THE TEACHING PROFESSION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CV, Issue 12427, 16 February 1901, Page 2

THE TEACHING PROFESSION.

SCARCITY OF CANDIDATES.. AN INTERVIEW WITH, A HEADMASTER. ■Yesterday afternoon, a, representative of this-journal had a short chav with Mr J. GL. Scott, headmaster of the East Christchurch Public School, on the position of the teaching profession in the colony, and the reason why so few young men come forward to enter it. “ In the first place," said Mr Scott, in answer to a question, " the life of a pupilteacher is made up. to a great extent, of very hard work, necessitating close application. and the remuneration is absurdly small. On five days in the week, the .pupilteacher is at the school from eight o clock in the morning until nearly five in the evening, and on Saturday, if he is a town boy, he attends the School of Art, in order to obtain his drawing certificate. For him, football, cricket, lawn tennis, boating, or any other pastime is out of the question. He will not have time for it. He has his holidays, of course, but- that is the only advantage he lias over boys who are being taught other professions and trades, while lie has many disadvantages. “Besides his small pay, Ids prospects are certainly nothing like those which are offered to'boys by professions, or even by trades. He can never hope to earn more than a- few hundred pounds a year, no matter how hard he works, or what amount- of ability, he displays, and he always has a great- deal of responsibility, and innumerable things to worry him. He has to serve five years of apprenticeship, as you-might call it, while he is a pupil-teacher, and during that time he can never earn more than £4O a year. During the past twenty years, the prospects of the profession in this colony have eeilainly diminished. Tlie salaries have been cut down time after time, and there are few plums in the profession, because there art-rot-many large-schools in'the colony. “There is always a greater demand for women teachers than men teachers. For instance, there are sixteen pupil-teachers in this school —which, by the way, is the largest- public school in the colony-—and only three of those are lads, but this proportion is sufficient for the school. -At present I do not know of a single boy in the school who would make a suitable, candidate for next year. The profession, being badly paid, is unpopular, and when it offers a man iii tlie country only £l5O a year, with lit lie prospect- of promotion, it is certainly not very attractive.

“I may say that, as a. rule, there are plenty of candidates for pupil-teacherships, but very few of them are suitable, or are likely -to become capable -teachers. Very few ho.vs possess the special qualifications required by a teacher, and capacity for man-aging-a class is more frequently found in gills than in boys.” “In my opinion, the only practical method of remedying the evil is to make the profession more, attractive, by offering larger salaries, and trying to make the prospects brighter. With regard to pupil-teach-ers, I think that they should come from- the cultured classes. Amongst colonial hoys and girls, there is a growing tendency to discard the King's English,* and- substitute idiomatic peculiarities. It is very noticeable in the schools, and is found even among many pupil-teachers themselves. The result is that the children, who are never corrected, get-into a slovenly style of speech, and often find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to break the habit, not necessarily contracted at- school, but remaining uncorrected there. It would he much better -if the pupil-teachers were recruited from the ranks of children whose parents -were welloff, and whose surroundings were such that they- always heardpure English. It- is quite surprising how such words as j shall’ Arid ‘will,” for instance, are misused, and how many words are pronounced as if they contained the let lor ‘-i’ instead of ‘a.'”