Bates. — On the Training of Teachers. 115 



Zealand. The section concludes thus: "These opinions, ren- 

 dered as they are by the foremost normal-school educators of 

 Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, have zxiade a profound 

 sensation among teachers and Government authorities. The 

 educational Press has reproduced them and commented upon 

 them. Even the political Press in Germany has considered 

 them the most authoritative and important contribution to 

 the question of teachers' training of late years, and expressed 

 the hope that the provincial as well as the central Govern- 

 ment will base future reforms on the advice of these 

 gentlemen. 



" The further fact that this symposium was called for and 

 published by the National Union of Teachers — a union that 

 has nearly sixty thousand members — is most significant, and 

 proves that the teachers themselves are not satisfied with the 

 professional education the State offers them." 



It will seem like an instance of anticlimax when we turn 

 from these high themes to the arrangements made for the 

 training of teachers in New Zealand. We have adopted, pro- 

 bably from motives of convenience and economy, the pupil- 

 teacher system from the Mother-country. This system, which 

 is really formed on the model of apprenticeship in trade, was 

 long ago tried in Germany and abandoned. Even in England 

 it seems to be showing signs of weakness, and is undergoing 

 modification. Her Majesty's Senior Chief Inspector of Schools 

 in the Metropolitan Division, in his report last year, thus 

 wrote : " The training of teachers in the science of teaching 

 still lags far behind the training of teachers in Germany or 

 France. In England we are still dependent for our supply 

 of teachers in elementary schools almost exclusively upon the 

 pupil-teacher system, and it seems that the sources of supply 

 as regards men -teachers are failing . . . People interested 

 in elementary education look upon this difficulty as one 

 which will at no distant day have to be faced, and the recruit- 

 ing of elementary teachers from scholars who have enjoyed 

 the advantages of a good secondary education, as in foreign 

 countries, is a matter well worthy of consideration." So much 

 as regards failure. That the system is being modified will be 

 obvious from the following extract from an article on our 

 voluntary schools which appeared in the Contemporary of 

 February, 1895. The writer (x\rchdeacon Wilson), himself 

 a highly distinguished schoolmaster, says, " A School Board 

 can not only provide special instruction for its pupil-teachers, 

 but can afford to duplicate its staff of such teachers, and thus 

 give them full leisure for private study." And in a note the 

 Archdeacon says, " If the Education Department would recog- 

 nise two pupil-teachers, each working half-time in school and 

 half-time in central classes, as equivalent to one pupil, the 



