TEACHERS' SALARIES
SIR,—Your correspondents, who wonder (or complain) at the grammar school masters' demand for higher pay than their colleagues in other schools miss the point. No one would deny that certain basic qualities and abilities are needed in all teachers whatever their type of school: patience, serenity, sympathy, hard work . . . (the list could be a long one) are as necessary in the Infants School as in the Grammar School Vlth Form. No one would deny, further, that all teaching is exacting and responsible and that all teachers therefore deserve well of the com- munity. But the grammar school is unique in that it demands from its staff, over and• above the basic teaching qualities, an intel- lectual distinction and a standard of scholar- ship without which its duty of educating the best minds of the younger generation would become impossible. First-class minds need first-class men to teach them. And the brute fact is that as intellectual distinction is inevit- ably in short supply, every inducement must be provided to coax what little there is of it into those schools where it is not only desirable but of paramount necessity.—Yours faithfully,
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