THE CHILD FAMINE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 414, 23 July 1908, Page 3

THE CHILD FAMINE.

A School Teacher’s Lament. At the Otago Educational Institute’s annual meeting, Mr A. W. Tynbell, a headmaster, spoke out strongly. He said ; “I wonder whether people have yet realised that there is a lack of children in this fair Dominion, where one might think it was quite a privilege to pass one’s childhood. The Hon. Mr Miller has expressed amazement at the disclosures laid bare to him by a perusal of the latest .educational returns. If he had been a teacher, the ugly fact would have been brought home to him long ago by a serious deficiency in his bank account. To all wage-earners outside our own unfortunate ranks, the decrease in the supply of children is not a matter for unmixed regret, for it means a decrease in the number of non-producers. Smaller families mean more comforts and luxuries for the actual bread-winner; but to teachers the dearth of children means direct financial loss. A race-suicide means gradual starva tion for the teachers.” The speaker stated that in Otago the average attendance reached a maximum in 1895, when it was 19,607. Last year it was 17,152, or a decrease of percent. Dealing with Dunedin generally, the maximum average attendance was in 18S7, when it was 4148. Last year it had fallen to 2882, or a decrease of 30 per cent, in 20 years. “Yet,” he continued, “ during this child-famine period so little alive were the authorities to what was going on that three handsome new schools were erected for the accommodation of the disappearing flock of pupils. The cost of the buildings would have been more justly speut in compensating teachers for the loss of salary suffered by the fall iuthe average attendance.” Aggravation of the grievance was caused, said the speaker, by the operation of unjust laws and regulations —particularly the schedule of the Education Act, which, while grading salaries according to average attendance, omitted to prescribe a similar graduated scale for other employees of Education Boards outside the teaching ranks. This unjust schedule placed all the loss caused to educational workers by the child-famine on the backs of primary school teachers. “ They alone are penalised for a decrease in the birth-rate,; they alone are made to suffer by slackness ofsettlemeut; they alone pay a special education tax to promote technical and secondary education; they are, in fact, treated as were the French peasants before the Revolution. Education in Otago is costing £20,000 more than it used to. No money has been saved to the country by the lowering of ous wages, because other expenditure has not been lowered but increased. Have the officials and inspectors ot the Board had their salaries reduced during the past twelve,years? Yet they now have the instruction of only 24,950 children to supervise instead of 27,916. Why should we be selected by the. State for such an invidious and oppressive distinction ? Is it just that the overseers and supervisors should get preferential treatment at the expense of the workers ? It seems to me a tradition of slavery—starve the toilers that shove the galley along, but pay 'the overseers lavishly in order to induce them to keep the whip cracking over the backs of the starving galley slaves. In 1894 the expenditure on teachers’ salaries was 75 per cent of the total expenditure 011 education. The percentage in 1906 was reduced to 52. In Otago in 1897 the 559 teachers employed received out of a total expenditure in Otago of ,£86,637, 1907 the 571 teachers employed received £64,932 out of an expenditure of ,£106,097. “So,” continued the speaker,” “the teachers of Otago can solemnly declare on oath that the prosperity of the country, the elasticity of the revenue and the immense increase in educational expenditure have been no benefit to them as a body. It has cost them more to live, and they have had no increase in wages. They have had ten or twelve lean years, while the rest of the country |has been rolling in riches. It is evident that if the school children of Otago keep decreasing at the present rate before the end of the century they will disappear altogether, while the vote for education in Otago and Dunedin (once fondly hailed as the Modern Athens of the Southern Hemisphere) will be divided, if the present regulations hold, among officials, inspectors, students in training and perhaps caretakers of empty school buildings.”