EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1954, 20 March 1919, Page 4

EDUCATIONAL REFORM

NEED OF BETTER TEACHERS. (By F. L. Combs, M.A., in the Dominion.) As,remarks the Hon, J. A. Hanim in his 1918 report: “It would seem the tritest of trnsims that the educator should be educated.” In other words, a sine qua non of the art of imparting knowledge is knowledge to impart. Does the teaching profession possess it? Let official figures speak: “Of 4,510 adult teachers, 3,245 (over 70 per cent.) show no evidence, of education beyond the standard reached at a secondary school by a pupil of 10 or 17.” In other words, though we would shrink in' alarm from permitting a medical student in his second year to try Ids ’prentice hand on their bodily ailments, we are prepared to yield up bound and captive our children’s minds to people of even less enlightenment.

No wonder that a relatively uncultured calling is found slow to grasp the significance and to assimilate the outlook of new progressive tendencies in education. No wonder that syllabi brought up to date are the substance of things Imped for rattier than an evidence of things existing and safely to be believed. PROFESSIONAL STANDING BA SED ON DIPLOMA. A medical profession abreast of the latest science and art of healing can secure ideally aseptic and hybienic conditions in the hospitals. These buildings have become . the concrete embodiment of the most fastidious refinements of a spic and span vocation. The schools, on the other hand, overcrowded and illcleaned, reflect the relative standing of those who ply their trade within (hem. The remedy is obvious. The -prime requisite of true reform is an influx of young teachers who, by virtue of native ability, training, and education, can raise the profession to a level commensurate with its opportunities and responsibilities. The cultural status these new entrants must obtain must be a university diploma. At present a bare ten per cent, of the teaching profession possess anything of the land. Moreover, the diploma commonly held, the Arts degree, cannot by any stretch of imagination bo regarded as the equivalent of the doctors. The securing of it leads the student astray into subjects that only remotely react: upon his daily work. It gives no guarantee of anything equivalent to the medical student’s clinical experience. It lends itself, as every correspondence college knows, to unmitigated cram. Even so, official testimony is that it makes on an average a better teacher of its recipient. UNIVERSITY SENATE v. TEACHING PROFESSION. What a real diploma, concentrated upon the field of a teacher’s activities and needs, would give—a diploma, moreover, certifying also practical competence of a scientific order for educational 'work —the New Zealand University Senate cannot .seem to realise. The Senate is quite aware that we need university schools of law, medicine, mining, and music, but the putting'of education on a parity with these is repugnant to its conservative conscience. Verily that unlucky Cinderella, Education, suffers from a plethora of obdurate stepmothers. One hopes for the time when such a diploma will be the indispensable prerequisite to appointment to a position in our schools. In the interim for the teachers it has —at least for those of a younger growth—the Department should institute refreshen courses on a lavish scale. One might suggest, to be concrete, that at least every four years a teacher should, for a period of six months, remove to a college and go through one of these courses. An enlarged edition of the summer school with the at present itinerant instructors pormcnently mobilised therein would gi'-e the nucleus of such a college. But the best done with an existing teaching body that includes thirty per cent, of teachers (?) “with no certified educational stains,” that is without even “the present low minimum of educational requirements,” will still leave the new cia to be inaugurated by a body of young teachers yet to be summoned to the scholastic colours. For one thing an institution, like an individual, has habits. To resist and transform the somewhat unenlightened habits of current instruction must be the task of people never under their yoke. NEEDED—2,OOO NEW TEACHERS. That is why the present writer has persistently advocated the influx on masse of some 2,000 young teachers to our schools. Coming by twos and threes they will be overwhelmed and submerged by the entrenched majority already in possession. Entering together with a common and modernised conception of their life work, they will be able to leaven the old lump. To those who regard as preposterous the obtaining in a. single year of such a number of entrants to leaching the writer would reply only an unprepared state of public opinion can make it so. How long did it lake to mobilise and send abroad at the rate of 3,000 a month the very flower of our manhood? Send them trained —send them, too, to a work of death, and through the gates of death. If the recent awakening to the defects and potentialities of our schools is a hopeful augury, the will to a “new model” teaching profession is already here, and adequate finance can find a way. Already there are four training colleges susceptible iu connec-

tion with our-city'schools of a considerable extension of function. One or two more, particularly a country school training college, might he set up at such centres as Wanganui or Palmerston. Instructors appointed thereunto with university status might prepare students for a diploma plausibly insinuated into that antiquated mechanism, the collective intellect of the New Zealand University Senate. A reshuffle of positions taking place, the best, the most enterprising, of present teachers might be brought into close contiguity to these training colleges. The elements of the practice of the art would be acquired from them in the same manner that painting is learned in a renowned studio, by the stimulus of a master’s presence, the observation and adaptation of his gesture to one’s individual needs •and temperament.

HOW TO ALLURE THESE 2,000? A final question needs answering. Unless you are going to conscript these 2,000 apprentices how will yon get them' to apply? Clearly by making teaching a desirable life occupation, by paying decent salaries, by not over-taxing with unduly large classes the nervous system, by providing buildings at once dignified and hygenic, by assuring professional initiative and standing to (he at present harassed shuttlecocks of three separate controlling bodies. If those things be done, instead of tbe present absolute dearth of entrants it will be possible to select from prize material. The promising pupil marked out fur a teacher’s career will be looked upon as receiving the scholastic blue ribbon. The rivalry of the best and brightest will be focussed upon this goal. It will be the despair of the culls and rejects of our secondary schools.

What teaching can lie nobody at present knows. It will not so much lie reformed as revolutionised once the mediocrities barred, the supremely able minds at present in our high schools and university colleges arc induced to enter it. Mind upon mind, like flint on steel, striking off flashes of insight into life, its meaning and its duties —that is the true educative process. Once the (lower of the opening intellect of Ibis country enters upon the teaching calling, educational problems will solve themselves. Ways and means, if not those suggested,' then others, must be found of alluring into this, Hie greatest and most difficult of vocations, the elite of the nation’s young manhood and womanhood.