Selection of School Teachers

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22073, 22 April 1937, Page 8

Selection of School Teachers

The concern expressed by members of the Otago Education Board about the selection of candidates for the teaching profession is a concern that should be shared by the whole community. If there is one profession for which a person must be fitted by natural aptitude, intelligence, and temperament it is the profession of teacher. The training of young minds requires more than mere knowledge; it requires a combination of qualities that are not born in every man or woman—that-are born indeed in far too few of those who take up the teaching profession; and of these the greatest are patience, sincerity, and understanding. If a person adopts teaching as a profession merely because scholastic attainment has made the road easy for a pleasant and (some may think) not very arduous way of making a living, the chances are tremendously against that person becoming a really successful teacher. There is much glib talk of the impressionable years of childhood, much that is palpably insincere and thoughtless; but there is so much truth in it that it cannot be disregarded. It is not too much to say that the influence, for good or bad -of a single teacher on. the mind of a sensitive child is beyond any

ordinary calculation. The teacher therefore must approach his, work with a full sense of its tremendous responsibility; must indeed feel, as a candidate for holy orders or a medical student must feel, that he has a real call for the profession. And even that is not enough; for though the prospective teacher may .feel the call,' may be confident of his own powers and his own temperament, it is possible for him to be mistaken. It is therefore of first importance that there should,be, as the Otago Education Board members have indicated, full opportunity for testing in scholarship, in character, and in temperament, young persons who intend to train for the teaching profession. The training colleges, of course, are to a large extent testing grounds for recruits to the teaching service, but it is doubtful whether even they can fully test the natural aptitude of the young teacher for his work. For teaching, vocational guidance tests, particularly from the psychological aspect, should be of supreme value. The Otago Education Board has made a wise move in deciding to recommend heads of high schools not to encourage young .persons to prepare themselves for the teaching profession unless they are entirely suitable, and in recommending also that particular attention should be paid to the speech of applicants. But even a headmaster is not necessarily the best judge of suitability—that is a job for the trained psychologist. It should be possible, with the amount of material available, to be thoroughly selective and so build up a teaching service even more efficient than that to which education is entrusted to-day.