The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1929 YOUTH’S SERIOUS HANDICAP

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 585, 11 February 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1929 YOUTH’S SERIOUS HANDICAP

TWENTY THOUSAND boys and girls leave school and college in New Zealand every year to begin the real struggle of life. How and where they all obtain employment must be left largely and loosely to conjecture. Even official statistics on the important subject are roughly speculative. There is at least 710 computation which can be taken as a reliable indication of the future occupational welfare of the children who annually close their youthful educational career.

As far as has been practicable authoritative observers have noted the outgoing of youth from schools and colleges, hut even the best system of observation yields nothing better than “a probable destination” in the work of the country. The children soon disappear into tlie mist, everybody concerned hoping that tlie well-educated boys and girls ultimately will make the most of their land of theoretical opportunities and do well. Presumably, most of these juveniles find some work to do, hut it is doubtful if anything like a reasonable proportion of the total secures employment commensurate with the high national cost of their preparation for a useful life or occupations which guarantee a great industrial future for their country.

A representative deputation of teachers and business men has had a serious talk in Auckland with the new Minister of Education about it. The principal speakers rightly described the fact of youth’s handicap as the outstanding problem facing tlie Dominion. The Minister and the deputation found it easier to emphasise the difficulties surrounding the question than to find a solution of the complex problem. There was, however, optimistic, but vague, talk about land settlement and the necessity of making rural life more attractive to the youth of the Dominion whose education lias included a thorough understanding of the difference between drudgery in the backbloeks and a comparatively easy time in the cities, with plenty of entertainment. Reference was also made to the lack of scope for industrial apprenticeship, and to the lamentable crudity of such organised effort as exists at securing sound employment for children. The Hon. IT. Atmore was frank and forceful on the subject, hut when it came to the real question of remedial policy he was just about as futile as his predecessor. In the best contradictory manner of politicians' tlie Minister assured the deputation that there would he no delay in putting the Government’s land settlement scheme into operation, though such an undertaking, of course, could not he carried out immediately. Moreover, the present position would have to be met by palliatives. That was merely the old politics at the old price.

No one would wish to belittle tlie value of extensive land settlement as an aid to providing more employment, but land settlement alone, which necessarily will be a slow and an expensive process, will not entirely eliminate youth’s handicap. Under the recent farmers’ Government the number of employees on the Dominion’s farms decreased in seven years by close on 17,000 workers. And in 1927 only 2,300 hoys who left the primary schools began work on tlie land, of whom nearly 50 per cent, had not. passed the sixth standard.

It is true that there must be a limit to employment in the public service. Already that form of occupation lias become so grotesque in extravagant cost that the sum of salaries now exceeds the total value of New Zealand’s butter and wool exports. If youth’s handicap is to be removed at all, the Government must promote the development of secondary industries.