“Teachers’ Spare-Time Work Often Necessary”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29652, 24 October 1961, Page 7

“Teachers’ Spare-Time Work Often Necessary”

"The Minister of Education (Mr Tennent) and the Public Service Commission have chosen a singularly inopportune time to wave the big stick over what teachers and other Government employees do with the time which is undeniably their own,” says an editorial in "Tellus.” the journal of the Christchurch Teachers' College. “If Mr Tennent had convinced his Parliamentary colleagues and the Treasury that teachers should be paid a professional salary in accordance with their status and dignity, there would be no need for teachers (and others'* to supplement their earnings by working in their spare time and vacations. As the matter is at present there is often a very pressing need for just this type of activity. “Mr Tennent wants to have his cake and eat it at the same time. On the one hand he wishes to pay us as hacks; on the other he wishes to impose on us the ethics of a profession in forfeiting the right to strike, or otherwise make our presence felt in a more vigorous manner than has been the case since about 1929.

“Furthermore, in answer to the Public Service Commission’s note that the outside employment must be ‘consistent with a teacher’s status and dignity,’ we might mention that any honest toil is dignified, or in the words of the immortal Burns—‘a man’s a man for a’ that.’ Their statement smacks of a class consciousness distaseful in the New Zealand setting.