WEDDING HOPES DASHED

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5090, 18 February 1927, Page 4

WEDDING HOPES DASHED

YOUNG TEACHER’S “RESIDENCE.”

LIFE IN THE WILDS.

A glimpse ci the lot of the young teacher who adventures from the paved streets and comforts of civilisation into the back-blocks was presented in some correspondence which came before the executive committee of the New Zealand Educational Institute at its last meeting. The letter was forwarded °n by the teachers’ district branch with a request that representations might be made in the proper quarter. It said, amongst other, things : — “In the ' ‘Education Gazette’ and ‘National Education’ for April, 1926, there appeared an advertisement calling for applications for school, salary as per regulations, and a fourrcomed. residence. I applied, as I wished to get married, and was appointed as 'from July 1. During the holidays I went over to see what I should need, and found the four-icom-ed residence’ was an attachment to the school, in one room being a bath. The kitchen was an addition to the original building, with a sloping ceiling, 6ft 6in in the lowest part. The original weatherboard!ng was also the inside wall of the room, with a stove placed on concrete in the centre, and smoking badly. The room was grimed with the smoke of 20 years. Door handles were missing, spouting broken, roof leaking, and there were various other little ‘beauty’ spots’ that would only be a wasto of paper to describe.” As the result o’f some urgent correspondence the board’s architect suggested improvements totalling £l6O, but the teacher, having applied for the position in the presumption that, the “residence” would be a real house, was disinclined to take his young wife into, a place with the noise of the school continually in her ears.

“In the present building,” he proceeded. “I have bached for six •months, and during that time have been smoked out and flooded out. During rainy weather I have to construct a duck-board out of the back door, as the building is in a hollow, into Which surface water drains. The closet for the residence is built five yards 'from that, provided for the school girls, and has almost tumbled over. It is most insanitary and unusable. The maddening part of the whole proposition is that, because the rooms are there I have to live in them and drop £4O per annum house allowance. I want the N.Z.E.I. to help me, and help in a hurry, as the present life is absolutely rotten.”

- The executive gave sympathetic attention to the letter, and decided to make representations to the board concerned.