Teachers’ Leave.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19241, 1 December 1930, Page 8

Teachers ’ Leave.

To the Editor. / Dear Sir, —I agree with you that the position in regard to the sick leave of teachers is far from satisfactory. I further agree with you thajt an employer, having a similar sick-list, would consider it not indefensible but one that gave pause for thought. I would suggest that a sensible employer would enquire fully into the situation before condemning the teaching profession. Every teacher has to pass two medical examinations before receiving a teacher’s certificate —one on becoming a. pupil teacher and one on entering Training College. Yet, according to the list submitted by Mr Penlington, one out of every thirtythree teachers has sick leave every month. Surely this is a serious situation and one that requires a remedy. But, perhaps the Education Department finds it cheaper to overwork teachers by giving them from fifty to sixty pupils than to employ more teachers and provide more buildings so that their teachers will work under easier conditions. I notice that in the month of July the position is most serious. I would suggest that in less draughty and better heated schoolrooms, fewer teachers would succumb to the throat and chest troubles that afflict them. If the critics consulted the school registers they would find that the pupils suffer in exactly the same manner as the teachers. Moreover, if one of the critics cared to spend a cold July day in the same room as forty or fifty coughing little creatures, he would pause to wonder that any teachers get through without sick-leave. I wonder if any of the critics has sent a daughter, aged about twenty, and who has never left home before, out to a country school situated five, ten or twenty miles from a railway station. (There are such schools in New Zealand!). In such a school district the teacher, being the only outsider, is the only common topic of conversation. Her every action is criticised: she is alone among strangers and in an environment very different from the one in which she was reared. Is it any wonder that many of these young teachers succumb to nervous troubles and have to apply for temporary leave? I know of one young girl who, in her first school (a country one such as I mentioned above) was reduced to such a state of nerves by the treatment meted out to her by the people of the district that she resigned and faced the risk of unemployment rather than stay. She is still without permanent employment. Let critics look for the cause before condemning the unfortunate effects.—l am, etc., A.B.C.