Royal Arthur School in Little Burgundy. A la Magritte. If I had time, I’d have Marion floating Mary Poppins like in the sky.
I am still trying to find exact information about 1910 demographics for Royal Arthur, where Marion taught. I just found out that Prince Albert School served Saint Henry, which was its own city at the time.
Well, they are debating merit pay for teachers, right now, and it’s been widely commented on in the News.
Seems a BC Liberal Leadership Candidate, Kevin Falcon, has promised to establish such a program, if elected.
And, of course, it’s being painted as a Right/Left issue, as everything always becomes, nowadays, at least in the National Post which declares that unions hate the idea because they like to pay terrible teachers the same as good teachers.
I know that teachers on the Montreal Board got bonuses back in 1910, because Marion earned one. She wrote about it in a letter. She used the money, 60 dollars, I believe, to help pay off one of her family’s many debts. She made about 600. a year, so it’s 10 percent.
(How else? Because without standardized exams, teachers might be inclined to inflate marks, like the prof did in the movie A Serious Man, or my grade 11 English teacher did for me, because I was one of the few kids who didn’t apply to transfer out of her class at the beginning of the year.)
In the 1893 Report of Protestant Education in Quebec, the recipients and their class averages are listed.
But, apparently, four teachers who merited a bonus ‘were too lazy’ to send in the class exams, (a criteria), so they didn’t get a bonus.
So what do we have here? Lazy, master teachers. Seems a bit of a contradiction in terms.
Now, salaries for teachers were pretty good in the Montreal Protestant system in 1910 (see below for 1893) but still it was hard to get by after paying room and board and after investing in that fashionable big hat.
All female teachers were single, and most teachers by far were female.
Could it be that these terrific teachers were so burned out that they just couldn’t gather up the exams and post them, or whatever?
Could it be that they lied about the results. (I’m not sure what fail safes were employed here.)
Or could it be that they were independently wealthy… Not likely, though.
Or maybe they were lefty union types who didn’t beleive in merit pay.
Marion Nicholson, as I have written, went on to lead the PAPT union and fight for higher salaries for women teachers and even pensions. She also was given the Award of Merit in 1946, by the School Board. She didn’t see any contradiction in accepting bonuses for merit and fighting for the collective good.
