INEFFICENT TEACHERS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1758, 24 May 1913, Page 11

INEFFICENT TEACHERS.

A CRITICISM OF UNIVERSITY MEN.

The defects of university men as school- | masters are discusssd ia relation to the i training of secondary teachers in the 1 annual report of the British Board of 1 Education for 1911-12, issued recently. Reports received from inspectors, it is stated, show that a largo number of secondary teachers are seriously deficient in professional skill. "Often," states one report, "they are graduates in honours of Oxford or Cambridge, who have tho knowledge, but are not able to give effect to it because they have never seriously studied tho methods of doing so. Somo might be doing much bettor work, but for somo peculiarity—a strident or indistinct voice, or a manner tinged with asperity which would naturally have been corrected by training, but to which it is difficult to allude in laJfcer years without offence. Others who are quite scholarly,_ but have not been 'trained, are strangely indifferent to details, such as the need for a definite scheme tor lessons, the careful correction of written work, insistence upon clear speech, alert attitude, and a general absence of slovenliness. The deficiencies of the ordinary untrained man fresh from thi9 universities are so marked that 6omo sort of training may be hoped for as a corrective. I think the worst defect is a want of businesslike management of time and opportunity." On the other hand, the work of elementary (teachers in secondary schools, especially the lower forms, is warmly commended. Ono inspector observed: "In schools of a particular type, espeoially in some municipal schools, in

which the bulk of the pupils are drawn direct from the public elementary schools, and in tho smaller country schools where the scale of salaries is not high, I do not believe that there is any teacher superior to the elementary teamed graduate, or any so thoroughly inefficient as tho secondrate university man."