The Training of Teachers and Youth Leaders
To say that the McNair Report lives up to expectation is high praise, for it is the most heralded educational document of our time.
After thirty years of interesting reports with high lights on ” The Teaching of English in England ” and ” The Education of the Adolescent we have at last tackled the real problem?the training of the teachers themselves. The present crisis has jerked us out of our hopeful illogicality?the belief that the right organization and the right methods would work without the right people. It is not proposed, in this late review, to comment upon the whole Report, except to thank the McNair Committee for its excellent work. Instead, one or two matters of psychological interest will be discussed.
The task of the Committee was to show how to attract suitable candidates for the teaching profession, and how to make the best of them. The Report is based upon a clear analysis of the present ” system “, revealing anomalies which bewilder the public (the source of supply) and make unity of purpose within the profession nearly impossible. The trenchant comment that ” What is chiefly wrong with the majority of Training Colleges is their poverty and all that flows from it ” sets the tone of the whole Report; it is both courageous and practical. The first group of recommendations is designed to get three things done which ” must be done if the number and quality of teachers … are to be obtained “? (1) the widening of the field of recruitment, (2) the improvement of teaching conditions, (3) the raising of the standing of education. Of these, the last seems pivotal, and some comment may be offered upon the Committee’s analysis.
We are quite rightly warned not to regard teachers as a race apart, which can exist on ideals only. Yet we must recognize that certain conditions, inherent in the practice of teaching, do tend to make teachers different from other people. First, they are the only members of the community whose contact with immature minds and personalities is intense and prolonged. For this reason alone, contacts with those in other walks ?f !jv is essential, both during training and after. Secondly teachers deal with human beings in the mass, at[? success in this undertaking, while it may inCfe,a.r efficiency, does not increase one’s humanity. Third’;^ teaching is a great profession whose objectives a imperfectly understood. Interviews with ordinary Pa ents and ordinary children about secondary educate ‘ for instance, still suggest with disquieting uniform1 ? > that education, if you are lucky, is the means to a bett ^ job; if you are unlucky, it is a period of life t? enjoyed or endured. Perhaps this is why the tradit’^ of cheapness in State education has been allowed persist, while paradoxically it has not been regarded a cheap at the price, either in money or time. . g With good reason, therefore, one welcomes everything in the Report designed to secure a higher public rega’ for education, which includes a more discerning aPPr> ciation of teachers. The salary schemes with a bas scale for all qualified teachers, are a first step in 1 right direction.
The setting up of a Central Training Council another urgent need. Of the alternative schemes } Area Organization, the University Schools of Educati^ seem to offer a sounder and more ambitious refor1?’ though the Joint Board plan is the more persuasiv^ argued. The supporters of the first scheme justly cla’1 , that they ” are not looking a few years but 25 years aheav and such an opportunity for fundamental reform as n?,, presents itself may not recur within that perio’H J They take the view that the Universities have an obliga’1 towards the whole educational system.
The most persuasive argument in favour of the J?l ? Board is that intending teachers would flood the Ufl versities. This is a formidable prospect, yet it is of V; g importance that these students, whose work will deprl them of daily contact with able adults, should segregated during training. The fear that these stu”^et might be regarded as ” sub-students ” is already ^ * Report of the Committee appointed by the Board of Education to consider the supply, recruitment and training ^ teachers and youth leaders. H.M. Stationery Office, 2s. by the fact thot + c ? … . .y the fact that the profession as now organized is a sub-profession The second strong objection?that . e Universities will make the schools more academic, ^ again persuasive. But dry-as-dust method as the tl?ns to the examination end, is not the passing on 01 .university tradition though it may be the debasing 1 it. The popular regard for commercial values in rvf”i?*i?n’ the mass production conditions, the root-rot 1 the Special Place examination, have all helped to oscure education’s true aim. Sound learning alone ar> give a teacher humility and confidence and make him eel part of a great tradition. His professional training, is based on observation of children and knowledge tr j-development, will make the debased academic Edition look both stupid and uninteresting. t tn its recognition that Teacher Training is the growing point of education ” the Committee invites at^.rimen.t the planning and content of training and, in 1 j P?int, seeks only to establish principles. These elude the overdue extension of training to three years, it*CClUate staffing and accommodation, more opportuny ‘or research. Perhaps the most important single P lnciple formulated is that of secondment, which should t ? n^uch to break the isolation (and isolationism) 01 ?t Srers* The granting of provisional recognition only ? the end of the Training Course calls for imagination un the part of the schools, and others responsible lor inspection, ana patience irom tne student. Young teachers of spirit are anxious to get on their own, even after a two-years course, although they would all like to be placed in schools which approve of the ideals and practice in which they have been trained. Perhaps when training is the concern of the whole profession, when all schools welcome probationary teachers, the formality of the probationary year may become unnecessary.
Little comment is offered here on the section of the Report devoted to Youth Leaders, because the recommendations are tentative and seek to regularize rather than to revolutionize. The analysis of the qualities and qualifications is excellent as a whole, but para. 345 (c) is surely either incomplete or misleading. ” Some understanding of the psychology of young people ” is apparently to be gained in relation to everything but their earlier development. This is the common fallacy among earnest Youth Leaders, anxious for whatever help psychology can give. Indeed, a tendency to treat “Youth” without reference to its life experience at home and at school has been the weakness of the Service of Youth.
We hope steps are being taken by all responsible bodies to see that this stimulating and important docuis read widely and discussed seriously. IN. L.
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