A DELICATE SUBJECT

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2310, 1 December 1925, Page 7

A DELICATE SUBJECT

WOMEN AS HEAD TEACHERS. PROBLEM FOR THE BOARDS. It is probably not known hero generally that Lord Burnham, who recently passed through Auckland with the British section of the Empire Press delegation, had acted earlier In the year as arbitrator in settling the basis of salaries of school teachers in England, and in so doing had made sex one of the determining factors of salary, so that’under the Burnham award the English teachers are not working under the New Zealand policy of equal pay for equal work. This discrimination was the subject of a resolution of protest at the conference of the National Union of Teachers at Nottingham in April. Lord Burnham’s decision Is recalled by the points raised by the deputa. Mon of the executive of the New Zealand Women Teachers’ Association to Sir James Parr (Minister of Education) at Auckland this week. Th« deputation desired that women should bo given the opportunity of appointment as organising teachers, to inspecters and as the head teachership of schools of Grade 3 and upwards. On the matter of head teacherships the Minister stated that he intended to bring the subject up at the forthcoming conference of education board representatives.

It was stated by the lady deputationists that while a male head teach er might control the boys better than could a female teacher, it was obvious that the big girls of a school could be better controlled by a woman teacher.

It is obvious that in the question the education board representatives at the conference will have to deal with a subject on which the teachers themselves are strongly divided. An indication of this was given at the Nottingham conference of English teachers. where the men’s side of the question was voiced with vigour by several speakers. For instance, it was stated that tlm great increase of juvenile crime in Britain was due to the handing over to the teaching profession to women. Women, it was said, are quite unable to control boys. The delegates, representing 6000 men teachers,' unanimously passed a resolution that every boy of more than seven years should be taught by men.

Mr J. H. Brooke (Liverpool) said that in 50 years' time teaching in the elementary schools would be entirely in the hands of women, and schoolmasters would be extinct. Seventyeight percent of the teachers in Britain were women, and the percentage was increasing. The policy of equal pay had eliminated the man teacher in America with disastrous results. Women were emotionally incapable of understanding and controlling boys.