Teachers' Homes in Rural Southland

Southland Times, Issue 24238, 23 September 1940, Page 4

Teachers' Homes in Rural Southland

AMONG the matters brought to the notice of the Minister of Education (the Hon. H. G. R. Mason) during his visit to Invercargill was the condition of teachers’ residences in many of the rural districts of Southland. The chairman of the Southland Education Board (Mr S. Rice) referred to four places where the need for improvement is especially urgent. At Waikaia, he said, the teacher’s house was “old and done,” and its foundations were too low. “The teacher’s residence at Mossburn was a three-roomed shack; that at Pine Bush was a two-roomed shack occupied by a mai'ried teacher; and that at Scott’s Gap was a small three-roomed residence with no conveniences at all.” This is a disturbing glimpse of teachers’' living conditions in some of the rural areas, but it will cause no surprise among those who remember the disclosures made in a report on school residences issued two years ago by the New Zealand Men Teachers’ Guild. According to this report, which covered the whole Dominion, at least 25 per cent, of the houses occupied by country school teachers were then more than 50 years old, and as many as 60 per cent, were affected by borer. Twenty-seven houses were without baths, in 207 others (including 32 in “the most southern education district”) the baths were situated in outhouses or sheds, in 65 there were no sinks, in 540 there were nd bedrooms with fireplaces or other heating facilities. Teachers in 43.7 per cent, of the houses were entirely without hot water services. These facts disclosed a really scandalous state of affairs. No doubt in some individual cases improvements have since been made, but nothing has been done to provide

decent homes for country teachers on the nation-wide scale that is obviously called for. Mr Mason, while expressing sympathy with the teachers who have to live under such deplorable conditions, mentioned that money for new buildings could not be found as readily in war as in peace. The financial difficulties created by the war will, of course, be understood: no one can expect the recent rate of expenditure on public buildings to be maintained during the«war. At the same time, while the Government presses ahead with its housing scheme in the urban areas and offers cheap money for rural housing projects it cannot reasonably deny the teaching profession the improvements in accommodation and facilities that are needed so badly. Indeed, it may fairly be claimed that country teachers should come first and that their requirements should be satisfied before any more millions are spent on housing in the cities. The Minister has promised to make a more extensive tour of Southland early in 1941, and it is unlikely that he will be able to pass over some of the worst cases mentioned by Mr Rice when he inspects them himself. But Mr Mason and his predecessor, the present Prime Minister, must already have seen enough of country teachers’ homes in this and other provinces to realize that the time for organized inquiry and reform is already long overdue.