The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1912. SCHOOL TEACHERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 56, 24 July 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1912. SCHOOL TEACHERS.

All sorts of experts have lately been theorising about the schooling of children, and all of them call this schooling "education." Plenty of advice has been hurled at the Commission that is examining the school system jn thi's country, and its effectiveness or ineffectiveness has been approached almost solely from, j the theoretical standpoint. The basis of the school system—the .teacher—lias not really been properly considered. In New Zealand a youth may be sent'to'learn carpentering or school-teaching; a girl may go into service or a factory—or to school-teaching. It is simply a question' 'of measuring a quantity of facts and rules, and the way to school-teaching is open. Considering the defects in the system, it is remarkable that there are so many excellent school-teachers. We will presume that a fair proportion of schoolteachers enter thfe profession because they are drawn to it by personal inclination'and .affection for it. No one "would remain a school-teacher if he or or she cculd get out of it, unless a sincere love foi a noble calling existed. The average school-teacher, who has an immensely' important task .to perform—the modelling' of the child's character during its most plastic period—is oft times paid less than p. navvy, a carpenter, a policeman or a miner. He is subject to annoyances none of these people know anything of, A teacher needs the diplomacy of a Bryce, the patience of Job, the application of Napoleon, the courage of Alexander, and the temper of an angel. He must consent to be pestered and sing small to every ignorant committeeman; he is the servant of both parent and child; he may be housed like a peasant; treated like a scullion; scolded like a kitchen wencli. Frantic ''educationists," under the absurd impression that tflie more subjects that can be crammed into a syllabus the more bright children will the country contain, perpetually overload the suffering teacher. There is always a chronic shortage of men teachers. A mere boy can earn from £52 to £IOO a year at other work. He needs no special schooling, ami lie has to pass no examinations. A school probationer earns £2O the tir.st year. Is there any need to ask whv bovs don't rush the school-teaching profession? All over the country there are dull, sunless, utterly unsuitable school buildings. The first rules of physical health are neither understood nor taught. Schooling simply resolves it'elf into a struggle to puss children through the requisite "'standards.'" The teacher who is the best "crammer" is the best teacher, according to the goipel of New Zealand "educationists"—save the name! The .system is demoralising. Good teachers are made into mere machines. and the knowledge that they are inferior in earning power to the people of most other callings is humiliating to them. The system of promotion, too, is

unsatisfactory. The plums are for the few; and the drudgery for the many. Special qualifications do not always count. It is mere chance whether ». teacher gets a living wage or a pauper's dole. A teacher who holds the first position is not necessarily as good a teacher as he, who holds a poor one. The business of the Education Department is to concentrate more on the teacher. Be is the basis of the school system of New Zealand, and lie won't be a satisfactory foundation while the | average navvy is better off than he is In ; the matter of remuneration and general | treatment. Only the brightest and best ! minds are wanted in the school-teaching | profession, but the conditions must im- [ prove vastly before the country has that j selection -which is. so very desirable.

THE GREAT EMPTY LAND. Public opinion in Great Britain grows uneasy—not to say critical —over the moral, commercial, and strategical necessity of multiplying the population of Australia, until it bears some decent ratio to the continent on which it dwells. One of the London journals, for example, publishes an article on what it calls—in all the emphasis of capital letters —THE GREAT EMPTY LAND. "The tragedy of Australia," it says, "is compressed into an obscure paragraph in the newspapers." The paragraph, it seems, "occupied precisely two and a half lines, and recorded the fact that the final results of the Australian census show that in ten years the population has increased by 113,000." It must be confessed that those figures, even to Australia, are unpleasant. We cannot deny the "emptiness" of the Australian continent, though the crowded state of the half dozen great cities-in which we dwell prevents us realising its emptiness. England, says the London journal already referred to, "is overwhelmed with the twin problems of overcrowding and unemployment. Out there, in the Great, Empty Land, there are very nearly three million square miles—getting on for two thousand million acres—held by a population of less than four and a half millions.' The country ia about three-fourths of the area of Europe, or twenty-five times that of Great Britain and Ireland, and its population is barely that of Ireland alone." And to that population there ha 3 been added in ten years, including children and emigrants, an average of just a little over 11,000 souls a year!' "In round figures, only 12,000,000 acres out ; of two thousand millions of possible fertility arevander any sort of cultivation." Commenting on these the magazine Life says:—We cannot deny these facts; we cannot justify them; we cannot even explain them. But we are trying to mend them; and, for the first time in Australian history, there is a reasoned, sustained, and successful effort being made by all the States to attract population. But I how can we explain the fact- that the ! population of t'hc six States, according [to the last census, increased during the decade only -at the rate of 11,000 per ] annum? On this, British critics ask a [ series of unpJaia>».t questions. "What has happened, they "to the 94,49.5 who, according to the Commonwealth official statistics, were admitted as immigrants in 1910? Or to the 83,324 who were admitted in 1909? Or to the 75,030 who were admitted in 1908?. During the ten years covered by the census peri6d, the number of immigrants Who entered Australia, according to official figures was upwards of 520,500. What has become of those 475,600 persons who represent the' difference between the official emigration total of ten years and the official census figures of ten' years? . . . , Canada is filling up . and her population increasing at an enormous rate, while Australia is still the Great Empty Land, and the combined efforts of twelve State Houses of Parliament and two Federal Houses of Parliament, a High Commissioner, and six, Agents-General, only help to increase it at the rate of 11.300 persons a year." An intelligent Australian, if he is prudent as well as intelligent, will make no attempt to answer these inconvenient _ questions (continues Life). j. Tl ' ' l } v^e '■' le critics to .contemplate, sot the the lean and sleepy years which lie behind, but the busy and enterprises years which lie before. But meanwhile all Australians might .with profit study the contrasted figures of Canada and Australia. During the ten years in which we added 113,000 to our" population, Canada, despite the rigor of her winters, unknown in Australia, added to her population -1,821,023 persons. In other wo.rds, for every two persons added to the Australian aggregate, Canada has added thirty-three'to her own total. Australia surely will not always consent to be left behind in the race for population—m the race, that' is, for nationhood—so ignobly as ( these figures rejjreseal.