The Sun FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1928 JUVENILE UNEMPLOYMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 275, 10 February 1928, Page 8

The Sun FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1928 JUVENILE UNEMPLOYMENT

IT may fairly be asked if New Zealand boys and girls are receiving a fair deal from their country in respect of opportunity for learning a trade or profession? The ready answer, of course, is (as politicians would say) in the affirmative. Impressive statistics could be massed easily enough in order to convince most people that New Zealand children enjoy unrivalled opportunity and efficient preparation for the battle of life. There is the boast, for example, that this country has the finest system of free education in the world. Its secondary schools and colleges are almost as numerous as granaries in Canada. Twenty-four thousand boys and girls receive secondary instruction every year, and of that number close on twenty thousand pupils hold free places. Then at least eighteen thousand boys and girls obtain some form of technical instruction in about fifty different educational centres throughout the. Dominion. Further, about four thousand students attend the university colleges, all seeking preparation for employment in professions or in the higher grades of industrial service. Altogether, the State spends close on £4,000,000 a year in educating its youthful population.

And yet the outstanding problem of parents to-day is how best to employ their well-educated children or, worse still, how and where to employ them at all. Hundreds of parents this year have solved the problem temporarily by sending their children back to school until something in the form of employment turns up.

It is a serious question, and one that does not receive the attention it deserves, largely because of the fact that public interest is concentrated on unemployment among adults. An idle man in an undeveloped country is a sorry sight, but to see an idle boy without prospect of useful employment is worse. It is lamentable, though it must delight the imps of evil temptation. How serious the question has become in Auckland may be measured by the official census of boys and girls who leave school every year. The latest available figures show that the total exceeds three thousand. At the end of 1926 the enumeration showed that 1,952 boys and 1,757 girls left school to seek employment, while 2,931 boys and girls went on to the secondary schools. The total for last year will be no less, even allowing for those who have gone back to school this year awaiting employment. It is impossible to say how many of the'three thousand boys and girls who have completed their school education in this district will be absorbed into the working population of the province. Those who take an active interest in the welfare of youth are afraid that a great number of them will be compelled to join the ranks of the adult unemployed. As to remedies, it is quite clear that not even Labour Government can provide a fair deal for the youth of a country. In New South Wales, for example, over 32 per cent, of 8,899 boys and girls who left school in 1926, already have been classified as employed in unskilled occupations. Too often that classification is merely a polite term for unemployment. They become on many occasions the working class for which a paternal government has to find occupation at tree-planting or clearing waste lands. It is admitted in New South Wales that many such workers, when planting trees and tidying up deteriorated lands, wear the broad arrow.

The causes of all this lamentable waste of good working material are remediable. The Dominions should depend less on foreign manufacturers and learn to make goods for themselves. Until this has been done, there will be no cure for unemployment.