EX-BRITISH CIVIL SERVANT.

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 70, 24 March 1931, Page 5

EX-BRITISH CIVIL SERVANT.

.VALUE OF EDUCATION

(To the Editor.) Sir—May I be allowed, as coming from overseas, and being plunged into the midst of what is to me a new educational world, to make a brief comment on the anony-: mous letters I have from time to time; noticed, particularly that in Saturday's; "Evening Post," concerning educational expenditure. It seems to me that in the wholesale fashion of the usual critique of: education, minor details are so obscuring the main issue that the general public is blinded by these,, and - apt to forget what that main issue is. The importance of education in the civil; teed communities of our times cannot be over-rated. Put a child out into the world without even the most rudimentary education, and unless he is of exceptional ability he will be in danger of starvation, and certainly a burden to the community until he has somehow learnt to support himself. From this state of things, to which none of us would desire to return, ■sw base lifted . cmrseh'eßj, jnth fefeite.

struggles against the type of mind which can cite teachers' salaries as an argument in favour of educational economy, and also ask whether there has been, an appreciable difference in our educational advantages since 1913. Your correspondent was evidently not at school in- 1913, or he would not need to ask such a question. I was, in England maybe, but educational advance in the Dominions goes more or less abreast with that in the British Isles._ Let me cite, one or two advances. Uncertificated and uncollege-trained teachers were common then; now they are practically non-existent. Better training means better /teaching. I remember classes ot sixty as the usual thing, now an exception. The study of •English was mere grammar-drill, now it is a study of a great literature. Geography was a subject or capes, bays, and inlets, now it: is: at least attempted as a study of the humanities. I 1 could multiply such instances by the dozen. The question is not, do we pay our teachers too much? For as usual it is the elementary teacher, doing the spade work of education; ,who gets the largest share of criticism from educational expert as well as -public; but; do we pay them as much as we can afford? .!■!. '■;■'.•■■ Education being one'of the mostimportant 'assets of ,a" person's ..equipment, each of us desires the/best we can get, but it seemsthat we are; unwilling to pay the best to., those frbm'.whbm we.get. it/-'We want, to:'pay the 'smallest ' "price':for -the best'material we can■ wring": out' of our teachei'S. The /correspondent.' points: out £450 as the .colossal salary, paid to;the. head of a' school . of/about 400 children,' whom he must .organise, as twenty years, of .experience dictates. .■ The .manager of • a department of ; this size,, in other less important labours,; would look with j contempt at an employer who .offered' him such remuneration'fopstwenty years', experience.^ Do not: letms, because of, these disturbing, times, when it seems necessary that all salaries, should be overhauled, ■ delude ourseltes with an air of-■self-righteousness into a quiet: conscience by false and unjust arguments'. :Let us face the f,acts of the matter and. realise, that/a good education cannot be afforded at present, and,having lowered our .educational status, refrain in a future decade to point out the deterioration of our educational advances since 1931, not that I think such a thing will be at all possible, as teachers are, -on- the whole,' a conscientious profession, and once started on the road to progress there is no turning back to any enlightened body of people.—l am, etc., 1 . LOUISE BELL.