edwin Cornelius Broome, Philadelphia Superintendent of Schools, will report in June.