Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1943. TEACHERS AND ARMY SERVICE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 October 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1943. TEACHERS AND ARMY SERVICE.

GREAT main 7 people may be expected to approve and support the vigorous protest made by the Acting-Principal of Wairarapa College (Mr F. J. Gair) and the Board of Governors against what they regard as an undue drain upon its stall, foi military service. The matter is one of arriving at an equitable adjustment of competing claims, both of which must be respected. Where teachers have qualified, as have some members of the staff of Wairarapa College, for important and responsible military duties, it is no doubt right that, they should take up these duties in time of war. The position is otherwise, however, when a trained ami competent teacher is taken into the Array to undertake duties which might be carried out equally well by someone not possessed of his .special qualifications. The efficient instruction of children in our schools is of capital importance. It is even more important, it is true, that children should be defended than that they should be educated, but at the stage reached in the drafting of manpower in New Zealand it should be determined on the total merits ol the case whether it is or is not in the national interest that a teacher should be accepted or called up for military service. It was from the standpoint of community, and therefore of national interest that this question was raised by the Acting-Principal ol Wairarapa College and members of its governing board. No exception was taken to the loss for the time being of members of the College staff who are serving overseas, but the board decided unanimously to empower its Education Committee to appeal for all staff teachers retained for service in New Zealand It was stated by one member that the Army had taken trained men to do clerical work which older men in the community were willing to undertake. There, is no doubt that a o-reat deal of Army clerical and administrative work m this country could be carried out well and efficiently by elderly men or by women. . .... The question of a reasonable maintenance ol teaching stalls is one for united action by local educational authorities throughout the Dominion, and in taking that action the boards would have every right to ask lor unqualified support from the Minister of Education and his Department. The root issue, nivohed —that of the extent to ■which members of school staffs should be released for or transferred to military service, taking account of the vital national interests involved in efficient instructiorr in schools- —is one on which an explicit ruling should be given by the Government. Obviously the.issue is not one with which the Army and appeal tribunals should be asked to deal at their unfettered discretion. The Army, naturally enough perhaps, inclines to regard its own claims as paramount over all others. A similar tendency is observable in all branches of the public service. In the Army it is developed to a pronounced degree, and appeal tribunals generally tend to adopt the Army standpoint. Where,, however, as in regard to the. reasonably adequate stalling of schools, essential national interests are at stake, it is very necessary that the whole of the facts should be considered dispassionately by the supreme civil authority and dealt with from the broadest standpoint of public welfare. In this matter a clear responsibility rests on the Government, and it is a responsibility that should not be shirked.