US Teacher’s Crisis

Series

Series Name

The March of Time 12th Year

Issue

Issue No.

8

Date Released

22 May 1947

Length of issue (in feet)

1435

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1US Teacher’s Crisis

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 1

Summary

The March of Time synopsis: In "U.S. Teachers’ Crisis" tmot discusses one of the biggest problems in the United States - Education. While today school enrolments are bigger than ever before, the United States has fewer teachers than it had in 1939, for in the past seven years out of a total of nine hundred thousand U.S. teachers, nearly half have left their chosen profession. The chief reason for this, the film points out, is low pay. In the scale of financial rewards, teaching stands well below the skilled trades and far below any other profession. Though salaries were low before the war, today they are utterly inadequate to meet inflated U.S. living costs, and in some states are far below any reasonable living standards.

In recent years, U.S. schools have been forced to hire some hundred and twentyfive thousand emergency teachers, who lack the qualifications ordinarily required, some of whom have never got beyond the promary grades, and most of them without the professional training necessary for their jobs. Other, the film stresses, are by character and temperament psychologically unfit to teach - a point which is illustrated by a stupid teacher calling a pupil stupid. Socially, teachers in the U.S. are held in a special kind of contempt - liable to prying and coercion in their private lives, and, as a rule, subject to threats and firing without any possible means of self-defence. Because teaching as a career has so many serious drawbacks fewer and fewer people are being attracted to it, and there are only enough teachers graduating to fill about a third of the positions open, with the result that the best as well as the worst are fantastically overworked. March of Time discusses the Bills that are being introduced in the United States today to equalise educational opportunity, for it is realised that a nation cannot afford to leave undiscovered its greatest source of wealth - the talent of each new generation. But, the film points out, with the supply of qualified teachers steadily dwindling and school enrolments steadily increasing, American education is being placed in grave jeopardy for years to come.

Researcher Comments

This story was included in Vol.13 No.8 of the US edition.

Keywords

Education and training; Employment

Written sources

The March of Time Promotional Material   Lobby Card, Used for synopsis

Credits:

Production Co.

Time Inc.