Opinion: 'Good old days' not so good for female teachers

I began my teaching career as a high school teacher. A lot of progress has come to the profession since then, especially for women teachers. I have always said that being a teacher is a lot like being a blood donor: Both are important and highly appreciated things to do, but one shouldn’t expect to be paid to do them.

I give away my age when I tell you about my first high school teaching job. It was customary then for elementary and secondary men teachers to be paid more than women.

The salary scale at my school called for men to be paid an extra $200 per year at all levels. If you were to know my first year base salary, you would understand the blood donation comparison. You would ask why college-educated people would work for so little. Certainly, you would wonder why educated women allowed the gender-salary inequalities. All I can say is that you had to be there at the time.

As for me, I enjoyed my brief high school teaching experiences and my college teaching career. Most gender injustices have by now been righted. If you think paying women less than men was outlandish, the practice was generous compared to earlier wrongs against women teachers.

The May/June issue of “Reminisce” magazine reprinted the rules of a 1915 teacher contract. These rules pertained to a school somewhere in Minnesota. These strictly enforced rules were typical for female teachers at the time. The exact contractual wording follows, with my parenthetical commentary inserted along the way.

“You will not marry during the term of your contract. You are not to keep company with men.” (I can’t help but interrupt to point out that outlawing “keeping company with men” would quash any chance of marriage. Doubtless, marriage was taboo in order to keep a young “schoolmarm” from being swept off her feet by some youthful rascal who would take her away in the middle of a school year.)

“You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function.” (If only those electronic ankle bracelets used on inmates under house arrest had been invented. The chairman of the board could have strapped one onto the teacher’s ankle. Why, an electronic bracelet kept Martha Stewart close to home during her house arrest.)

“You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.” (I don’t know what immoral things may have been going on at ice cream stores circa 1915, but when I was a boy, I was admonished to stay out of pool halls. My parents would have been glad had I loitered in an ice cream store.)

“You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have permission of the chairman of the board. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother. (Why do I keep getting the feeling that these weren’t terms of a teaching contract but rather terms of a jail sentence?)

“You may not smoke cigarettes.” (Good advice, but it should have been her choice.)

“You may not dress in bright colors. You may, under no circumstances, dye your hair. You must wear at least two petticoats. Your dresses must not be any shorter than two inches above the ankle.” (I guess we all know what bright colors, dyed hair, only one petticoat and dresses three inches above the ankle can lead to. That such a document would be signed says a lot about attitudes and job opportunities for women 91 years ago.)

“To keep the schoolroom neat and clean, you must: sweep the floor at least once daily, scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water. Clean the blackboards at least once a day, and start the fire by 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m.” (Besides living a monitored virtuous life, she was the school janitor. Notice that nowhere in the contract is quality of teaching mentioned. Some of the “good old days” weren’t actually so good. Being a female teacher in 1915 is one of them.)

If the women teachers I knew were rightfully teed-off because they were paid less than men, those contract terms would have driven them into a frenzy.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.