MARRIED WOMEN TEACHERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19452, 7 October 1926, Page 8

MARRIED WOMEN TEACHERS.

Sir, —There was a time when the question of the employment of married women as teachers resolved itself into the simple alternatives stated by Miss WarthoHansen. Twenty-five years ago, when little inducement was offered to the brightest of our young people to take up the work of teaching, there was generally no objection to a married woman being local mistress of education. A lady teacher who had married a country storekeeper was perhaps the best person available to conduct the village school, and if her position was challenged, the fact that she could "teach the children something that would be of lasting good to them" was her ample justification. Times have changed and the problem is more complex. In these days, not professional ability alone, but other conditions of suitableness as well as certain social and economic aspects of State employment have to be considered. Qualifications being equal, the self-supporting woman should be preferred to the married woman and the more remunerative positions should be given to married men with families to keep rather than to women whose husbands are able to support them. It should be remembered, also, that the home is the most important institution in the ■world; the school comes next. The indispensable married woman teacher is an ideal creation, not known in the real world of practice. J.H.B.