Conference Informed Of Lower Teacher Status

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32077, 27 August 1969, Page 26

Conference Informed Of Lower Teacher Status

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 26. The effects of the lowered status of teachers in the eyes of the community were so great that the country’s education system was in grave danger of collapse, said the president of the PostPrimary Teachers’ Association (Mr C. B. Newenham) in his presidential address today to the association’s annual conference.

Mr Newenham said school teaching was not the popular profession it was during the pre-war years of the 1980 s.

“One important factor which accentuates this problem is the fact that teachers are underpaid for the work they do and the responsibilities they accept.

“Yet there is widespread acceptance of the idea that schoolteaching remains one of of the most important, if not the most important activity, that any country can support.” he said. Once three people—the parson, the schoolmaster and the doctor—held a special place in the eyes of their community. Professional Groups “Changing times, ehanging influences, changing patterns, have largely displaced this trinity in the esteem of the community and the one who seems to have forfeited his place to the greatest degree is the schoolmaster.

“Education had become a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

‘‘Education was a matter which Governments could not refuse to deal with even though they might not be specifically equipped to handle the question knowledgeably. They therefore maintained professional groups of officers and advisers.

“It is at about this point that the educational haze and murk thickens. It is in this purgatory of education, that the teacher loses his identity and his status and education becomes diminished in the public estimation,” said Mr Newenham. “Diminished Stature”

Mr Newenham said that as long as the Government retained the responsibility for providing education, it must accept responsibility for the diminished stature of the educator in the eyes of the community. “But the responsibility of government is only a delegated one which lies in truth —if democratic government has any meaning—in the hands of the people themselves.” ''

Mr Newenham said illiteracy was the most tragic han-

dicap that could afflict a person in society. “But if we do not raise the status of the teaching profession to the point where teaching is again made attractive to the best minds which our nation can produce then we are active, agents in promoting the tragedy of illiter-