E.—7 a,

38

a system of State grants, and where the supply of entrants is secured mainly by this means, will thereby lose prestige and standing in public opinion, as compared with other callings, and that its power of attracting recruits will be diminished accordingly. Shortly put, they contend that methods of securing a supply which rely on anything but the inducements which the profession offers must be bad for individual teachers, for the standing and spirit of the profession, for the schools, and for the supply of teachers itself. " They mean by the attractions of the profession partly those inherent in the teacher's work, and partly those resulting from satisfactory conditions. They suggest that the desire to teach exists in many people, men as well as women, and that the capacity to develop into an efficient teacher is not so rare as to constitute any difficulty in securing an ample supply, provided that the conditions of teaching are satisfactory. These conditions include reasonable salaries, regulated on a basis assuring a full measure of stability and certainty, reasonable pension arrangements making adequate provision for disability and retirement, satisfactory conditions of work as regards, for instance, school accommodation and amenities, freedom from minute administrative control, and a more general recognition in public opinion of the value of the work which teachers do. " Such a principle fully carried out right through the system means, as its advocates contemplate, that there should be no provision of assistance to boys or girls, and young men or women, in consideration specifically of an intention to take up teaching, as distinct from any other vocation. They do not, of course, imply that the education, or, indeed, the professional training, of intending teachers should cease to be subsidized from the rates and taxes : what they urge is that the general system of aid through grants, the remission of fees, and maintenance allowances, ought to be such as to cover the needs of intending teachers along with the needs of all other young people who are being educated whatever their aim in life, and that special assistance in respect of this particular aim ought to be merged in the general provision available for all. Up to the point at which professional training began, no one intending to become a teacher would be under any requirement of declaring it, and no one would be in a position to obtain educational facilities better or more cheaply than others because he declared this intention. " The shortened course we suggest has the strong recommendation of an admirable minority report, which states, in justification of a one-year course based upon a full secondary course : " The plan we propose would certainly reduce the present heavy expenditure which goes to provide subsidized educational and professional training for women teachers who by reason of early marriage are prevented from giving service in the schools commensurate with the cost of their specialized training." Before leaving the question of teacher - training we should point out that in the report above quoted there is a strong advocacy for supplementary courses of training for teachers actively engaged in their profession. We quote from the report as follows : — Supplementary Courses for Teachers. "When a teacher has completed his course of training, and his year of practice, and has been definitely recognized as a certificated teacher, he then has before him the prospect of about forty years of teaching. We have now to consider the means by which, during this period of service, teachers may be provided with facilities for helping them to maintain and supplement their interest and efficiency. That the provision of such means is in the highest degree desirable, if not an absolute necessity, has been the unanimous opinion of all our witnesses who have considered the point. " There appear to be two main aspects from which the need of such means can be regarded. "No professional man," we were reminded, " can afford to be ignorant of the advances which are made in his own profession. For the teacher it is specially important that he should be familiar with the latest improvements in technique, and with those additions to knowledge which are constantly being made in the subjects which he has to teach." He must keep abreast of the developments of educational thought in their relation to his own work, and he must keep up, and if possible make progress, in his own subjects. " The second aspect, and perhaps the more important, is the general effect of such means of further education upon the teacher's mind and outlook. It is one of the first essentials of good teaching that it should come with freshness and vigour, yet the tendency of school teaching, year in year out, is to dull the teacher with its monotony and to narrow his interests to the ordinary school round. Most ways of life have their sameness, but there are perhaps few professions which make a more continuous tax upon the same powers, or where the natural effect of monotony is more inimical to good work. Thirty or forty years in the class-room teaching a succession of boys and girls, known only for a year or two, individually different, but hardly different in the mass, and learning the same things, is a prospect calculated at times of depression to dash even enthusiastic spirits, irrespective of difficult and sometimes worse than difficult conditions. Yet if the teaching is to be good it must proceed from minds actively interested, and continuously capable of seeing things in their right proportions. The mental tonic of knowing that, apart from the ordinary holidays, there is provision for some break in the monotony, which is not merely a break but also a means to better professional equipment, must clearly be a powerful effect, only second to the effect of such breaks themselves." Now, in many universities vacation courses largely attended by teachers, among others, have become a feature of the university work, and they are capable of

Shorter course of training approved.

Supplementary courses of training advocated.