Freedom From Speech A Worry To Teachers

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31656, 17 April 1968, Page 14

Freedom From Speech A Worry To Teachers

Freedom from speech is now competing with freedom of speech, according to the New Zealand Educational Institute. For its forthcoming annual conference in May, this teachers’ organisation has the problem of giving every branch the opportunity to air its views and at the same time controlling an already bulky agenda. “If girth and goodness go together, pride of place will be accorded to ‘Education and Television,’ a report of the institute’s national committee on audio-visual aids,” says “National Education,” the institute's journal “Not far short of 50,000 words, it is about the length of a short novel and more penetrating in its comments on life, leisure, and learning than most. ... It should be a basic document for institute policy and educational development for several years,” says the journal. There are also reports on professional standards, on proposed degrees of membership, on qualification allowances, on work plans, and even the grass-roots of school ground maintenance. Two major topics for debate

will be the claim for travelling expense* for in-service training courses and for new staffing schedules. There will also be a sounding of support for a seminar proposed in conjunction with the 1970 assembly of the World Confederation of the Teaching Profession in Sydney. AH these could take up the whole time of the conference without consideration of a record number of remits. The institute has "session committees” to collate remits, and from each it selects two for priority. These will be:— the training of young teachers and a research study on appointments and promotions; payment for superior classroom teaching and maximum scales for all teachers; inspections of schools and schemes of reclassification; resource material for teachers and the introduction of “new mathematics”; working conditions and science equipment. The institute has appealed to every member to think up ways of giving “freedom from speech” but still getting business done effectively. V