James Krohe Jr.
Remember the news, announced by District 186 in March, that 68 of Springfield’s 1,329 public school teachers did not have the required paperwork in their personnel files showing them to be fit for the classroom? This except from A New Guide for Emigrants to the West, written by the American Baptist missionary John Mason Peck in 1836:
It's refreshing to see that some local institutions still respect tradition.A material defect in all the laws that have been framed in this state, on this subject, has been in not requiring the necessary qualifications on the part of teachers, and a previous examination before a competent board or committee. Without such a provision no school law will be of much real service. The people have suffered much already, and common school education has been greatly retarded by the imposition of unqualified and worthless persons under the name of school teachers; and were funds ever so liberally bestowed, they would prove of little real service, without the requisites of sobriety, morality, and sufficient ability to teach well on the part of those who get the pay.
