LETTERS TO THE EDITOR,.
[Letters of the length of on3 of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
SCHOOL TEACHERS' FIVE PER CENT. CONTRIBUTION FOR PENSION.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—In your recent note on the 5 per cent. deduction for pension to be made from teachers' salaries (surely all teachers, not only elementary, as you suggest), you speak of teachers " seeming to claim that they alone must be excused from making any sacrifice in these troublous times." Surely it is hardly fair to us teachers to repeat this charge without also at least noting the pleas that we are always trying to keep before the public! You say that the average of salaries is now two and a-half times as large as before the War. I cannot answer for elementary teachers, but I think you are wrong in the case of secondary teachers. I am a master at one of our most progressive and efficient public schools. As late as 1919 there were few, if any, salaries which exceeded £300. They are new up to a £525 scale, and if we take the unit of food and other prices we may say that this £525 barely equals the pur- chasing power of the pre-War £300, while numerically it is certainly not two and a-half times as large. Again, teachers who were beginning to agitate before the War for an increase in salaries which were admitted by all, yourself included, to be disgracefully low, dropped this agitation during the War. They may be said herein to have set a good example that was by no means widely followed. It was only after the War that the Burnham Scales came into operation. These Scales were accepted, though lower than the then prices of commodities warranted our asking, because we understood them to be guaranteed for a definite period during which prices might fall, and we regard this 5 per cent. contribution as tampering with this agreement and, as you remark, this view was that of practically half the Government Committee—surely a fairly strong point in our favour.
We maintain that so far from teachers alone shirking their share of public burdens teachers are now singled out from all other public servants (for they are morally Civil Servants nowadays) for the " honour " of extra taxation. We maintain that teachers in the past were so badly paid that they could either not marry, or if they did could not save, and that if the increase had been considerably higher it would have been only fair as making up arrears of the past. (My own salary rose from £200 to £285 in fifteen years, so that the rise in 1920 to £525 does not work out to a very high average.)
I doubt if you realize (I am speaking for secondary schools, as I do know something of their conditions) how difficult has been the lot, and how precarious are still the conditions, of the body of cultured and educated men to whom the nation entrusts what is as important a task as that of Civil Servants —that these men have in the past suffered in silence, and from a sense of noblesse oblige not attempted to push their case, and have now only done so under sheer stress of poverty.
You do not realize, I think, that even the Burnham amelioration leaves many grievances untouched and does not put masters in any position of affluence. Do you realize that numbers of older men will get no pension (and as things are at present they even have to pay 5 per cent. of their salaries none the less!), because unless they serve till 1930 they will not " qualify " to count perhaps thirty-five or forty years of service? You say teachers are in danger of forfeiting public sympathy. Could not you and other influential journals do more to ensure public sympathy with a "sweated " profession? Could you not demonstrate that even by the tardy recognition of their claims in 1920 teachers are not yet placed in the position due to them. Could you not educate the public into the belief that if they need education they must pay a fair price for it? The complaint once made to me by a parent, "I am afraid that in order to send my boy to you I shall have to put down my motor-car," illustrates the too frequent attitude of parents. It makes one despair when the Spectator, of all papers, repeats this charge of selfishness. Can you not do bettor for us? I always prefer to write to the Press over my own name, but in this case policy bids me disguise my identity, so I must remain, Sir, &c., PUBLIC SCHOOLMASTER.
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