Teachers' Salaries
SIR,—There is a fallacy, which is, I believe, widely held, implicit in the letter of " Rector who has been a full-time teacher." Your correspondent confuses skill in teaching with the pcisassion of academic knowledge. It is a false assumption that the " double first," even with a diploma in education, is necessarily a better teacher than the two-year trained primary or infant teacher, and that Ii is in the nation's interests that he should be paid a higher salary. Capacity and ability in teachers are not, and need not be, matched with that of their pupils. The really intelligent boy will make headway with indifferent instruction, or even with text- books alone. It is the boys and girls of average intelligence, the great majority of the child population, and not the brilliant sixth-formers, who are most influenced by good and bad teaching. These are the children on whom the future of England depends, and it is in the schools that they attend—infant, primary and secondiry--that the best teachers
should be found. c*".-
Would your correspondent agree that the clergyman with a well-to-do and cultured flock requires more skill and training and works harder than his colleague whose parish is a city slum ? Would he argue that the former deserves a higher income than the latter ?—Yours faithfully,
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