The Manawatu Standard, (PUBLISHED DAILY Suivant la verite. MONDAY, MAY 28,1883. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 4, Issue 145, 28 May 1883, Page 2

Manawatu Standard, (PUBLISHED DAILY Suivant la verite. MONDAY, MAY 28, 1883. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

On this;very important subject,on which we have often written, we find tha following practical and apropos remarks m the Christchurch Weekly Advertiser, the sentiments expressed -'being, exactly.' m accord with thoße entertained^ byourselves, and often previously set forth m thepe columns. Our contemporary observes :—" The boy is taught to read and write, and the fond eyes °6f the mother see m him every sign of latent genius ; bis education, to her, is complete, and she persuades herself that he must be brought up as a gentleman ; her ideas of & gentleman being that of a man who does not earn his living by manual labour. She obtains her way, and the youth, instead of being apprenticed to'scme good honest trade, as the father was before him, becomes — an office boy— and m time grows up to be a clerk. Occasionally a . genius is developed, and the boy becomes a man who rapidly rises by the force of intellect to a commanding place m society ; but on the other hand, m the majority of cases, many become nothing, and if vMous tastes are not developed, a barren life, destitute of afmostr everything that makes life pleasant, remains ito them. Every year we find the demand for this Bort of lab ur becoming leBS m proportion to the supply, and until parents make up their minds that 'the best thing they can do for their boys is to give them some skilled trade, the number of clerks seeking employ ment will continue to increase. Bettfr ; make a boy a blacksmith, mngh and i dirty as the trade is, than bring him up to office work. If you choose the latter course, the chances are that his children Kill be taught that which their father had not an opportunity of learning. Many a man walking, about; the streets tc-day earning a precarious living, bitterly regrets that he cannot take up a tiowel and use it skilfully instead o r ! a pen ; could he but do so, he could count with moderate certainty upon being able to provide; for himself and children those comforts which he now finds it impossible to obtain. It is this class of people who m England find themselves the most destitute, and as a natural sequence Buffer the most. When parents recognise that their son and heir is just as much a gentleman, with his, hands besmirched, , and f his face begrimed by the soot ahd : dirt of his trade, as their neighbor's boy is at his desk, one of the most fertile causes of poverty which now * oppresses civilized ' society will have .been removed, and the happiness of the community so much the more advanced." ;...;.