Case in Point

She figured that it would cost her $125 to go to the National Education Association convention in Cleveland. Corma Mowrey scrimped and budgeted all year to save the money. Like the 3,500 other teachers (three quarters of them women) at the convention last week, she considered it "the high point of my year." Miss Mowrey, tall, robust and 40, teaches English and practical arithmetic in a Clarksburg, W.Va. high school.

Her big moment came at a meeting of the Department of Classroom Teachers, a powerful subdivision of the N.E.A. The discussion was about overcrowding in schools, and Miss Mowrey rose to tell her colleagues about the situation in Clarksburg. Most of them found it painfully familiar.

"I teach five classes a day," she said, "a total of 176 students. Under these circumstances, I can barely cover the subject matter of my courses, let alone give my students the individual attention they need." In addition, she presides an hour each day over the study hall. She is chairman of the student assembly, chairman of the School Spirit Committee, "homeroom" adviser for 35 students, coach for junior class plays, chairman of the faculty social committee.

And because Miss Mowrey thinks it a good teacher's duty to belong to education groups, she is a director of her local teachers' association, vice president of the West Virginia N.E.A., an active member of the American Association of University Women and of Delta Kappa Gamma, an education society. She teaches Sunday-school classes and is regularly called upon to help in Clarksburg's Red Cross and Community Chest drives.

After school, Miss Mowrey must grade papers, prepare for the next day's schoolwork, help her sister with the housework, find time to visit the parents of problem students. She rarely sees a movie, does practically no reading beyond what is required for her class work, and is annoyed to find herself slipping out of touch with the news. She climbs into bed each night exhausted.

After 20 years of teaching, Corma Mowrey, with a master's degree from Duke, takes home $276 a month--nine months of the year. Summers she organizes teachers' conferences for the state education department.

"I guess you might say," she concluded dryly, "that I am overworked and underpaid. But I stay in teaching because I like it. There's a satisfaction to it that is missing from most jobs--even better paid ones. The realization that you are making an important contribution to the lives of individuals gives you the zest to go on."

The N.E.A. convention asked President Truman for a special session of Congress to pass federal aid to education (a request that Harry Truman wasn't likely to act on). N.E.A. also wanted the U.S. to start a $10 billion school building program, and to fire 100,000 "undertrained" emergency elementary-school teachers.

Just who would replace these emergency teachers, N.E.A. did not say. The U.S. Office of Education reported that most high schools should be able to get all the teachers they need this fall. But of this year's crop of 54,000 new teachers, only 20,000 are qualified to teach elementary grades.

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