The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 19

000 Shortage Of 135, Teachers Blamed On Money sneering colonial attitude is still reflected in the oft-quoted phrase: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, teach how to teach." Perhaps this almost uniquely American attitude of disdain for teachers is the primary reason for this country's teacher "shortage today. It shows in salary schedules that almost all educators say are too low to lure good teachers into the field and keep them there. By the latest estimates, U. S. public schools are short some 135,000 qualified teachers.

But you can't just send four million kids home and tell them to come back when teachers are avail- By G. K. KODENFIELD WASHINGTON Some of the first teachers in colonial America were virtual slaves, working off a term in debtors' prison. Those early-day teachers weren't teachers at all. They were brought to the colonies and sold as teachers because they had no other trade.

They were scorned and ridiculed as people who taught because they could do nothing else. Colonists capable of teaching wouldn't enter the field. The job was too hard, the pay too low. THE TEACHING profession has come far since those days. But that But right off we're starting with a deceptive figure.

California and New York hire the most teachers, and they pay the highest salaries. That brings the average up. One out of every four classroom teachers last year received less than $3,500. In eight states the average annual salary of the entire teaching staff was less than $3,500. In three states North Dakota, Mississippi and Kentucky, one teacher in three was paid less than $2,500 for the school year.

The average for all of Mississippi was just over that: $2,525. If we use the national average of $4,520, it works out to about $120 a week for the school year, or about $86 a week if the salary is supposed to cover a full 12-month period. And from here you can take off and fly in all directions. IF THE TEACHER is a married woman helping her husband make both ends meet, that $120 might be considered a good salary. Even the $86-a-week figure is not to be sneezed at.

But, if the teacher is a man trying to support a family on his own hook, it's a different story. That $120 a week won't go so far, and he's liable to have trouble on the $86. Many families, of course, get by on that much, or even less but seldom do they have to when the wage earner has spent four years in college and thousands of dollars preparing himself for his life's work. On the basis of a 40-hour week, that $120 works out to an even $3 an hour. That's a nice round figure that sounds fairly impressive but here again the figure is deceptive.

The teacher who works a 40-hour week is a rare bird, indeed. MOST SURVEYS show that teach-'jrs work anywhere from 50 to 60 hours a week on school chores teaching, preparing lessons, grading papers, taking tickets at basketball games, chaperoning dances, and organizing and supervising outside activities. At 50 to 60 hours a week, the pqy scale drops to $2 to $2.40 an hour. That is considerably below the pay of the average plumber, carpenter, bricklayer, or other skilled workman in the building trades, and even further below the pay scale in most other professions. able.

So you make up for the shortage with overcrowded classrooms, double sessions, and emergency teachers who aren't really qualified for the job. THE RECENT REPORT of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund said the root problem of the teacher shortage is financial. "Salaries must be raised, immediately and substantially," the report noted. "Those teachers with more than modest financial needs and responsibilities can only solve their problems by becoming administrators, or leaving education altogether." Almost any discussion of teachers' salaries gets lost in a maze of mathematics. For instance, how do you figure a teacher's salary? By the hour, or by the week? On the basis of a 37V2 week school year, or from September to September? It makes a difference.

Accurate figure for the present' school year won't be in for several months yet, so let's take some figures for 1957-58 and see how they work out. THE AVERAGE SALARY for all classroom teachers was $4,520 a year. to. JU THOR HEYERDAHL, A SCIENTIST FIRST Fcrching atop statue on Easter Island 1 1 A i 4 it L. vJf i NA .1 till --inntnTM HHM I Minn II 111 I These weekly and hourly figures are based on the national annual average of if we consider Mississippi's yearly average of $2,520, it comes out to $68 a week for a 37 Va week school year, or about $49 a weelc on a full-year basis.

And the hourly rate, even for the school year alone, drops to between $1.13 and $1.36. i DR. CORMA MOWREY of the Na. tional Education citing thesa figures to a congressional committeb earlier this year, said that to be truly professional, teachers' salaries should average between 50 and 60 pet. higher than the average of all wage or salary earners.

On this basis, the national average for teachers last school year would have been between $6,453 and $6,883, instead of $4,520. And she struck at what well may be the heart of the matter when she told the committee: "Teachers' salaries will be at about the right level when the successful and leading citizens of any community will encourage their sons and daughters to consider teaching among desirable vocational choices." 'We Can Take Flier Says By JAMES CARY A NATIONALIST CHINESE AIR BASE IN CENTRAL TAIWAN lP)Tha young Chines pilot grinned and glanced at the American instructors lounging nearby. "I think we can handle the Communists," he said in perfect English. "We would all like to get some mora MIGs." He was Capt. Au Yang Yi-Feng, one of the hottest pilots in the Republic of China's tough five-wingair force.

Au, 29, a boyish-looking veteran of more than 100 missions against the Red Chinese, is best-known here-, abouts for his exploits in an aerial battle on July 21, 1955. THAT DAY his blazing guns sent two MIGs down in flames and damaged two others in a dog fight over the offshore island of Matsu. have been in MIG fights 10 times now," he said, "and I don't think their pilots are trained too well. Maybe their morale is bad too." He talked freely against a bustling backdrop of this central Formosan base where a program is under way to build the first F-100 Super Sabre jet wing in Nationalist China's Air Force. Six two-seat versions of the Super Sabre the F-100F and six American instructors were flown here last month from George Air Force Base in California to begin training 10 Chinese fliers.

These will in turn, teach other Chinese pilots to fly the Super Sabres at speeds faster than, sound. Au, one of the 10, waved his arm at one of the swept-wing Super Sabre fighters bearing the blue and white Nationalist emblem. "I HAVE BEEN LOOKING it over on the ground," he said. "It's beautiful. Duane Lt.

Duane Mill of Rte. 4, Fort Collins, my instructor, let me race it down the runway Wednesday and I get to fly it myself tomorrow." Au has spent so much time with American fliers that he talks and acts like them. His American friends say he flies with skillful application of everything the American Air Force could teach him. In 1954 he spent 40 weeks in U. S.

flying schools, largely roaming the fogless skies over Arizona, Williams and Luke Air Force Bases. Achievement And Peace Heyerdahl Thinks He Solved Mystery Of Pacific Peoples WARF Earns Money For University By ALTON L. BLAKESLEE MADISON, Wis. ifl The professor was offered $1 million for exclusive rights to his discovery. He turned it down cold.

This was back in 1924 when $1 million bought a lot more than it would now, and when income taxes wouldn't take anywhere near so fierce a bite. But Prof. Harry Stecnbock wanted his discovery to work for his beloved University of Wisconsin, in the state where he was born. So he helped organize, and assigned his patents to, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation WARF. AND BECAUSE HE DID: The university has received nearly $20 million from WARF.

It got $1,348,340 this year alone to support research, help pay salaries for fellows and professors, and give other aid. Today the foundation has investments with a market value of about $35 million, producing income for research at Wisconsin. In short, WARF has been a spectacular success. In an age of science, it is helping meet Wisconsin's need for money for science and research and training human minds. Can other universities do the same? Many are trying to make discoveries made in their laboratories work this way for them.

Some are doing so individually, others co-operatively through the Research New York City. BUT THERE'S MUCH more to it than just setting up a foundation, taking out patents, and automatically reaping profits. WARF, for example, has patented more than 150 inventions and discoveries made mainly by University of Wisconsin researchers. But only 17 have ever paid back more than $1,000, says Ward Ross, managing director of WARF. The foundation lost money on some inventions, in taking out patents and trying to develop them.

i lf ft Iff. S4 14 lit PROF. ARTHUR D. CODE With a gift from WARF Itolihy Unique By TOM HEN SHAW NEW YORK tf) Thor Heyerdahl, who built a world-wide reputation on a balsa raft named Kon Tiki, thinks he has finally made his point after 20 years. "This is the first time I have come back from an expedition with no questions in my mind," says the 43-year-old Norwegian scientist-writer-traveler whose latest wanderings took him to isolated Easter Island.

"I think I have proved my theory unless, of course, someone brings up another point." Chances are someone will, since few theories as new and as radical as Heyerdahl's go undisputed. And then there's the alarming to science fact that he is also a best selling author. HEYERDAHL'S THESIS is that the original settlers in the islands of the Eastern Pacific came from South America. This contradicts an older theory that all the peoples of the Pacific came from Asia. The slight, soft-spoken shy Heyerdahl has poked around the Pacific on and off for two decades and has written several books and a score of scientific papers designed to prove his theory.

One of his books, the immensely popular and successful Kon Tiki, the story of his voyage on the raft, has sold 20 million copies in more than 50 languages since 1947. But it's also caused him a good deal of heartache. Heyerdahl wants most of all to be known as a scientist and the popularity of the breezy, suspenseful Kon Tiki has made its author somewhat suspect in footnote conscious scientific circles. "PRIMARILY, I am a scientist," he says forcefully. "I am not an adventurer or navigator.

In fact, when I was a boy I was Norway's outstanding landlubber. I wouldn't swim until I was 22 years old. "I think the story of what happened on Easter Island can teach us a lesson," says Heyerdahl. "The statues were made while the people were at peace. After the war started there were no more statues built.

Just that ought to tell us something. "We only achieve while we live in peace." U.S. Chess Honors With Reds Ride On Shoulders Of Boy JUN Unterpreters Must Analyse On up on documents and background ma- for the atomic energy conference, terial to keep up with subjects under they had a cram course to familiarize discussion by the various committees them further with the subject and to which they are assigned. Recently, the terminology. At least one inter-before 35 interpreters went to Geneva preter, though, didn't need it: He al- i n-M board which means more to him than anything else in his life.

Bobby Fischer doesn't want to be a baseball star or a football player or the most popular fellow at the prom. He wants to be chess champion of the world and it seems a pretty sure bet he will be. Most Americans don't know it, but their honor in a big international contest with Russia is riding on the thin shoulders of this 15-year-old boy from Brooklyn. BOBBY IS HAILED by the experts as the greatest chess mind the world has produced in many years. "He doesn't look like one he looks more like a farmer's boy than an intellectual but he is a genius," says Hans Kmoch, secretary of the Manhattan Chess Club which is the nerve center of chess in the U.

S. "Fischer is something unique. None of the great ones ever accomplished so much so early." He has become an international grand master the youngest in the long history of the game and will meet the world's top seven players this year in a challengers' tournament. The exact date and place remain to be determined. Anderson Family Works For Uncle HOLLYWOOD UR Hollywood's Anderson family is giving up a week's vacation for Uncle Sam.

Robert Young, Jane Wyatt and the others of TV's Father Knows Best series had a week off but the U. S. Treasury Dept. asked them to make a savings bonds pitch. The entire cast, director, writer and all will make a 30 minute film in their regular format.

NEW YORK UP) There's a Batman comic book on his bedside table and a rock 'n roll program blaring over his radio. He's slouchy, gangly and crew-cut. But Batman is sprawled over an open chess book and his nail-bitten fingers are deftly moving chess pieces over the black and white The ready held two advanced degrees in nuclear physics. "The minimum requirement for an interpreter is fluency in three languages and most of our staff can handle more than that," says George L. Sherry, acting chief of the section.

"But none of us thinks of himself as a linguist. Language is just a tool." Interpreters must pass a rough examination before they are hired for the jobs, which pay from $6,000 to more than $14,000 a year. SHERRY'S UN languages are Russian, French and English, and he's also fluent in German and Rumanian. The official UN languages are French, English, Russian, Chinese and Spanish. Sherry is an English interpreter, which means he always interprets Russian and French into English.

It takes more than a flair for languages to make a good UN interpreter, Sherry says. At the world organization, two types of interpretation are used. One is simultaneous, when the interpreter translates as the speech goes along. The other is consecutive, when he does his interpretation after the speech is finished. "You can compare either one to broadcasting a basketball game," says Sherry.

"Y'ou must have the ability to analyze things on the fly." 4 UNITED NATIONS, N. Y. UP! The UN delegate, proud of his florid oratory, delivered a long speech with each word rich and consciously beautiful. When he concluded, a UN interpreter read the French translation clear, lucid, but neatly pruned of excessive verbiage. The delegate rushed up.

"That's not what I said," he protested furiously. "Monsieur," replied the interpreter smoothly, "that is what you ought to have said." THIS IS THE favorite story of the UNs' interpretive section, but in practice the 70-odd translators have little time or inclination to edit speeches. Mostly they just try to keep up with them. It might seem simple to translate sentences word for word as a speaker mouths them. Actually, much more is required of an interpreter.

Many know almost as much about the subject under discussion as the speaker. About a third of the interpretive staff numbering 70 are Ph.D's. Most own degrees in law, economics, political science, mathematics, comparative literature, pr some other learned specialty. ALL ARE CONSTANTLY boning ft i 'Za V- i CAPT. YANG, DUANE MILL Universal language 4 41 '-f fcii.im i tinmtiiiiiirnniinanMimfiftiM iimiiirr- mi i in I'i i ni oi riuinlinnit'i GEORGE SHERRY RIGHT AND TED TAGAN Translate for a better understanding.