Teachers Quit To Aggravate Big Shortage

Already gloomy prospects of alleviating the nation's teacher shortage are worsened by the annual shift of close to 60,000 present teachers to more lucrative professions, Hollis L. Caswell, president of Teachers College, Columbia University, asserted last night.

Caswell, first speaker in the Education School's newly-inaugurated Burton lecture series, said that because of the number of resignations by teachers every year and the inadequacy of present efforts to solve the shortage, "the annual demand is already more than twice the available supply."

The only way to solve the shortage problem, he suggested, is "some broad scale, powerful influence to induce students to enter teaching. Such an influence would be provided if the several states were to establish substantial scholarships for teachers in training."

The size and conditions of the state scholarships, he said, should vary to suit particular needs, though it would be generally advantageous to grant scholarships directly to students in order to permit study at any approved institution of their choice.

First opportunity for the scholarships, according to Caswell, should go to college graduates willing to take a fifth year program. If this were not successful in satisfying the demand, "aid for the third and fourth years of college preparation might be required," he said.

Emergency programs of a few weeks' duration must be recognized for what they are -- "a stop-gap measure that ameliorates somewhat the bad effects of introducing persons without adequate preparation into teaching, but which in no way assures the basic professional competence a teacher needs," he noted.

"Some of the recently inaugurated internship plans underestimate the importance of systematic study in education. Internship, properly conceived," he said, "assumes a considerable professional background based on study, observation, and guided experience in dealing with limited problems."

Education School Program

The Education School's internship program pattern, now followed in several metropolitan areas, draws its "interns" from 12 New England liberal arts colleges. Dean Francis Keppel said last night at Caswell's Fogg Museum lecture that participants usually have already had the "systematic study in education" to which the lecturer referred, "or we give it to them when they come."

"Our summer program for the students in the plan gives the specific training which both Dr. Caswel and we recognize as so important. But we must fully agree that despite our program and other similar ones elsewhere, present efforts on the national scene are wholely inadequate," he said