LEAGUE OF EMPIRE

Hokitika Guardian, 11 June 1932, Page 2

LEAGUE OF EMPIRE

EXCHANGING OF TEACHERS. TWO THOUSAND GRASP CHANCE. LONDON, June 8. ‘‘We take up a little peg on each side of th e 'world, and just change them over.” Thus Miss E. Doggett, the secretary of the League of Empire, summarised the work of the league, which arranges for Engli-h and Scotch teachers to exchange posts for a year with their colleagues in Canada, Australia, 2few Zeala'nd and South Africa.

• Up to the present, some 2000 teachers, a large proportion of them beiug women, have taken advantage of the opportunity which this system gives them of studying life in other parts of the Empire. One woman teacher who has recently returned from South Africa, describes how sb e accompanied an inspector ot native schools on a tour of the virgin forest of Nkhandla, in Zululand. She tells how she crawled on hands and knees into the dark interior of native huts, where unclothed babies, dogs ana chickens sprawled together on the floor and all the . household goods were hung round the wall?. She, describes how the Zulus .even now shout news of warfare from hill-top. to hill-top, and adds: “The natives often receive the news quicker than the white hiaii with his telephone.” Another woman who spent some time in a small school of the Australian bush, describes life in remote farming district?, remarking that, although she enjoyed her stay enormously, it made her realise “the loneliness of teachers in such isolated places.’’

Often, too, these visits lead to a romance and end in a permanent departure to the Dominion, or to England, as the case may be.