YOUNG MEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10756, 30 April 1913, Page 7

YOUNG MEN.

2A DEARTH IN TEACHING PROFESSION. [FHOM OUR Correspondent.] WELLINGTON, April 29. "Why is it," asked a well-known "Wellington headmaster of his school committee, " that there is such a dearth of male applicants for the service? Although a considerable number of the best girl pupils of this school havo adopted the teaching profession, there is not .a single example of a boy having done so during the seventeen years of my experience in this school." He was speaking of Clyde Quay, one of the largest city schools. He went on to say that he was "not blind to the fact that some of this shyness on the part of males is the result w? reluctance to face the years of necessary study and training to fit them for the work, years during which they have to be dependent on their parents for a considerable portion of their support. There is not a similar shyness, liowcv.er, where law and other professions are concerned. Indeed, a good many of the more promising and ambitions young men in this profession only make it a stepping-stone to other professions, because in them they can satisfy their ambition, and in the teaching profession they cannot. If the latter is the noble profession we are so constantly having it dinned into our ears that it is, then it is worth paying for. We shall never succeed m attracting to and keepin~ in the profession the best of our voung people until the public of the dominion grasp this elementary truth." The committee endorsed these vie\vs in resolutions calling for improved scales of payment.