Teachers for South Africa.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 12, 20 March 1902, Page 1

Teachers for South Africa.

On Thursday last an advertisement appeared in the daily papers signed by the Secretary of Education, Wellington, intimating that at the request of the Secretary of State for the Colonies twenty female teachers for refugee camps in South Africa would be selected in this Colony, and inviting applications from those qualified to fill the position. The engagement is to be for a year, and the salary will be £100 for the year, with free rations and accommodation in the camps and with the prospect of further employment for those teachers who may decide to remain in South Africa. The applications are to be sent, in the first instance, to the secretaries of the local Education Boards, by whom they will be forwarded to the Secretary of Education at Wellington, where a first general selection of perhaps eighty candidates will be made. All who are lucky enough to be included in this selection will get a free passage to Wellington, where they will have a personal interview with the Secretary of Education and with the medical officer, after which the final selection of the needed twenty will be made.^ The successful applicants will then receive a free passage to South Africa and have all expenses paid till they reach their destination. It is also understood, though this was not stated in the advertisement, that any of those selected who are at present employed in the public schools will have their position kept open for them during the term of their engagement in South Africa.

In spite of these inducements it was generally thought that there would be but little response to the appeal, at least from the regular, duly qualified members of the profession. Most people imagined that the fear of the dreaded fever, the hardships of life under military law, and the misery of going a stranger to a strange land, would be enough to keep most girls from giving one serious thought to the proposal. It is usually the unexpected however that happens, especially where lovely woman is concerned, and in this case, so tar as Otago at least is concerned, it is already evident that the public have quite underestimated the adventurous spirit of our girls. The very next day after the advertisement appeared the office of the Otago Education Board was besieged by a regular regiment of fair applicants and some forty names wtre then and there enrolled. The next day — Saturday — btought in a contingent from the country and the record of the prc\ ious day was doubled, so that within two days after the adveitisi ment appeared a hundred applications were received. II thib is the case in Otago where the teachers have always been so much better paid than in other parts of the Colony it is probable that the applications in other provinces will be still more numerous. The motives underlying this readiness to ' trtk ' on the part of our lady teachers are somewhat mixed. The salary is certainly not the sole inducement, for more than one of the Ouigo applicants are at present in positions worth £150 a year. The truth is our girls can see as far through a ladder as most people, and they know a good thing when they see it. They realise that at the rate at which the men are now being sent out of the Colony this is no place for them. The prospect of a free trip to South Africa, the

unique experience at the end of it, and a well-paid billet with easy work and little responsibility — these appeal to both the practical and the romantic sides of their nature, and they rush to be enrolled. Perhaps when they have had time to think calmly over it their enthusiasm will cool a little, but in the meantime there is every indication that the twenty vacancies will be very easily filled.