The Hawera Star. MONDAY, MARCH 29, 1926 THE COST OF EDUCATION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 29 March 1926, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

MONDAY, MARCH 29, 1926 THE COST OF EDUCATION.

Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera. Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eithani, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea. Waverley, ilokoia, Whakamara, Ohangai, Meremere. Fraser Road and Ararata.

Sir James Parr will relinquish the portfolio of Education with the knowledge that lie has lifted school-teaching from its former place as the Cinderella of the professions to a level which attracts a due proportion of the best that the Dominion has to offer in brains and character. Only a few years ago, New Zealand was threatened with a famine of male teachers, and those at the head of the education service had cause to be concerned for the future. The Minister saw that the reasons influencing young men against teaching were principally economic, and he was able to convince 9 his colleagues that money spent in raising salaries to compare more favourably with those offering in other walks of life would bo money wisely invested. Proof of the soundness* of this view is contained in the increased numbers of qualified recruits which the service has been able to enrol since the salary question was faced. Now the position is that each New Year brings many more applications than the vacancies to be filled, and the department, which oneo was forced to grab almost every inquirer—every male, at least —is now in a position to pick and choose. The experience of the Auckland Education Board is typical. This year it received 314 applications for 139 positions as probationers, and 197 of the applicants had passed the Matriculation examination. A year or so ago, any board was glad enough to get probationers whose highest examination success was Public Service Entrance, and some of those rejected now would have been among the first accepted then. The Minister may well be proud of the now popularity of teaching, for the wealth of candidates ensures the selection of a better class of trainee, thus providing a safeguard against possible deterioration in the standard of the teaching profession; or, indeed, making for an improved standard, for the increasing numbers of students passing through the training colleges of recent years has enabled the department to dispense with the services of more and more of its unccrtifieated teachers. In 1920 the total of these was 1472; by 1924 it had fallen to 931. Speaking at Blenheim last week, Sir James Parr referred to the annual cost of education to the Dominion —some three and a half million pounds, or one-

eighth of Hie national revenue —and expressed the opinion that this vote must be increased “whether the country liked it or not.” Those last were foolish, empty words, for none knows better than the Minister that no Government would defy the will of the people our democratic constitution demands that no Government shall. But Sir .Tames may tgike it that the country will not object ii ; it be shown that another £(>0,000 a year is needed for education. Teaching is not a profession that any man or woman enters with the hope of making a fortune; it IS the profession which has most to do with the building of the next generation, and the country owes to its children that the salaries offered in teaching, while never sufficient to give the service an unhealthy flavour of commercialism, shall nevertheless be adequate for a man or woman to live in comfort, and free from that mental anxiety for the future which is poverty’s deadliest weapon. No man will enter teaching because of the money return; but ■while that return was insufficient to keep a teacher and his family in reasonable circumstances, many men passed by the profession who would have been pillars of granite in its ranks. Now these do not pass by; and the .nation is the richer for their halting.