SCHOOLS AND THE WAR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 203, 28 August 1942, Page 2

SCHOOLS AND THE WAR

THE opposition expressed by members of the deputation which waited * upon the Minister of Education yesterday to the use of school buildoy the army and for hospital service will meet with strong support, in times of sudden emergency, a big epidemic or the arrival of a large number of soldier patients from overseas, the normal functioning of any P»S?i c nfJT ? . ma Y rightly be interrupted, but the continuous use of Um facilities intended for the training of the young cannot be condoned. The demands of the armed forces to-day compel the withdrawal from ■econdary and university education of youth at the formative age of eighteen, and the men from whom the future leaders of the country Will be drawn are thus being gravely, if inevitably, handicapped. If the reservoir of trained minds is to be further depleted by the filching of •ducationa l facilities from a still younger group of the Dominion's rising jMlwration, the outlook will further deteriorate. Only as a last resort OU educational facilities be stripped down, and in this T i 1? no i tl ? e so . se Judge of its own requirements. 2 *1 ®* ami P of all the circumstances may prove that the thlt authorities are taking only the easiest road, and •Sliil k j can found for their requirements. Every effort ° a dual handica P bein 8 placed on the youth n . la i nd ' f.° that when peace returns the disabilities to be overSgb?k&tWrtMoSwHSlS l educatlonal facllltlcs tim. of war