726 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 



may be faultless; buildings and equipment may be the best that 

 lavish grants of money can produce; but unless the teacher is a skilled 

 and sympathetic craftsman, happy in his surroundings, a high 

 standard of excellence will not be reached and maintained. Assuming 

 again that national well-being depends upon educational efficiency, it 

 logically follows that education from the kindergarten to the university 

 should be one of the chief concerns of the State; that the profession of 

 teaching should be made one of the most attractive and honourable 

 of the professions ; that the highest intellects of the State should be 

 culled for the teaching service ; and that the well-being of its members 

 should be carefiilly tended. The enthusiasm of the true teacher dies 

 !. lowly, but no enthusiasm, however intense, will withstand the chilling 

 blasts and biting frosts of neglect and lack of appreciation ; the winter 

 of discontent surely sets in, and its blighting effects rapidly and 

 disastrously permeate a whole service. The teacher loses interest in 

 his work ; his main object becomes not the efficiency of his school but 

 a desire to find a more congenial and a moi-e remunerative field of 

 labour; or, if he be devoid of ambition, to Avork with just sufficient 

 energy to escape official censure. The teacher is but human. No- 

 more striking exemplification of these facts can be found than in the 

 American system. In many respects the American organisation 

 approaches the ideal ; but in appreciation of their teachers and care 

 for their material well-being Americans seem to be suqtrisingly 

 neglectful for so astute and far-seeing a people. The ReA^ Herbert 

 Gray, Warden and Head Master of the Bradfield College, in Berkshire, 

 and a member of the Moseley Commission which visited the United 

 States in 1903, stated that he had been assured that not more than 7 

 per cent, of male teachers in secondary schools stay in the profession 

 more than five years ; and not more than 5 per cent, make it their life's 

 vocation ; the same remarks may be applied, but in a modified form, 

 to the elementary school teachers in America. Writing in the 

 "Educational Review" of April last, C. W. Bardeen affirmed that in 

 the seven years ending 1906 the number of men teachers in the United 

 States had decreased 24 per cent. Teaching is just as much a man's 

 vocation as it is a woman's ; indeed, for the higher education of boys 

 it is the man rather than the woman that is needed. There must be 

 something seriously defective in a system of education which fails not 

 only to obtain sufficient good men for its service, but fails to keep the 

 men that it does obtain. The defects are not hard to locate; the pay 

 is poor ; the prospects of promotion are bad ; the teniu'e of position is 

 insecure; teaching is not fully recognised as amongst the learned 

 professions, and the lack of that recognition re-acts detrimentally 

 upon the standing of the teachers. 



The care which the Germans take of their teachers is in striking 

 contrast to the policy of the Americans; and the tender regard which 

 Prince Bismarck had for the teaching profession is characteristic of 

 the whole German nation. On the occasion of Bismarck's seventieth 

 birthday the German nation collected a large siun of money by public 

 subscription, with Avhich they bouglit Ijack the estate which had once 

 formed part of the family propei"ty of Schoenhausen, and made 

 Bismarck a present of it. A sum of 1,200,000 marks bej'ond the 

 amoimt required for the pujpose remained in hand, and Avas placed 



