The NEA Journal, January 1951


The NEA President was Corma Mowrey at this time. She had recently made an appearance on the Kate Smith televsion program promoting American Education Week. Educational professionals were working to get their share of television programming by meeting with the Federal Communications Commission.

The NEA Journal photo above shows young women from 1950 in a journalism class.

One of the most amusing things was the price of goods and services at this time. Looking through the magazine is like thumbing through the original Sears Roebuck catalog. Hotel rates in San Francisco (the NEA Annual Meeting was to be held there) were from $2.50-$11.00 per night. It cost $1.30 if you wanted to stay in the YMCA Hotel. Annual membership dues for active members in the NEA were $5.00! (And that included your subscription to the magazine.) Dues for retired members were $2.00 per year.

A small article in this issue called "Let's Stick to Teaching" addressed the problem of teachers leaving the profession for other careers.

Let's not pour out of teaching as we did from 1940 to 1945 into better-paying work which we, in error, thought would be more glamorous and exciting. And let's not be modest about the great contribution teachers made to winning the last war..........Ours is the rightful pride which comes from making a definite contribution to safeguarding freedom. We can count ourselves among the indispensables........Let's stick to teaching! It's a front-line job. Editorial by Robert F. Williams

 

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