TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 851 
to get a post in a good school; this encouraged athletics, and a demand for 
trained teachers might encourage training. Teaching should not be regarded as 
a passing occupation, but as a life work, and the training of teachers would 
tend to bring this about. It was very important that the conditions of service as 
a teacher should be improved. There should be a prospect of rising in the pro- 
fession, and there should be more security of tenure. 
Mr. Ernest Gray, M.P., said that the local authorities had no greater difficulty 
at present than that of providing their schools with an adequate staff of well- 
equipped teachers. They were counting the cost, and some of them had come to 
the conclusion that it was easiest to throw the cost of training on other authori- 
ties, and then attract the trained teacher by offering him a slightly higher salary. 
It was not desirable that the teaching staff should be mainly drawn from certain 
centres. No local authority ought to be allowed to escape from the obligation of 
training a certain number of teachers. But then came the question of cost, and 
the money available for the purposes of higher education, including the training 
of teachers, was not sufficient unless the localities rated themselves heavily. The 
charge now imposed by elementary education was so considerable that any further 
burden might lead to a reaction. It was, therefore, impossible to escape from the 
conclusion that the training of teachers should be a national charge. As might 
be expected, the local authority that trained teachers was now putting them 
under legal bond to serve in its schools ; educationally this was most objectionable, 
and, from the point of view of the poorer counties, it would be disastrous if the 
authorities of the great cities were to follow the same policy. The time had 
arrived for the more scientific training of secondary school teachers. At present 
these teachers sometimes gained their experience at the expense of their pupils. 
Dr. E. H. Cook pointed out the difficulties of the local authorities, and 
thought that in the great majority of cases they were performing an admittedly 
difficult task very well indeed. ‘The question of the training of teachers was one 
of the most pressing troubles, in regard to which he thought the training colleges 
might improve their methods. In some cases teachers who had been ‘hall- 
marked’ as trained were found inefficient, and in other cases teachers had abso- 
lutely come back from training colleges less valuable as imparters of knowledge 
than when they entered. The cause of this was probably that in the curriculum 
of the ordinary training college a very short time—about six weeks or two 
months in the year—was devoted to instruction in the art of teaching. A 
certain amount of education was given, which was really that of the secondary 
school. For good training the practising schools should be carefully selected, and 
the actual teachers should be the best to be found, so that the pupils might 
study from the best examples and have fixed firmly in their minds the most 
effective methods of bringing out the latent powers of the children. The point 
referred to by Mr. Hobhouse, as to local authorities insisting that locally trained 
teachers should remain in the district in which they were trained, was in a great 
measure a ratepayers’ question. It must not, however, be forgotten that the 
greater the number of local authorities who undertake the training of their own 
teachers, the less the difficulty in regard to localisation. Because,if A loses 
teachers to B, it would also gain from B, inasmuch as if B trains all it wants, 
then taking some from A will obviously give it an excess. In Bristol this view 
has been taken, and it has not been insisted upon that the locally trained teachers 
shall return to work in the city, notwithstanding that for some years now we 
have provided for many more pupil-teachers than we want. The training of 
secondary teachers was most important, as it was, unfortunately, the fact that a 
large number of such teachers, whilst good students and well stored with know- 
ledge, could not impart that knowledge to others. Fortunately, we have in our 
university colleges centres which can be utilised for this purpose, and in the 
proper development of these institutions seemed to lie the solution of the difficulty 
of training secondary teachers. 
Principal Griffiths said that the one important question was whether the 
training of teachers should be a national or a local undertaking. In Wales the 
present difficulty was about to be considered by a congress of all the education 
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