Board Of Education Progressiveness

The proceedings of the Arm Arbor board of education Tuesday evening furnish abundant evidence of new and progressive ideas on the board. It is to be hoped the schools will profit thereby, and they undoubtedly will, if these ideas are sustained by board action, as was the case at the last meeting. It is altogether right that teachers should be compensated according to their merit. Ann Arbor believes in just and liberal teachers' pay-roll. Those who do the hard work should be compensated accordingly. But there should be no salaries paid to any teachers who are rendering no service to the district. The Argus believes the board has no warrant for paying public funds to teachers who are on leave of absence and are returning no value to the district for the salary paid them. There is not a single right thing about it. Nor is it equitable or just to ask other teachers to do the absent teacher's work without the compensation. The salary of those on leave of absence should be reduced to the vanishing point and divided among those who do the work. Last Tuesday's report of the committee on teachers was a. move in the right direction.

The project of giving teachers a day off occasionally to visit other schools is another move in the right direction. More or less of this was done last year. and there is much advantage in it to the schools. The very best way to get new ideas of teaching and to learn of their value is to visit up-to-date teachers and schools and observe the new educational ideas in practical operation. New educational ideas and methods are thus seen as living entities, as it were, and become vastly more helpful than the theory as laid down in a book.

The plan of a more intímate relation between the pedagogical department of the university and the public schools whereby those who are about to graduate with a teacher's diploma can have the opportunity to do some practice work appears to the Argus to be a good onè and of mutual advantage. Not only may the plan be handled without cost to the city schools but at a saving. The young men and women from the university who would do the practice teaching are thoroughly equipped for the work they would be assigned to, and there could, therefore, be no loss to the city school students from having them as teachers. Whatever work they did would relieve regular teachers to a certain extent and, with a thoroughly worked out plan, might lessen expense of teaching force. There would certainly be no added cost.