NOT WANTED!

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 42, 8 February 1946, Page 5

NOT WANTED!

SCHOOL TEACHER’S UNENVIABLE PLIGHT

NO ACCOMMODATION AVAILABLE

The teaching profession tlirouglv out New Zealand has suffered a heavy setback and loss of prestige resulting from both the housing shortage and the lack of accommodation for school teachers. Young teachers are today literally compelled to hawk themselves from street to street in the vain search for friendly accommodation in the homes of the pupils they are expected to teach and control. Many of these unfortunates are pupil teachers, little more than young gii4fc and their plight is not only a stigma on the educational system but also a reproach to the civilian community, for its apathy and selfishness.

Into Whakatane at the beginning

of the new term this year, came over a dozen teachers requiring accommodation. Some of them have been fortunate, others not so fortunate. Six of them are still requiring permanent accommodation and their number includes the Deivtal Nurse, who unless accommodation

is offered in the near future will be compelled to go elsewhere with the result that. the work of the Clinic will be reduced by some 50 per cent, for the year. The young ladies concerned are all drawn from good, homes and having chosen the profession of school teaching are willing to be transferred to wherever the Board cares to appoint them. They are prepared to undertake the education of children in remote country districts or in the heart of

metropolitan centres. Theirs is a heavy responsibility and they have the heart to tackle* it anywhere. But there is no more undermining experience for a young person to feel compelled to canvass for board,, street by street, house by house until the heartbreaking truth is forced upon them—they are not wanted, literal outcasts. The results are damaging in the extreme, giving rise to an inferiority complex, which is un r dermining to tile teachers standing, plus an overwhelming sense of homesickness which is surrendered to must cut off many a promising young career in its earliest stages.

The position has given rise to the gravest concern in the School Committee where the utmost endeavours have been made to meet the difficulty and make the plight of those eon,cerned less desperate. Homes where there appears to be no possible hope of accommodating more have been made available. There are however many substantial homes housing only one or two people which could easily provide rooms or board and which are nevertheless sellishly held intact by the occupiers. It is* time for some plain speaking in this respect, and unless the position improves we would welcome a law making it possible for some,forcible action whereby in glaring cases of selfishness owners were compelled to make their sparp rooms available to others for the good of the community as a whole.

The responsibility for its teaching staff cannot be entirely shifted from the Board., which after all is still answerable for the welfare of its employees, when by its own system of appointment it pitchforks young girls into ' schools hundreds of miles away from their own homes. The policy is aS' cruel as it is shortsighted and disastrous, and unless adjusted will rebound on the Board itself in a sweeping wave of mass resignations, which must lower the standard of the profession in a manner which will take years and years to build up again.

It is time the Education Department commenced to foster its employees in the same manner as the Railways and F.W.D. ,by providr ing permanent accommodation for both married and single teachers of our public schools. Such a policy would he soundly economic, as well as making for goodwill and contented officers.

In the meantime, the vital question as far as AVhakatanc is concerned is ‘who will offer accommodation for the six young ladies still without permanent homes?’ That is the burning fact which everybody must face up to, not merely out ot sentiment but as a duty which is surely our privilege lo give '