HEAD TEACHERS' SALARIES.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 18027, 23 May 1930, Page 9

HEAD TEACHERS' SALARIES.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —In your issue of the 16th inst. is a report of the Education Conference held in Wellington. This letter is concerned with the complaint of the 'headmasters who express themselves dissatisfied with the amount of money thev receive for their services to the Slate. This, at a time when all earn-est-minded men are at their wits’ end to devise means of combating the un-. employed problem, and coming from a body of men who are presumed to be endowed with at least a little more than ordinary intelligence, is surely calculated to give us a very poor opinion of their standard of ethics, lo reflect upon the fact of decent hardworking men and women struggling, as many are doing at the present time, to make ends meet upon an all too precarious income, to read in every paper of the privations and sufferings of their fellows in this and other countries, and the knowledge of the drain on charitable and local funds, and appeal after appeal being made for Government assistance towards their - replenishment, it is indeed pitiable that a section of the community should at such a time be eager to inflict still heavier burdens upon those who have to toil to provide the money to keep things going. . Does it ever occur to the headmasters that very much moie than probably the unfortunate seekers after relief work, as- it is conveniently called, are in many cases the products of the schools over which they preside? And if so, does it ever cause them to reflect upon the expense to. which the country has been put to . educate these people sufficiently to become glad to accept anything to avoid starvation? Headmasters will do well to remember that now more noticeably than has been the case heretofore is it difficult to place boys in vocations despite the supposedly high degree to which they have been educated, also that to fill ordinary positions necessitating really only elementary knowledge of penmanship and accountancy and carrying but very moderate salaries, applications are received from men .holding very high scholastic 'qualifications. If the question: Is'the amount now annually expended upon education justified by results? is, as it only can be, answered in the negative, headmasters will -be well advised to reflect somewhat ere advancing their claim for further remuneration. With present-day facilities for the acquirement of knowledge any boy or girl can, by application and self-dependence, become theoretically proficient in any branch of study which v appeals to him or her, and at considerably less, cost to them than, under our present national education system, it would cost the country.—l am, etc., R.R.R.