THE TEACHER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8496, 27 July 1907, Page 7

THE TEACHER.

By a Teacher.)

No. IV. j SUNDRY COMPLAINTS. ] I have been asked to give my j opinions concerning "Promotion" to i the public; but this is so impurtant and deep a subject that, as I have J said in my first paper, it; belongs : properly to the legislator, not to the commentator, the object of the latter being to point out where the educational administrative shoe pinches. -For the present, then, I continue to carry this object out. I have been * -told lately that when officials of rail- , ways, police, or civil service are transferred, the expenses of such i transfer are borne either wholly or partially by their respective'departments. When a stationmaster shifts, his belongings are not only conveyed for him free of cost to himself, but he ( is granted special assistance in packing up his" effects and re-arranging them, on leaving his old sphere of action and on arrival at his new. The teacher? No such advantages fall to - the teacher's lot. No Board pays a penny of his expenses when he is appointed to another school. Indeed, it sometimes happens that the increase of salary in his new appointment is altogether cancelled by the expenses of reaching it. Here is the - bill one of ours had to face not long ago: —Packing of furniture, £1 10s; ■conveyance to railway station, £2 10s; charge of railway transfer, £5 4s 6d; conveyance to new residence, JS2; railway tickets for parents and children, £1 15s; unpacking and arranging furniture, 10s; total expense, £l3 9s 6d. And the increase of salary of that year was only £ls! And all this in a transfer from one school to another under the same Board. What must the expenses be •of a teacher in a transfer from, say, Otago to the North of Auckland. Another case told me by a chairman of a committee to whose school a widow with several children was, quite lately, appointed: The appointment is at present worth £BO a year. She had to pay for the transfer of her poor furniture, valued at about £25, a railway charge of £5 and an unknown amount for cartage. To this must be added her and her -family's personal expenses. The public must have surely quite an erroneous idea of a teacher's financial status or its opinion would make itself heard against such a state of affairs. Application ft r Another School. — All Boards have certain forma of their own which an applicant is re--quigfcto fill out. These are in the ma££*v'ery similar, so that anyone woulcTimagine that if an applicant filled out a Well ngton application form when seeking an appointment under another Board, that would meet the case. It does so with two Boards, but several, at least five of them, insist on application being sent in on their own form and no other. Again, if several schools under the same Board are vacant, separate application for each is required; As long as only copies of certificates are required, the only hardship on a teacher is that of the labour of copying his "testimonials." It is, however, quite a different matter with certificates of health. These must be in the original, and as each of them costs the • applicant 7s 6d it follows that, if he applies for three vacancies, in the hope of obtaining one, he has to disburse £1 2s Gd for that item alone. In the writer's opinion, the whole matter of testimonials is silly, and that of certificates is not necessary. The former .are often misleading, for, if a teacher is in actual employment, a copy or two of inspectorial reports is better guidance for the selection of a teacher than all the recommendations of chairmen of committees, the laudatory effusions of clergymen, etc. I myself was once the unhappy recipient of such an attestation of my personal virtues from a "chairman," who hated me worse than a bandicoot. I blush, really, when I recall its extravagance of praise. A<i to certificates—every Board has a list of "teachers'classifications." The curious will find there all the information j needed—how a teacher obtained his rank or class, whether he did so by examination, length of service, or j inspectors' marks, or by all of j them combined. C 4 will show that j he has passed the C examination, the j 4 that he has not quite served five years. C2 will show that he has been in actual employment fur at least 10 years, and that his "marks" are good. Every application form inquires into the age of the applicant, the extent of his teaching experience, what extra branches he can teach, and where he has been trained in teaching. The first two enquiries are anomalous. If the applicant is young his experience as a teacher must be young as well. His youth is in his favour—evidently—for teaching seems to require a spry young spark who can shake his legs nimbly. If the applicant is old. he has much experience in teaching no doubt; but then that is counter-balanced by his agejfl£lis joints are getting stiff. PefgWhthe is within measureable distanced retirement. Thus, on the whole, we may conclude " that the greater a teacher's experience is, the less chance has he of being preferred to a young teacher. The third enquiry is unnecessary, as the prescriptions of our present Education Act are emphatic on the subject. Every teacher knows "what science, etc., he ought to know and be able to teach."