THE NEW TEACHER

Evening Star, Issue 19198, 15 March 1926, Page 4

THE NEW TEACHER

POST-GRADUATE MOVEHEHTS WHERE JOBS ARE OFFERING IS BOND A “SCRAP OF PAPER”? Teachers’ training colleges have reopened, and tho Education _ Department’s new quota system, limiting tho number of entrants to the requirements of each education district, is receiving its first trial. In each district, including Otago, tho result has been that hundreds of young men and women, who felt they had a call to the teaching profession, have been disappointed. But it is felt that a more efficient system of supplying tho educational'needs of the country will be evolved when the quota principle takes its ellect. One obvious result is that there is now in operation a process of _ selection, assuring more or less tho flick of the country’s talent, and imposing on the selectees the challenge that is represented in the numbers who did not gain admission. A TIGHTER STANDARD. Such innovations as this are tokens of a great progression in the standard of the profession. Each year finds another change for the better. Tho time when almost anybody could be a teacher—sometimes, to tho consternation of certificated members of the profession, when he had made a failure of a more exacting walk of life—passed years and years ago. Uncertificatcd teachers arc rare nowadays, and such remnants as exist of a last disappearing race are placed whore they cannot do much harm. Now that the standards for certificated teachers are also being stiffened, tho dream of educationists that nothing but the best typo would do for tho profession seems to he very near realisation. When tho department introduced its quota system the inference might have been drawn that too many teachers were being trained. But inquiries about tho position were answered in tins way: that the boot is on the other foot. ]t was stated that in Wellington and Canterbury there was a turplus last year, but that as far as Otago was concerned very little difficulty had arisen in placing students in employment. PLACING LAST YEAR’S STUDENTS. The number of Training College students belonging to tho Otago district who left the college at the end of last year was eighty-four—twenty-five males and fifty-nine females. Of the twenty-five males who left the college three are still attending the University, and are available only for relieving work in Dunedin or the suburbs. Four have received permanent appointments, twelve arc filling temporary positions, ami six are not employed. Of the fifty-nine women eight have received permanent appointments, thirteen are filling temporary positions, two are ill and unable to take up any work. Thera are thirty-six not employed, and a number of these are still attending tho University—how many is not known by the Otago Education Board.

Though the number not employed is low. it suggests that the number of students required was exceeded by just so many. The chairman of the hoard (Mr J. Wallace) was therefore ask ad a few questions. “ Some of them are unemployed at present,” answered Mr Wallace, “hut you have to remember that they have scarcely left the college, and in no year have any of the Training College graduates been out of employment in the August following the date of (heir leaving the college. Some of them by that time get only temporary employment, but any teacher worth his salt gets a job.” There were many cases, he. said, where ieaehers flatly refused to take up work in the country. These included students who wished to complete their studios at the University. In such cases the students could not expect hut to ho out of employment. Only that, it was perhaps too drastic, said Mr Wallace, lie would he one of those who would insist that students on leaving the college should go whore they were sent. ARE RONDS A FARCE?

_Tha.fi might, be a good .solution of the difficulty but for the fact that the one instance of compulsion has already proved somewhat ineffective. It is no doubt well known that when a student enters a training college ho is obliged through his parents to enter into a bond, the condition of which is, in the case of a male student, that ho will serve the State for six years after his graduation from the Training College, and in the case of the female student three years. None of the authorities who wore questioned about the matter would venture any comments about the bond. But there were enough straws to Indicate the direction of the wind. Apparently it is an open secret that the bond is a matter of form. It is duo to the profession to mention that the bond lias in general been scrupulously honored, ft is due to many who h avo found it expedient to choose other careers, or to accept positions in private schools, to admit that they im.v« paid the amount (about £2so)' upon estreating. Tint in the eases where the bond lias been flouted no effective steps have yet been taken to recover the amount. One notable instance in Otago was the case of a distinguished young man who, after passing through the framing College, changed his course altogether, studied in another faculty, and alter a. brilliant course obtained a professorship in an outside university, lie is no doubt a credit to Otago, hut ho lind two years’ education “ on the nod,” was paid during that time, and did not do a day’s teaching. Another branch of learning, and in a field outside the dominion, gets the benefit of education for which the taxpayers contributed a good portion. The department had, and no doubt still has, the instrument to recover that money. The question is whether in this and other instances that instrument is what it purports to be, or is merely a matter of form. So chary has the department been that there seems to ho onlv ono conclusion.

Any suggestion nf compulsion, t.herefore, has to Ijo viewed very carefully. There is an understanding at prpsont (lint n. teacher after lea vine; (he college must fulfil a certain form in a country school, But apart from those who are continuing as internal students at the University, there are some who have openly declared that (hey will not go (o the country under any considMntion. Clio bond in their case is virtually nothing more than a sera!) of paper. What would be the effort of another obligation, such ns Mr Wallace has in inmd, requiring (hem to “go where they are sent”? teachers wanted in north. Fortunately, however, these are, hut isolated instances. Most of the students go wherever a position compatible with their grading offers itself. Most of the vacancies at present are in the North Island—Auckland, Taranaki, and Hawke’s Bay. The reason why positions are not' offering so freely in the South Island (and incidentally the reason why the quota of students admitted this year to South Island training colleges' under the new system is lower) is that more new schools are being erected in the North Island than in the South. The number of schools in the provinces mentioned has increased rapidly. The demand for up-to-date young teachers for the settlements now equipped with schools is correspondingly brisk, and many of the Canterbury and Otago ex-students will no doubt begin their career in tho.s*-dis-tricts. In future years, now that each

college is educating just the number required to replace tho “ wastage ” in its educational district, graduates of the college will more easily bo placed in their own district. ARE “ SUB-NORMALS ” NEGLECTED? Sometimes a teacher’s inability to secure a position is not bis own fault altogether. Many teachers with whom a reporter talked declared, without giving him anything definite to work upon, that women were getting positions ahead of men in too many instances. It was suggested, in fact, that superior grading was not invariably the deciding factor in some appointments. If that is the case, obviously there should be a change. Infinitely more men than women take up teaching seriously as a life career, and the reason is obvious. Of tho very few concrete instances given of teachers with qualifications failing to get positions, there is one local case. A lady who has taken a special course in the training of defective children, at much expense to herself, has, it is said, repeatedly failed to secure a position where her expert knowledge could bo capitalised by the country. The positions offering in this at-present-limited field are stated to be occupied in every instance by unqualified women. Men, it seems, are not wanted in this field, as one who has taken the course lamed when his professor advised him to apply for a position for which applications by women were invited. This teacher, however, has high qualifications for work with normal-minded pupils, so that, apart from the expense and study lie has wasted, it does not affect him greatly. But that a woman with this ■special knowledge should have to take temporary work of any kind, often far from an educational nature, while comparatively unqualified women hold the positions, reflects upon tho consistency of a department that is exacting full qualifications in other branches. Docs that attitude inspire confidence in the present system of training the sub-normal child? That is a serious question, in yiew of the declaration made by Mr Frank Milner, M.A., rector of the Waitaki Boys High Sciiool, that “if an export psychiatrist were to be brought to the dominion and asked to make investigations in the primary schools, you would be surprised at the number of feeble-minded children.”-