STUDENTS' DIFFICULTIES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 54, 5 March 1923, Page 2

STUDENTS' DIFFICULTIES

TO TBB EDITOK. Sir, —Your leading article about tha need of boarding accommodation for boys and girls attending the Wellington Colleges is to the point, and there is another . phase of the same need for tb» same boys and girla when they get a little older, and art more apt to be beset by the troubles resulting from unsuitable, environment. At the Wellington' Training Coileg* there are over five hundred students, mostly young girls ar.d lada not long from school. A' considerable number of these' students are practically dependent on their salaries for their living. These are strange anomalies in the ideas and methods of those who have arranged ! these salaries. They seem to* think that there is, some relation between the brain capacity and the appetite of these students, for those who have passed most examinations get the highest salaries. There is another anomaly. It is a gen-1 eral rule that those students 'whose parents live in the country, and who therefore have to lodge in town, get a boarding allowance. This allowance is about £30 for nine months' board. Tha.t is one thing I wish to emphasise. The hostels' charge 27s 6d a week for board and lodging, and the cheapest decent private board and lodging near the College is 30s a week. Hostel accommodation is still quite limited, and a largs number of students have to go to' private rooms. This comes to £54 for nina months—£24 more than the boarding allowance granted by Government. Town students who live at home get the same salaries as country ones, and those in poor "families have difficulty in making the'two ends meet after paying for class books, clothes, iind societies, so it is easy to understand the struggle that country students have.

As a matter of principle in training, all students would benefit by being residential in the College, wherel they would be under proper discipline and freo from the harassing cares of a struggle for existenece on too small an income, and therefore be more fit for the needful study. The chronic cry of poverty to which we have become so accustomed from the Education Department is all bunkum. The teachers are the most important people in the country, because they are largely instrumental in building up the Empire of the future, and are nearly always people with a special gift for their work, and a special faculty of managing, and fondness in the care of children. Yet teacers are the worst paid Civil servants when they should be the best. From the earliest period of training, when —instead of being comfortably housed and fed and clothed— many—and all self-dependent ones— have a grim struggle through the two lean years of Training College duty, and in their later years many are still struggling to rear a family on the miserable pittance allowed. Almost any teacher who is capable of getting the necessary qualifications could do well in business or any other profession, and it is only because they are bora teachers that they go on as they do in spite of,hard times. It is therefore all the more reprehenaible for successive Governments to go o:n taking advantage of these people's love for their profession, by grudging them fair pay for their services rendered. The 'Miriister""df Education"knows nearly as well as I do that the Government could easily find another £500,000 a year for education, if it thought the people were insisting* on its." being found; but he thinks the people dp not care enough to make a fnss. Well, Sir, the pressing need at present is a decent boarding allowance for the poor Training College students, and, later on, but soon, a proper residential college.—l am, etc., F. W. M'KENZIE. Ist March.