The Negro Secondary School Teacher

Abstract

In 1936 there were in 171 Southern states 2,305 Negro public four-year high schools with a total enrollment of 188,936 pupils and a teaching staff of 7,131 teachers. Because of the close relationship that necessarily exists between the quality of the service rendered by the public secondary schools and the quality of the instructional service to which the pupil personnel is exposed, it is fitting that the status of the instructional staff of 7,000 or more teachers employed to instruct approximately 190,000 Negro youth in the 2,300 Negro secondary schools be inquired into. This chapter addresses itself, therefore, to two main aspects of the status of the Negro public secondary school teacher: (1) preparation, and (2) the next steps in the preparation of the Negro secondary school teacher. To what extent does the present status of the public school teacher in the United States constitute a problem of common interest? And what is the justification for the interest now being evidenced in this problem? Since the publication in 1936 of the findings of a three-year study of the education of teachers2 in the United States by the United States Office of Education the