WOMEN IN SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 125, 29 May 1930, Page 8

WOMEN IN SCHOOLS

INFLUENCE ON BOYS

INSPECTOR AS CHAMPION

(By Telegraph.)'. (Special to "The Evening Post.") DUNEDIN, This Day. A spirited defence of women teachers was put up at the Education Board mooting this morning by Mr. Stuckey (sonior inspector for Otago). The question of. women teachers and thoir influence on boys was introduced in a communication forwarding a Press cutting of a London cable on the subject, and asking that the board should have a consultation with Mr. Stuckey. The cable, dated 21st April, -read:— The National Association of Schoolmasters at the annual conference at Manchester unanimously adopted a' resolution declaring that boys should be taught by men. It deplored the fact that there were 7000 women teaching boys at schools; also the fact that there were 700 fewer men ■ teachers and 5000 more women since the war. The arguments used were that a boy under the influence of a woman teacher could not become a 100 per cent he-man, and that if the teaching of boys remained fc'nunised the whole nation would become feminised and would sink below other nations. • : '■- Mr. Stuckey expressed tho opinion that this was an ex parte statement made by an association of headmasters. He dared say that when they had as much experience as he himself had had they would know better than to talk like that. / The chairman: "That is an assumption on your part." .: NOT EFFEMINATE IN WAR. MiV Stuckey: "No, it is a fact. .Before the war boys in our schools and in British schools wero taught by women, and during the war there was no evidence that they were effeminate. There jis one thing that these people seem to have ignored; that is heredity. If a boy is born a milksop he will be a milksop. When wo come back, to a consideration of our own schools, is it not a fact that half of the children under women teachers are girls |" A member: "More than half." ■'Mr. Stuckey said that if a question was raised about' big boys being taught by men, was it not equally right that big girls should be taught by women? He instanced the case of a school where there \yere more big girls than boys under a male teacher. In conclusion, Mr. Stuckey called attention to the feat of Miss' Amy Johnson. ' ■ , "Mr. Stuekey has no right to make a statement like that," declared the chairman (Mr. Wallace). "I might as well say that he has made an ex parte statement on behalf.of the Department. Ho has no right to say that these people don't, know what they arc talking about." MUST BE -WOMEN ON STAFFS. A member said that the board fully recognised that there must be women on school staffs' to look after female pupils. They had never advocated that staffs should be composed entirely of males. . The chairman: "That is the attitude the board has always taken up." The discussion then lapsed.