A TABLE, A CHAIR AND A CHILD

‘KAIWHAKAAKO’ ASKS, ‘WHAT PRICE EDUCATION?’ CITIZENS, do you want the best education available for your children?—This was what I heard in a tape recording of an American radio programme, it was part of an advertisement urging parents to find out what was happening in the schools of the district and was aimed at getting public approval for an increase in the taxes which people pay to keep their schools going. —In the U.S.A., my American friend told me, every district has its own school board, elected by the people, and this board levies the taxes from which nearly all the expenses for new schools, teachers' salaries and so on are paid. —That's very different from New Zealand, I thought. Here the Government pays the education bill along with the railways, health, defence and all the other bills. But this money doesn't come out of a hole in the floor of Parliament Buildings, it comes out of the taxpayers' pockets. The real difference is that under the American system parents have direct control over what is spent on education. In New Zealand Parliament has more direct control. New Zealanders and Americans share one thing, though: if they want ‘the best education available’ they have to be ready to pay for it. But do New Zealanders know what they want, or are they ready to let the Government do their thinking for them? What I want: I am both a parent and a teacher. I want— ▪ the best teachers available ▪ the best school buildings that can be had ▪ the best equipment and the most modern methods of teaching I want these for my child and I want them as a teacher. Nothing less will do: Now let me take you on a tour of my classroom. Before we go in I should tell you that it is about average for New Zealand schools. ▪ It is a solid wooden school built about 1937. ▪ It has pleasant whitney windows opening on to the playground. ▪ It is approximately 25 feet wide and 30 feet long. ▪ It contains six built-in cupboards, a set of bookshelves, a free standing cupboard, a teacher's table and forty rather rickety tables and chairs for children. ▪ There is a trestle table for art work and a small table for nature study displays. ▪ Fixed to the walls (against Education Board instructions) are some sheets of pinex bought by myself. These serve to pin pictures to. Now you are in the room let us do some simple sums. (1) The floor area of the room—25 × 30 feet i.e. 750 sq. ft. (2) There are 40 children in the class, therefore each one gets about 18 square feet, a space of about 6 by 3 feet. But wait a minute, this doesn't take in the space for moving around, for cupboards, tables and bookcases. How much for these, say 300 sq. feet? That leaves about 400 feet for the children, 10 square feet each, a space of 4 feet by 2½ feet, in which to put a table, a chair, and a child. Now remember, I said that these were about average conditions for New Zealand. But are they good enough: Last year this same room held 52 children! Teaching today doesn't or shouldn't require children to sit still and keep quiet all day. They need to move about and to talk to one another. This means noise. And to tell the plain truth, many teachers find themselves unable to cope with this very thing. Too often they lack the equipment to carry out the best modern methods and when they have it they find themselves hampered by too little space and too many children. The result is something which should worry parents and which I find frightening. It is this: too often strained and inadequately equipped teachers decide that the only way they can manage is to keep children in an unnatural silence by fear of the strap, and keep them eternally busy doing work that is often just not worth doing. What can we do: We need more teachers. The school at which I work has a staff consisting of Headmaster and Infant Mistress, neither of whom take classes (although both spend most of their day helping children with learning problems), eleven assistants and three teachers who have not completed training. The average class size is forty to forty-two