EDUCATION NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 156, 30 June 1914, Page 4

EDUCATION NOTES.

—.-■■■■ | n DEPUTATION TO M.P.'S. QUESTION* OF SALARIES. [HT MENTOR.] Tun deputation, representing the different sections of teachers, that waited upon the Auckland M.l'.'s last week received a very sympathetic hearing on the various matters brought forward. Naturally enough the question of salaries occupied » prominent place in the discussion that took place, and tho teachers made it very clear that they have good canes for asking Parliament to improve matters in this connection. Teachers ask. in brief, that they shall be treated equally a,- well as other public servants; and it l's difficult to see how this request can lie refused. At present the teaching service is at ,i distinct disadvantage from start to finish. If wo tako the youth who is leaving a secondary school 'after having the Civil Service examination, we find that ho will receive, on entering the railwav service as a cadet, a salary of £50 per annum, ho will be paid, too, a similar sum in the post office, but should he decide to become a pupil-tea. h- must rest content with £35 per annum. In both railway and post office he receives yearly , increments of £15, but the unfortunate j pupil-teacher must rest content with inI creases of only £10 per annum. Under I these circumstances it h not surprising that the best and the brainiest products of J our secondary schools look askance at the teaching profession. Poor Prospects in Profcssicn. [ A poor rate of salary for beginners mav {ho accepted with sonic equanimity if future ; prospects promise some recompense, but ■ no such silver lining to the morning cloudi j can be discerned by the young teacher. | Jhe post office promises its cadets in tho j clerical branch yeariv increments leading Ito a certain £220 per annum at the of 1 28. but very few teachers are fortunate ' enough to attain to an equal salary at , that age. In the Raihwiv Department 63 | per cent, of the clerical staff receive £200 [ per annum, or over, hut onlc 20 p.. cent lof the tea. hers are equally f.Vtimate '!;.., ! Kduc.itional Institute is asking mil a. 1 trained teacher-that is. one 'who has • served as a pupil-teacher, has been through i a training college, and has .•tai.ied"'a , certificate, shall be paid a minimum j salary of £130 per annum: that tear here in_ charge of grade 4 schools doing I efficient work shall rise bv annual increI merits to a salary of £260 per annum, I and that'the so-called prizes of the proi fession shall be worth £500 per annum. j In comparison with what is paid in other i Departments of the Public Service these I requests do not appear unreasonable,

Teachers' Superannuation Fund. 'J he secretary's statement, laid before, the last quarterly meeting of the Superannuation Board, showed that on March 31 last the credit balance stood at £277.572 Tho number of contributors at the same dalo was:-Men, 1802; women. 2227; total, i?- 2 c 9 00 ( ' ontriljllt; to the amount of tJbfffl were returned to 68 persons who had resigned from the service. Xino retiring allowances, under ordinarv provisions of Section 12, of the 1908 Art, wero granted. These ranged from £32 to £214 per annum. Under the extended provisions of tho same section, four allowances ranging from £103 to £216, were granted. Three contributors retired medirallv unfit, and the deaths of six annuitants were reported. The usual allowances were granted to six widows and three ehildten. '

Learners and Teachers. 'J here are some people who enjov learning, and some who enjov teaching- but. | unfortunately— and this is.' no of the' chief I difficulties of education— who enjoy J teaching,do not commonly enjov learning". And this explains why 'it is 'that many people find little pleasure in the society (if teachers.. They have developed the habit of (caching— no one can complain of that since it is the habit of their profession; but it often seeni6 to have closed their minds against .he habit of learning. The worst „I it is that the habit of teaching may be much more mechanical than the habit of learning; indeed it always become* mechanical when it is not combined with learning. There are teachers, j like the beaver that would build a dam j in the desert of Sahara, who will go on teaching when nobody wants them to leach, and when they 'had much better be learning; and when a schoolmaster repeats his teaching on those who have long left school, we may be sure that lie. like tho persistent beaver, is functioning blindly. His business in the schoolroom is to know : and there he has to adopt a schoolroom convention, according to which there is nothing intermediate between knowledge and ignorance, between truth and error Nil' outside the schoolroom his business, like everyone else's, is to learn; and. if hi- is to do that, he must put away tho schoolroom convention, and remember that lie knows only for the purpose of teaching and that in the great world outside the school he is but. a schoolboy, like the rest of us. The universe confronts him in all its glorious uncertainty, hut he will never even begin to understand it if he thinks that he knows it already— if it were onlv an irregular verb.

The Born Learner. Rut those who have the habit of learning find it curiously difficult to acquire the habit of teaching. For their very love of learning crimes from sense of the glorious uncertainly of the universe. They are on a voyage of discovery through life, and have no time to write hook? of travel about it. They will tall; easily about the latest experiences of their minds, but only because they want to Jive those experiences over again to make them clearer and more intense. In fact, while, they talk they are teaching themscl\es and not others, and they will never, if they can help it. present anything that hey know ascertain knowledge. So the Worn'learner '> seldom the l.oin teacher, and if, by any eliance. he is a schoolmaster, neither he himself, nor ntlur schoolmasters, nor even the boys, consider him a success. The hoys may like t-n be in his schoolnom, but to them he <\<ies not seem to mean business, and, to the very tupiil nnes, .it least, he seems to know, very little. Other lorn teachers remember hen afterwards as the man who encouraged ihem rather than thwarted them, but ii school there is need of hers who will .on,train, for the world wild of boys <-r -,I men is not made up of born learners.

The Born Teacher. ! Rut it does happen sometimes that the lioni leal nor is also a born teacher, and when he is that he is horn to Ik: a schoolmaster. His delight then i< nut only in learnin:' himself Kill in communicating his I «\vn surprise and delight 01 learning to others. Such a one U'-es out into the Iwmlil and returns to his •>• hoolroom like. .1 bee laden with honey it-turning to its hive. And the very contagion of his tielieht makes even stupid boys understand what learning really i^: that it is a kind hi cxperien. e ami not merely an excrri?' of i lie mind. To tins burn schoolmaster teaching itn-ll is »■ I merely a profession. lint as much a delight ml and surprising experience as learning. When he tenches something new happens to himself and to hi-- pupil- Hi- own experience of learning is communicated to them as a |>opt communicates his own expeiienio of love. It is nut tha' they know facts which they did not know before, but that their minds, like his, are growing, and that he sees them growing, as if he were a gardener milking his own sprint; for his plant*. To him the stupid are merelv difficult plant of whoSfl ultimate growth he never de.•.pairs. To learn the re<-ivl nf their stupidity is for him a delight Ijkc another kind of learning, and »<■> tea h them is an ex-pi-iienee that never In- ■ •m, - .1 rut inc.