YOUNG NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 288, 5 December 1932, Page 6

YOUNG NEW ZEALAND.

Matilda Jane—that is not her name, of course —is a pioneer. That i<*, a pioneer in her own family and her immediate locality. She has brought self-expression to the point of having her name in the papers among the "honourable mentions" in a drawing competition. She is. filled with pride. But there is no sinfulness in it. She is not proud because other girls she knows have not had their names, in print. It is because the design and execution were all her own, and that she was able to win her distinction, though, as her beaming mother told me, "she never had a real lesson in drawing." The neighbours, too, thrilled by the reflected glory of the event, have risen to the occasion in an astonishing way. Pennies and pats, handkerchiefs and handshakes, up and down the road, have been the portion of this little girl, not yet twelve, partly for her art, partly for herself, and, I think, largely for the uplift given to the rather drab and humdrum lives that are lived around her. If Matilda Jane fulfils all her promises to "do something" for us she will have her brain and her hands quite bus}' for some time to come. Trivial as it may appear to some minds, I think the episode has all the elements of inspiration on a larger scale of life. There must be thousands of Matilda Janes, and, perhaps, John Henrys, throughout the Dominion with an aching for the opportunity to show what they can do with the motive forces within them. A drawing competition is only one of a dozen ways in which such urging will have a natural outlet. I have known girls who, with the .most unpromising materials, have shown themselves to be dolls' milliners and dressmakers of extraordinary ingenuity. Yet, later on, they will probably find themselves in a lollio shop or a clothing factory, where necessity and machinery will deaden and eventually kill all the art within them. We have girls who are "born cooko" whose immediate relations never give them a ghost of an opportunity to depart from the routine of the fry-pan or the tin-opener. It is more difficult to judge of a boy's natural aptitudes because of the extraordinary mental disturbances, which often take place during adolescence. Besides, their field of vision as to what they want to do with themselves is not only wider than that of girls, but, perhaps because of this, it is much more indefinite, and it is often not until they have "found a job" that they have found also they have made a mistake. It is then too late to start again.

All this is a great pity, especially as it is possible that, in certain aspects, the future of our,country may depend a*.much on our cultivation of'individual talent as on the price of wool and butterfat. There are two points which those who rule our destinies ought to boar in mind. ;That square pegs in round holes are always an element of potential discontent and unrest in the social body. And that work which is the natural expression, of the worker is not only always better done than "forced" work, but, in the case o£ the true artist, may also be less concerned about "award rates." Whatever far-sighted statesmen can do for us in this respect will be of little avail until parents begin to take an individual as well as a collective interest, in their children. Parents-, as a rule, are frightfully ignorant of their children's qualities. They not infrequently look on them merely as potential contributors to the family finances. They trouble little, and care less, about the seething thoughts which make many children "intractable." The deplorable result is that when they come "to earn for themselves" their offspring are often as .anxious to "cut loose" from the parents as the latter are to see they have not the chance of doing so. Young New Zealand, as represented by Matilda Jane and John Henry, will, in their turn, only fulfil the functions of parenthood as they ought if we take them in hand now and develop them in such a way that it will be an object lesson to them, as to how to treat their children when such a responsibility is theirs. —INA BACKWATER.