Inferior Qualifications of Teachers and Varied Methods of Teaching.
The methods of teaching were almost as numerous as the teachers, and followed no specified rule. Sometimes it was by classes, often by individuals, and in other cases by an extensive use of monitors, being generally a mixture of the three styles, and nearly always a higgledy-piggledy, go-as-you-please arrangement, as easy as possible to the teacher, and as unproductive of good results to the pupil as such indefinite work might be fully expected to be. And the character of the teachers, speaking in general terms, and not forgetting many bright exceptions, was not above suspicion. Certificates were granted by township superintendents, who too often relieved the charitable, and the district council, by thrusting into the school-house the ne'er-do-wells, the infirm, the crippled, the sickly and the unfortunate, who, under ordinary circumstances, would have become dependent upon the good nature and benevolence of their fellow-citizens. In one district a superintendent, after the passage of the new School Law, was compelled to give notice that he would not grant certificates to any candidates unless they were strictly sober, and that he would cancel the certificates of all teachers who suffered themselves at any time to become intoxicated. And, we are gravely informed, the result was that a majority, not all, of the hitherto intemperate teachers became thoroughly temperate men, and that the incorrigible were dismissed. The quality of the teachers may be guessed at very fairly, it is safe to say, from the salaries paid to them. In 1845, the average was £26 2s, or $104.40; in 1846, £26 4s, or $104.80; and in 1847, £28 10s, or $114, and this, too, for the most part, exclusive of board. Had the schools been kept open during the whole of the teaching months of these years, the salaries would have averaged $134 in 1845, $147 in 1846, and $148 in 1847. It must be borne in mind that, in those days, male were much more numerous than female teachers, so that the smaller amounts generally paid to those of the gentler sex had comparatively little influence in lessening the general average. The parsimony and poverty of the people had much to do, of course, with the quality of the teacher, for men who could obtain higher wages at almost any other occupation, through physical or intellectual superiority, would not waste time and opportunity to earn more than the paltry pittance paid to the pedagogue, simply through philanthropic desire to advance the interests of the rising generation.