TRAINING OF TEACHERS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29401, 31 December 1960, Page 15

TRAINING OF TEACHERS

Longer Course Advocated (New Zealand Press Association) HAMILTON, December 30. If adequate time could be given to the training of primary school teachers the course should cover four years, said Mr J. S. Allan, principal of the Hamilton Teachers’ College, at the South Pacific education conference at Tuhikaramea. Mr Allan said that an insecure teacher was forced to lecture, to the detriment of his students. The development of security in a teacher could not be hurried. “The time to be spent on teacher training is a simple problem to solve,” said Mr Allan. “It is all a matter of how much we value education in giving our young people, who will eventually run our country, a sound and wise preparation. If we value this enough we will spend the money. If we don’t, we wont.” Mr Allan said he felt that teacher trainees and teachers could do with more help in the translation of the syllabus into effective action in the classroom. “A syllabus, such as the English syllabus, is the result of seven years of revision by highly experienced people, but when a student teacher is .confronted with it, it was a ‘dehydrated skeleton’,” said Mr Allan.

He was supported by Mr L. le F. Ensor, district superintendent of education, Auckland, who said that many teachers could not interpret the social studies syllabus when it was introduced. “We have struggled with this for 15 years and are still struggling,” he said. “Teachers cannot teach with conviction.”

‘‘A teacher cannot teach what to him is invalid,” said Mr Allan. “There must be a sympathetic appreciation of the aims underlying the syllabus. The only effective way of training a teacher is to preserve his integrity. They must not just accept aims, they must believe in them.”