“Taranaki Central Press” SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1937. PERSONALITY IN TEACHERS.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 416, 24 April 1937, Page 4

“Taranaki Central Press” SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1937. PERSONALITY IN TEACHERS.

Dissatisfaction with the calibre of candidates for the teaching profession has been expressed by the Otago Education Board. It will communicate with the head masters of high schools asking them not to encourage young people to prepare themselves for the teaching profession unless they are entirely suitable for it, and to pay greater attention to the speech of applicants, especially where there is a tendency to speak through closed teeth. Such action is considerably overdue, for it is true, as one of the members of the board has observed, that there are far too many misfits in the teaching profession. It is hardly likely that the difficulty would be overcome by restoring the pupil teacher system, in which a candidate app proved by the school committee spent four years as a pupil teacher and then passed on for a year at the training college unless drooped out for lack of aptitude. That was largely a system of trial and error, in which the specialised training period came last instead of first. The present system, which puts the accepted candidate straight into training, ought to work satisfactorily. The candidates are admitted to the training colie ges by a special committee composed of the principal of the col lege, the chief inspector of the district and a representative of th e Education Board. There is a personal interview, and an examination of reports by secondary school teachers giving the estimated scale of the candidate’s ability in scholarship, leadership, person ality and so on. Grave initial errors may be made by the teachers of the secondary schools who select and train prospective candidates for the profession, and the final selection committee may also find itself frustrated in an attempt to maintain a high standard if in a given year the Education Department decides to admit, say, four hundred trainees when there are only two hundred candidates who can pass a reasonable test. The system is satisfactory, but the need for safeguards is only t oo apparent.