STEPPING STONES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 57, 8 March 1923, Page 4

STEPPING STONES.

Men may quite properly "rise on step; ping stones of their dead selves to higher things," but there is no reason why the State should help them to use the teaching profession as a mounting block for the more lucrative work of the law. Having been advised by its inspector that a number of young teachers were evidently making a convenience of their position in order to enter the legal profession or the ministry later on, the Board of Education yesterday decided to obtain from all pupil-teachera or probationers a definite declaration of their intention to remain in the eerrice. The Board is quite justified in doing this. It cannot reasonably ask a nu to bind himself to remain a teacher always, but it has a night to require him to state that he has every intention «.* the present time of making the profession his life work. This .is only fair to the service and to the State. A young man who takes up teaching with something else in vityv cannot be relied upon to show as much interest in Jiis work as one who means to be a teacher and nothing else. Enthusiasm is the very salt of education; without it no man or woman can really succeed as a teacher. In these days more and more is expected or a teacher in the way of equipment, and the State goes to considerable expense in preparing young people for work of the highest responsibility. When the State trains a, probationer who, after a few years, will go to some other work, it wastes money that is hard to come by. The teaching profession cannot in certain respects compete with the law, which will always attract a large proportion of able and ambitious young men. Teaching, however, has ite compensations. It is a profession in which the labourer who ! feels he hae entered the right field may reap rewards more lasting and more satisfying than a handsome income.