Teachers' Salaries
SIR,—Mr. Webber's letter on teachers' salaries in the Spectator of January 6th contains a fallacy more widespread and more dangerous than any which he claims to refute. His statement that the "double first" is not necessarily a better teacher than the two-year trained primary or infant teacher is one that we have heard before, and one which is con- stantly used to depreciate the grammar-school sixth-form master. It is, of course, quite irrelevant. To be successful every teacher must be able to teach ; he must have the gift of understanding children and conveying interest and knowledge. To a certain very limited extent he can learn techniques of teaching. Beyond that he must, if he is to teach higher mathematics, understand and care for higher mathematics, which is very much more difficult. This is an additional skill which the primary or infant teacher has not got, which is in short supply like other exceptional skills, and which involves long and costly training. There is no reason on earth, either in justice or economics, why the community should expect to get it thrown in at the same price, or even nearly the same price, as it pays for the primary teacher. Of course, a double first may be a poor teacher ; but so may a primary teacher. What is quite certain is that the best primary teacher could not begin to teach a sixth form.
A truer analogy than that which Mr. Webber made with the clergy would be with the medical profession. Everyone concerned with the care of the sick must have certain qualities of sympathy, understanding and devotion ; the district nurse has a job quite as arduous and calling for quite as much devotion as the general practitioner or the great specialist. No one has ever suggested that they should be paid the same ; or even that all three should be paid on the district nurse's scale, with a £50 a year graduate allowance for the general practitioner and £100 a year special responsibility allowance for-the great specialist.—Yours faithfully, A. D. C. PETERSON. Adams' Grammar School, Newport, Shropshire.
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