Shortage Of Tear hers

Press, Volume C, Issue 29554, 1 July 1961, Page 3

Shortage Of Tear hers

Sir.—An increase in teachers’ salaries may reduce the problem of teacher-shortage; it will never solve it Measures of a quite different order will be needed. There must be an. acceleration of the present slow reaction from "progressivism” to common sense. Pupils must be taught (and if necessary, compelled! to show the teacher respect on account of his office, quite apart from his personal qualities. Such virtues as docility and obedience, now often ridiculed, must be restored to honour. Teachers and teachers-to-be must be encouraged to teach, and not merely supervise their pupils’ research; for fear of being “authoritarian" some teachers fail to wield the authority, doctrinal and disciplinary, which they possess Radical changes are needed, too, in the teachers’ college curriculum; at present it is quite unworthy of the qualifications demanded of the entrant When a prospective teacher has to grapple with material comparable to Uhat which the prospective lawyer or doctor has to master, teaching will gain the status of a learned profession —Yours, etc., G.H.D. June 30, 1961.