Children today need less money, free time and television, and more spiritual, emotional and intellectual stimulation.

That's the opinion of a spry 91-year-old former teacher who devoted close to 40 years of her life to students in the public school system.

Mrs. Elsie Gertrude Bascome, who recently received her first Teachers' Award for outstanding work in the classroom, began her teaching career at a time when women scarcely entered the workforce.

At age 18 she was teaching at Sandys Grammar School and three years later became the youngest principal of the first Government school in Southampton East. The school is now known as Heron Bay.

"I'm not a degree teacher,'' she stressed during an interview at her Somerset home. "I'm from the old school.'' The mother, grandmother, and great grandmother recalled that she was attracted to teaching by her love of children and a primary school principal who believed in her.

"I first wanted to be a secretary,'' she said.

But the principal of Sandys Grammar School -- now Sandys Secondary -- where she was a student, had other plans for her.

"Mr. C.A. Isaac Henry, from Michael College, Jamaica, was very efficient,'' Mrs. Bascome reminisced. "He would sometimes put me in the classroom to fill in for other teachers. He said I had the attitude of a teacher.'' Because he saw the potential in his students, Mr. Henry, said Mrs. Bascome, started an after-school programme, allowing promising pupils to study for the Cambridge junior level examination.

Two of his first group of 15 students went on to Berkeley Institute and passed the exam, she added.

And while Mrs. Bascome was not one of them, Mr. Henry still believed in her and recommended that Government allow her into its teaching programme.

She was the first student he sent to sit the Board of Education exam, and passed it on her first attempt.

But the modest educator won't dwell on that achievement. She prefers to talk about her fond memories of teaching.

Mrs. Bascome taught kindergarten, second year and fourth year students at Sandys Grammar before going on to Southampton East where, with the help of only one assistant and one monitor, she was responsible for up to 70 children.

In 1929, she interrupted her career to marry the man that has been by her side for the past 64 years and to raise their three children, Barbara -- who is now a teacher in Dayton, Ohio -- Aubrey and Richard Jr.

But she confessed: "I missed the classroom.'' So when a one-year teaching vacancy came up at Central School, now Victor Scott, Mrs. Bascome said she took the plunge.

After 11 years at home, she was asked to teach at Southampton Glebe where she spent the next 29 years.

Teaching a fourth and fifth year class for two years there, Mrs. Bascome said every Friday about 20 minutes before the end of the school day students were taught "courtesy, good manners'' and about local and foreign black people who achieved much despite their humble beginnings.

"We would talk about George Carver Washington, Booker T. Washington and all sorts of local people to let the children know that these people were not always wealthy,'' she said. "We also made up a play based on Paul Lawrence Dunbar's life.

"None of this was part of the curriculum. But we did it to build up their self-esteem. And it worked. I saw the level of enthusiasm rising.'' Mrs. Bascome said even with infant students, who she mainly taught during her time at Southampton Glebe, teachers stressed that they would grow up to be successful.

The children were also motivated to learn by acting out their lessons and by competing annually in an Island-wide elocution contest, she added.

Students, representing schools in the east and west, would compete by making speeches, recitations and singing songs.

"The children really achieved in practising for the contest and they looked forward to it,'' Mrs. Bascome said, recalling that one of her male students with a speech impediment walked away with the top prize one year after he recited a poem eloquently.

"After that he approached me and said: `Mrs. Bascome I feel I can talk to the president of the United States now','' she said beaming.

But Mrs. Bascome sadly remembered that the contest was abandoned years ago after a teacher questioned a judge's decision.

Today the former girl guide leader said youngsters had very little to motivate them.

Reading her favourite definition of a teacher, which she found in an article of an Ohio magazine and used in a tribute to former Southampton Glebe principal Mrs. Dalton Tucker, Mrs. Bascome said: "A teacher affects eternity; she never knows where her influence stops. A little of you (the teacher) lives in every child with whom you come in contact.

"Great is your influence for you have contributed to the development of every advance in medicine and science. You speak from every court room and from every pulpit.

"Your voice is heard in every song, and your influence felt in every painting. You live in the pages of every book that has ever been written.

"You ride into space with every astronaut. You live in every home and speak through every child at dinner time when the child says `my teacher said'.'' But Mrs. Bascome made it clear that the responsibility of steering youngsters in the right direction did not rest solely with the teacher.

Parents must realise their responsibility, she stressed.

In many cases, Mrs. Bascome said, parents shower their children with money and material things, but have no time to sit around and talk with them.

"No matter how busy we were during the day, dinner time was the time we all had to sit down at the table together,'' she said. "That was the family way.

But the family life has gone out of the picture.

"Both the father and mother have a role to play,'' Mrs. Bascome insisted, "because if they do not, it does make it harder for teachers, especially if the child is not coming to school adjusted.

"I don't care what they say about times changing. And there's nothing wrong with a woman working. But parents can't forget their God-given responsibility.'' DEDICATED TEACHER -- Mrs. Elsie Bascome, 91, spent 40 years of her life