lized by women than
teaching posts, they are being steadily filled by them. For fifteen
years Idaho has had able women State superintendents elected by popular
suffrage; Colorado and Montana have also given this highest educational
post to women. In most of our States we have women serving as county
superintendents; and in Idaho women fill nearly all these positions.
Several of our largest cities, notably Chicago and Cleveland, have women
superintendents; while many high schools and most of our elementary
schools have women principals. In 1909, Mrs. Ella Flagg Young was
elected president of the National Education Association; and in 1911,
Miss Alice Dilley was elected president of the Iowa State Teachers'
Association. Both of these elections were victories for women won in the
face of determined opposition from many of the men.

Another feature of this monopoly of teaching by women should be
emphasized. Many boards of education require a woman to resign her
position if she marries, and married women are seldom appointed to
teaching positions, except where they are widows or separated from their
husbands. In a test case recently carried to the Supreme Court of the
State of New York a decision was rendered that the Board of Education of
New York City could not dismiss teachers for marrying; but by refusing
leave of absence to prospective mothers the Board is still able to
remove all women who dare to have children. Thus we have a modern
industrial democracy being educated almost entirely by celibate women.

But why should a woman be forced to leave teaching because she marries?
Would not married women do much to strengthen and broaden the calling?
Are not married women better fitted than celibates to deal with boys and
girls in the period of adolescence? There is doubtless a feeling that a
married woman should make way for some girl who needs the position to
help herself along; but schools should not be used for the needs of
teachers, no matter how deserving the individual may be.

There is, too, a possibility that a married woman might have a child,
and a feeling that this would shock the other teachers and the children.
Surely we have grown beyond this condition; the teacher could easily be
given a leave of absence for a few months, or for a few years; and
nowhere else could the children better meet this fact of universal
existence around which our Anglo-Saxon reticence has woven such a
shameful conspiracy of silence.