SO YOU'RE THINKING OF BEING A TEACHER?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 948, 11 October 1957, Page 4

SO YOU'RE THINKING OF BEING A TEACHER?

A talk by

RAY

COPLAND

in the

series "My Poor Boy

|™ determined to play this radio parlour-game aceording to the rules, I'm going to pretend my audience is not in. fact composed of Anxious Mother, Constant Listener, Radio Reviewer and stern old men whe ought to be playing ecribbage. Not Ladies and Gentlemen then, but Young Man, Young Woman: eager, credulous, anxious, on the tiptoe of eritical de-ecisions-So you're thinking of being a teacher? This probably means that you're good at everything or that you're good at nothing. It’s a sad state of affairs, sadder by far for the youth who's ood at everything. He’s good at aths,, but just as good at English and languages. No particular bent has been built into him; over-generous Nature has embarrassed him with riches, If she’d withheld the gift of tongues, his ability in Maths,, or his interest in chemicals would have pointed clearly to a science degree and a rewarding eareer in industry or research, As it is, though, he spins uncertainly in the centre of his abilities, spreads his talents thin over a University degree and finds that the only thing to de with his bag of precious trinkets is to sell them again to the young. he old adage tolls in his ears more and more resoundingly: he who can does; he who can’t teaches, It’s a mockery, of course, because such a teacher is a can-man, over and over again, Then there’s the youth who’s good at nothing, He just passes, with fatal equivalence, in all his High School subjects. He writes reasonably correctly

but without flair. He reads regularly but without reeption, without diseernment, without delight, He can satisfactorily apply the rules of mathematical manipulation, but could never have invented them, can never anticipate the new rules; can learn to work by the rule but never know why the rule works, The Training College lures him by laying before him the prospect of further easy rules of learning, with examinations that he will doubtless find it no harder than before to pass; only he will be prettily paid to learn these things and pass these tests, He drifts to the net like a perplexed trout. He teaches the‘ young to pass. He extols to himself and his friends the advantages of steady pay, short hours and long holidays, You can see that I’m not being paid to boost the campaign for more teachers, and that ought to reassure you. Of course, I’ve grossly misrepresented the position, But remember I'm talking to those who're thinking about going into teaching, not about those who are going into teaching, and I'll probably get around to them in a minute er two. I just want to complete the sorry history of these two classes I’ve been considering-those who are good at everything and those who are good at nothing. Both are very apt to spend five or ten years as teachers and then quit, Girls of the first type make animated wives and mothers and are later found on committees which would be lost without them, Girls of the second type make efficient wives and mothers and their husbands stand in pleasant awe of their spelling and their vulgar

fractions. Men in the first class may find that with maturity their interests and ability finally settle in one area and they quit and take up medicine or law or accountancy and become a phenomenon in these fields, because they’re not merely qualified, but educated, Men in the second class keep on teaching but take on other jobs in the T.A.B,, keep poultry or raspberry canes, or mix concrete with such devyotion that teaching becomes a spare-time occupation. And as teachers all these are more or less lost to the profession. But there are, however, the born teachers who are going in for the profession, anyway. I suppose you may be a born teacher and not know it. As one who is not a born teacher I have been privileged to look on fram the outside at these people all my life, Let me show the difference. The born teacher looks at his new class at the beginning of the year with interest and even excitement. He notices a little red-headed girl over on the left and recognises the sister of Sally whom he taught two years before. Sally was dull but sweet, Will what’s-her-name-Linda be the same? Up in the back there is this year’s edition of the Jackson tribe-same black staring eyes, same black flat hair, he’s wearing Bruce’s pullover and he must be Derek. He already knows these children, he’s pushed them straight in assembly, he’s seen them in the grocer’s, he’s reproved them for riding in the playground, found their underpants in the baths, heard their: requests on the Children’s Session. He’s interested in children, he’s happy to hear their tales, their confidences, to know they’ve just had

another baby -- another Jackson. Above all, he’s appy that he knows more than they do, to think he can _ interest them, amuse them, make them think, make them grow. He's a_ teacher. Outside of schoo] he may be planning new projects for them, or he may joke about them, grouse about them, repeat their stories and eall them little so-and-so’s. But he depends upen their dependence upon him. If children didn’t need him and love him and talk to him he’d be lost, In a prison he’d probably teach fleas, I’ve meet another sort of born teacher-these people are mostly in High Schools, They have only a mild interest in children, but they have a father’s love for their subject. It’s* their subject, Latin or Maths. or English, that they cherish. They’re so fond of it that they grow fond of any cranial cavity into which they can _ transplant it. MeTavish is not so much a boy, a personality, as a warm receptacle for the precious subject, a place where the seeds can be

planted and strike new roots. So the relationship between the teacher and pupil is not direct but as it were tri-angular-they are like parents who are kept in harmony by the precious bundle of joy, the subject, which they dandle between them. The trouble is that such a born teacher tends to be bitter and sarcastic to the possessors of unsuitable skulls. Yet I have never heard such a teacher despised. He'll be called Bags or Pongo, but the work he sets will be done, with assiduity and disgruntlement, and when they leave his pupils will recall him with forgiveness. Well, now, there are the twe born teachers. Are you one of them? If not, don’t you think you'd be better off in insurance or as a land agent or as a dental nurse, or in one of the Goevernment lurks like the State Fire, State Advances, State Coal, P. and T., Health or Income Tax Department? Believe me, there are thousands of cheerful, dreary occupations where you handle fivers not your own, fill in forms not your own, and promote ulcers not your own, You drink departmental tea, talk about footy and horses, slap each other playfully, develop a tight little be-hind-the-grille camaraderie and tolerate applicants and outsiders, Sometimes you run a sweepstake. Does that sound too forbidding? Then maybe you ought to think about this teaching business again. Suppose you're not a teacher born, but cherish your independence. Well, then you will find that though certain hours are required of you, you can please yourself very much just hew you fill those hours. After the first year or two you will find yourself left more and more to choose topics for yourself and to treat them however you wish. There’s endless scope for inventiveness, for variety, for sudden changes, new deals, rearrangements of all sorts. The classroom is no longer so supervised by headmasters and inspectors, all tyrants for ritual and regimentation, If you go into a country school you suddenly find yourself with loads of responsibility but plenty of freedom in meeting it, Your word has already become law, you acquire prestige, a shadowy town personality suddenly becomes a viyid rural ene, You are The Teacher, and doors are opened to yaqu, lives are entrusted to you. Your own life is simple and well-paid and sociable. Your independence as a_ teacher carries beyond the class room, As a teacher you’re not ‘bound by other people’s proprieties. If I go to visit a teacher-friend I can often pick his house in the street-there are palings off the fence, a tent and Indian feathers on the front lawn, several bikes against the front porch, the front door is open, the ZB or YC programmes blare with equal uneconcern from within. You're not in the business world, as a teacher. You're not in the office world. You can wear sports coat and grey slacks unpressed to work. You ean wear a softcollared shirt, and go to the pictures (continued on next page)

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with no tie and a blazer. You can ride a bike or take the bus-you're not obliged to use the car although you're in a position to own one. And when you talk shop at least it’s about people and not pound notes. All this, by the way, doesn’t seem to be true of lady teachers. As a fule their flats, their clothes and their cars are as neat as a new exercise book. I never understand why, except that I do know lady teachers are fastidious by nature and not by the oppressions of gentility. It’s not the disease of conformity that makes a lady teachert’s fingernails so neat, so white-rimmed. Independence, then, you who are not born teachers, may be a sufficient inducement to you to cut your losses in other directions and enter the profession. There’s another attraction. Teaching is a profession which along one road ot another lures interesting people. Admittedly in the average commorn-room there is a fait number of bullet-headed pedagogues and tattered, desiccated females; but there are always, too, people of lively intelligence or with irreverent opinions, a weathered and sardonic resignation to fate, witty and provocative, worn and genial. It’s easy to make friends in this world and to enjoy these friendships more and more they develop. One snag, of course, is that teachefs are always of the move, or they used to be when I was

— among them. You’d no sooner make a friend than he would pass into a corte-spondent-a tedious translation always. Incidentally, some of these moves are made to overseas countries and several of my friends have pillared-and-posted about the world on the cheap. There are school§ everywhere that the adventurous teacher can misfit himself into for a while; and this wide market for his commodity must be counted as an advantage. But may I go back to my classification of teachers again? When I think about the hundreds of teachers I’ve known I realise that there’s a New Zealand type perhaps more common than any I’ve mentioned. You couldn't say these people are enamoured either of the children or of the subjects they teach. They may have ufshakeable notions about punctuation, but they hardly bother themselves about theories of Child Development or the Aims of Education ot the Principles of Juvenile Psychology. For them teaching is a job and they go to it willingly, faithfully arid without excessive enthusiasm. They are men and women of the world who are obsesséd neither with the need to probe deeply into the emotional lives of their pupils nor with the need to cling desperately to an emotional or social or cultural life of their own, Their approach to their classes is businesslike. They and their pupils clock on with habitual readiness at 90 a.m. and they all clock off with no less

teadiness when the last bell goes. Holidays are welcomed, but not yearned for. These teachers are eagerly interested in salary scales and systems of grading; they ate thoroughly versed in the advantages and disadvantages of various positions, They see teaching as a career for themselves, and children as their working material which they handle ‘with care but without deep affection of distaste. Now, on the whole, these are successful teachers. The children respond to the work-a-day: air of this approach and last out their long year together calmly and profitably. It may well be that you are potentially a teacher of this sort. If your disposition is tranquil and your health is good you may confidently expect to see out your 35 or 40 years in the teaching game, to retire on a comfortable pension and spend your declining years in the garden during the day and reading the latest of your Book fiovels during the evening. You'll always have enough money in your pocket to make life easy, and enough leisure for cam ing holidays, for Ranfurly matches and for painting the hotise. If there’s a typical New Zealander I'd sa this sort of teacher is it-practical-minded, intelligent, handy with tools, fespectable and self-respecting, tough, durable, without a trace of snobbery: tolerant, adaptable, sociable, surviving. As a breed they exist in hundreds and in the climate of their teaching 90 per cent of New Zealanders grow up.

The chances ate high then, that you ate such a New Zealander; and if so, you would make a New Zealarid teacher. Well, there it is. If "you're a born teacher yau're already chasing school cert. or some stich abominable abbreviation, and already perhaps buy-. ing rubber stamps of elephants.. The world of plasticine and playgrounds, of innocerice and hope and distressful puddles under the desk, and ail the unspoiled promise of childhood waits for you to efter it. And even though you're fot a born teacher, you may still consider that teaching needn't be hum drum, needn’t draw your reservoits down till you can establish a flow only with the mind of a child, needn't oppress you but always atnuse you. You may prefer the legitimate childishness of children to the dreadful childishness of adults into whose company you may otherwise be thrust. In feturn for eoricessions to the child you are granted éxemptions from certain grown-up inhibitions. There is a steady inéome; the superannuation scherne is generous; the hours are light. If you're still in grave doubt, the only thing is to try it. But if at the age of 25 you're still in doubt, get out, youtig man, young woman, get out before your gastric juices revolt, before yout featufes brass up like a fhuteracker, before you start underlining your neighbour's grammer in blue and pitting a fing found your own humanity.