YOUTH AFTER THE WAR

Southland Times, Issue 24882, 23 October 1942, Page 3

YOUTH AFTER THE WAR

PROBLEM OF FINDING EMPLOYMENT Proposals for dealing with the rehabilitation of young men and women discharged from the armed forces were contained in a letter from Dr D. E. Hansen, principal of the Christchurch Technical College, read at the meeting of the board of the Southland Technical College last night. Dr Hansen stated that his board had considered the problem as it was very much of an educational problem because all youths were now called up at 18 years of age. Many young men in the forces had not completed their technical or university education and many had had no experience of civilian employment. The proposals were: —

(1) That the school leaving age should be raised to 15 years immediately after the end of the war, and that children up to that age should be excluded from gainful employment. (2) That the armed forces after the war should be demobilized gradually, the older men and women with good employment experience to be demobilized first, the younger ones with little or no employment experience (except tljose who had approved positions to go to) to be kept in camp and put through educational courses of a vocational character to enable them to be absorbed when discharged. (3) That a special youth rehabilitation board be set up in each centre to deal with the education and placement of young men and women and that these boards should act in close co-operation with the youth centres. , . .. (4) That it should be made permissible immediately for youth centres to undertake the guidance and placement of men and women up to the age of 21, instead of 16 as at present. (5) That young men and women now in the armed forces should be given the best educational courses possible consistent with I these courses not interfering with their •military training. , . (6) That the accommodation and educational facilities of technical colleges should be improved now to enable them to deal with educational requirements as soon as they arise. BROKEN APPRENTICESHIPS “The position is calamitous for boys aged 18.” said Mr C. A. Stewart, principal of the Southland Technical College. "Many of these boys had just started in their apprenticeships and the war means for them a break of three years or perhaps more in their apprenticeship time.” "The biggest problem I see lies m the lad who has never had a job,” said Mr H. C. Gimblett. "Who is going to employ him when he comes back?" Mr A. Cook said that after the depression young men were allowed to be apprentices up to the age of 25 provided they attended night classes. It might be possible to do the same for young men discharged from i the armed forces. Mr W. J. Thomas said that after the last war the Government had subsidized the wages of returned men while they were learning a trade, and this had worked fairly well. A conference was to be held in Wellington shortly to consider the whole question of apprenticeship. Mr Stewart said that one group of boys with the armed forces was receiving a sound technical training. Those were the boys with the ground staff of the Air Force, but he did not know of any others who were in a similar position. Mr J. H. Reed (chairman): It is bad enough to see the young men going away to the war, but we cannot visualize now the difficulties that will arise when they try to get back into civilian life after the war. , . It was decided that the matter should be discussed at a subsequent meeting of the board.