THE PEDAGOGUE'S POCKET.
(To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.")
Sia,—The most disconcerting thing about the Sootsmen I hale known is that they are always being engagingly funny, presum- ably in an attempt to live down the " blacksmith" and the " surgical operation " jokes; and the only man who ever returned to me a borrowed umbrella was a Welshman! The truth seems to be that you can put a man in a pigeon-hole, but you cannot compel him to stay there. For the nonce, however, the writer is behaving " according to plan," for it would be distressing to the man who simplifies life by a scheme of easy generalizations if he found that a schoolmaster thought or wrote of anything that did net concern his pocket! Furthermore, there is at present a new spirit abroad which may animate our educational clay, and the reader may care to hear how the average pedagogue views one aspect of the awakening—the paternal interest of Education Authorities in his purse.
"The County Education Committee of Blankshire has issued a new scale of salaries, which will ultimately cost the county 240,000 a year more." Announcements such ae this have been fairly common lately, and the reader must have been torn between his desire for a better educational system and his concern for keeping the rates from soaring. It will be consoling news to him to hear that the Government will refund to the county one half of the money expended in this way. It will perhaps interest him still more to know how much each individual teacher benefits here and now by the new scale, for the impressive totals are apt to mislead. The increment in salary in most cases works out at 3s. 10d. a week! The average rift over and above what a master would have been earning had there been no Fisher Grants and had there been no war is about ten per cent. These are the rises which are not only to cover the increased cost of living, but also to contribute to a better status for the profession. Cold facts!
And herein lies the most tragic truth of all. Our true experts in education are compelled by circumstances to take on outside work, which usually means that they are too busy or too jaded to take a real live interest in education. Exceptional but very significant cases are those of two men I know who augment their slender incomes at a music-hall, one manipulating the limelight and the other scraping a fiddle in the orchestra. The profession is being made attractive for novices on the spider-and-the-fly principle : those who are well within the parlour receive scant consideration.. It is time to impress upon Education Authorities that, important as it is to attract new men into the profession, it is still more important to retain in it the tried men.—I am,
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