FALSE ECONOMY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16565, 1 June 1914, Page 6

FALSE ECONOMY.

Tiik representatives of the Cantorbury Educational Jnstitute avlio met the local members of Parliament in conference on Saturday morning lincl no difficulty iu making out a strong case for tho improvement of teachers' conditions. The Hon James Allen has promised to introduce an amending Education Bill during the approaching sossion and it must be said for the Minister that he has not shown himself altogether indifferent to tho needs of the teachers, which are, of course, the needs of the children and the needs of the country; but it is just as well that tho Institute should enlist for the measure the. sympathy of tho gentleman who will have to pronounce final judgment upon the proposed reforms. It is very natural that a. good deal of prominence should be given to the question of salaries at such conferences as the one that took place on Saturday and no. one can complain of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses aspiring to at least tne same rates of pay as are given the officers of tho Railway Department and the Post and Telegraph Department, but their inadequate salaries, are by no means the only grievance the members of the teaching profession have against the State. There is, for one thing, the outrageous under staffing which requires a teacher in a city school to take classes of fifty or sixty or seventy children and a teacher in a small country school, usually a woman, to push a score of boys and girls of all ages and of all degrees of intelligence through the six standards. Men and women who aro set such herculean tasks as these could do no more than they are doing if they wero paid as well a.s the general manager of the railways is paid; but they do not pretend to bo doing all that ought to be done. The truth is that the Education Department is king starved and tho teachers, the children and the country are suffering. The teachers arc kept up to the mark by examinations and inspectors, which at least compel them to pass a certain number of pupils through the various standards year by year, but hundreds of the children are being turned out into the world with only a nodding acquaintance with the rudiments of a. primary education and the country is being made immeasurably the poorer by the products of its economies. This happily is not a party question, and if it wero Mr Allen might claim to have been no more conservative than his predecessor in office; l;Mt what is wanted is a Minister who will insist upon the most important department of tho public service being also the best equipped in every respect. The teachers, speaking generally, are doing their part, by giving of their best in spite of inadequate pay, and we believe if the present Government or any other Government would give them a sane and vigorous load the taxpayers would do their part in tho full assurance that their money was being well invested and securing a rich return.