SOLE CHARGE SCHOOLS

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16289, 13 August 1918, Page 8

SOLE CHARGE SCHOOLS

TO TUB E1»IT0R OF "THE PRESS." Sir, —In Friday's issue of your paper I was struck with tho following sentence in your leader on the '"Education Conference": —"iho 1336 sole charge schools, which naturally do not attract teachers who can make a succcss' of teaching in the large centros, cannot do justice to themselves or the children." Now, sir, neither consolidation of rural I schools, nor any other arrangement will make for efficiency in the country, unless "Country Service" comes' to mean something more than the two years' scramble of raw recruits from training college, anxious to get that service over. Country service should be made compulsory for at least four years, and that service should come after teachers have had experience in city or suburban schools, and not, as I 6aid previously, on their emerging from training colleges. Consolidation may do away with that other bane of the country school, the uncertificated teacher, but efficient teachers, and efficient teachers only, will obtain efficiency. _ I maintain that real sole charge teaching has never received a fair trial. Place one of these schools in the hands of a capable, energetic, enthusiastic, certificated teacher, who has had previous experience in both town and country schools; give him or her up-to-date and not obsolete apparatus to work with, and the chance to attend education, elocution, or singing classes for solf-improvement, and I'll guarnntee that in time not only will the'pupils show such efficiency as will make town school? look to their laurels, but constant, contact for several years with a teacher of high ideals, instead of the yearly change, which mu6t occur in a consolidated country or in a city school, will so mould nnd develop the children's characters that the country will have every reason to be nroud of the children sole charge teachers will send out.—Yo'm-s. etc.. LILY A. ROGERS, Kimberley 'School.