THE NEW TEACHER

Southland Times, Issue 19822, 19 March 1926, Page 10

THE NEW TEACHER

POST-GRADUATE MOVEMENTS. WHERE JOBS ARE OFFERING. Teachers’ training colleges have reopened, and the Education Department’s new quota system, limiting the number of entrants to the requirements of each education district, is receiving its first trial. In each district, including Otago, the result has been that hundreds of young men and women, who felt they had a call to the teaching profession, have been disappointed. But it is felt that a more efficient system of supplying the educational needs of the country will be evolved when the quota principle takes its effect. One obvious result is that there is now in operation a process of selection, assuring more or less the pick of the country’s taleftt, and imposing on the selectees the challenge that is represented in the numbers who did not gain admission, says the Evening Star. A TIGHTER STANDARD. Such innovations as this are tokens of a greater progression in the standard of the profession. Each year finds another change for the better. The time when almost anybody could be a teacher —sometimes, to the consternation of certificated members of the profession, when he had made a failure of a more exacting walk of life—passed years .and years ago. Uncertificated teachers are rare nowadays, and such remnants as exist of a fast disappearing race are placed where they cannot do much harm. Now that the standards for certificated teachers are also being stiffened, the dream of educationists that nothing but the best type would do for the profession seems to be very near realisation. When the department introduced its quota system the inference might have been drawn that too many teachers were being trained. But inquiries about the position were answered in this way: that the boot is on the other foot. It was stated that in Wellington and Canterbury there was a surplus last year, but that as far as Otago was concerned very little difficulty had arisen in placing students in employment. PLACING LAST YEARS STUDENTS. The number of Training College students belonging to the Otago district who left the college at the end of last year was eighty-four—twenty-five males and fifty-nine females. Of the twenty-five males who left the college three are attending the University, and are available only for relieving work in Dunedin or the suburbs. Four have received permanent appointments, twelve are filling temporary positions, and six are not employed. Of the fifty-nine women eight have received permanent appointments. thirteen are filling temporary positions, two are ill and unable to take up any work. There are thirty-six not employed and a number of these are still attending the University—how many is not known by the Otago Education Board. Though the number not employed is low, it suggests that the number of students required was exceeded by just so many. The chairman of the board (Mr J. Wallace) was therefore asked a few questions. “Some o fthem are unemployed at present,” answered Mr Wallace, “but you have to remember that they have scarcely left the college, and in no year have any of the Training College graduates been out of employment in the August following the date of their leaving the college. Some of them bv that time get only temporary employment, but any teacher worth his salt gets a job.” There were many cases, he said, where teachers flatly refused to take up work in the country. These included students who wished to complete their studies at the University. In such cases the students could not expect but to be out of employment. Only that it was perhaps too drastic, said Mr Wallace, he would be one of those who would insist that students on leaving the college should go where they were sent. ARE BONDS A FARCE? That might be a good solution of the difficulty but for the fact that the one instance of compulsion has already proved somewhat ineffective. It is no doubt well known that, when a student enters a training college he is obliged through his parents to enter into a bond, the condition of which is, in the case of a male student, that he will serve the State for six years after his graduation from the Training College, and in the case of the female student three years. None of the authorities who were questioned about the matter would venture any comments about the bond. But there were enough straws to indicate the direction of the, wind.

Apparently it is an open secret that the bond is a matter of form. It is due to the profession to mention that the bond has in general been scrupulously honoured. It is due to many who have found it expedient to choose their careers, or to accept positions in private schools, to admit that they have paid the amount (about £250) upon estreating. But in the cases where the bond has been flouted no effective steps have yet been taken to recover the amount. One notable instance in Otago was the case of a distinguished'young man who, after passing through the Training College, changed his course altogether, studied in another faculty, and after a brilliant course obtained a professorship in an outside university. He is no doubt a credit to Otago, but he had two years’ education “on the nod,” was paid during that time, and did not do a day’s teaching. Another branch of learning, and in a field outside the Dominion, gets the benefit of education for which the taxpayers contributed a good portion. The Department had, and no doubt still has, the instrument to recover that money. The question is whether in this and other instances that instrument is what it purports to be, or is merely a matter of form. So chary has the Department been that there seems to be only one conclusion.

Any suggestion of compulsion, therefore, has to be viewed very carefully. There is an understanding at present that a teajcher after leaving the college must fulfil a certain term in a country school. But apart from those who are continuing as internal students at the University, there are some who have openly declared that they will not go to the country under any consideration. The bond in their case is virtually nothing more than a scrap of paper. What would be the effect of another obligation, such as Mr Wallace has in mind, requiring them to “go where they are sent?” TEACHERS WANTED IN NORTH. Fortunately, however, these are but isolated cases. Most of the students go wherever a position compatible with their grading offers itself. Most of the vacancies at present are in the North Island—Auckland, Taranaki, arid Hawke’s Bay. The reason why positions are not/ offering so freely in the South Island (and incidentally the reason why the quota of students admitted this year to South Island training colleges under the new system is lower) is that more new schools are being erected in the North Island than in the South. The number of schools in the provinces mentioned has increased rapidly. The demand for up-to-date young teachers for the settlements now equipped with schools is correspondingly brisk, and many of the Canterbury and Otago ex-students will no doubt begin their career in those districts. In future years, now that each college is educating just the number required to replace the “wastage” in its educational district, graduates of the college will more easily be placed in their own district. ARE “SUB-NORMALS” NEGLECTED? Sometimes a teacher’s inability to secure a position is not his own fault altogether. Many teachers with whom a reporter talked declared without giving him anything definite to work upon, that women were getting positions ahead of men m too manyinstances. It was suggested, in fact, that superior grading was not invariably the deciding factor in some appointments. If that is the case, obviously there should be a change. Infinitely more men than women take up teaching seriously as a life career, and the reason is obvious. - Of the very few concrete instances given of teachers with qualifications failing target

positions, there is one local case. A lady who has taken a special course in the training of defective children, at much expense to herself, has, it is said, repeatedly failed to secure a position where her expert knowledge could be capitalised by the country. The positions offering in this af-present-limited field are stated to be occupied in every instance by unqualified women. Men, it seems, are not wanted in this field, as one who has taken the course learned when his professor advised him to apply for a position for which applications by women were invited. This teacher, however, has high qualifications for work with normalminded pupils, so that, apart from the expense and study he has wasted, it does not affect him greatly. But that a woman with this special knowledge should have to take temporary work of any kind, often far from an educational nature, while comparatively unqualified women hold the positions reflects upon the consistency of- a department that is exacting full qualifications in other branches. Does that attitude inspire confidence in the present system of training the subnormal child? That is a serious question, in view of the declaration made by Mr Frank Milner, M.A., rector of the Waitaki. Boys’ High School, that “if an expert psychiatrist were to be brought to the Dominion and asked to make investigations in the primary schools, you would be surprised at the number of feeble-minded children.”