The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1936. PARENTS AND EDUCATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 297, 15 December 1936, Page 6

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1936. PARENTS AND EDUCATION.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Many parents of children now leaving school for the summer vacation find themselves in a state of uncertainty. On the one hand they have the knowledge that a course of secondary education is 011 general grounds desirable, and that its benefits, tangible and intangible, cannot be fully secured if the pupil does not go on at least to the matriculation stage, and, preferably, for one year or two years longer. On the other hand, parents are aware that the conditions of two or three years ago have been reversed, in this respect, that there is now a demand by employers for boys, and for a smaller number of girls, a demand so keen that it has already induced many pupils to leave school without completing the course 011 which they embarked. Furthermore, there is a reasonI able apprehension that in consequence of the Government's labour legislation the boy or girl who stays at school will be handicapped later, because of his age, when he seeks employment. Parents and their children are thus confronted with a hard choice.

The problem is almost certainly a temporary one, but fjor those parents whose children are about the ages of fifteen and sixteen it is present and pressing. Such parents should bear two main considerations in mind. First, education is not for employment alone. Secondly, the general advantages which a child may expect to gain from a secondary school course will not be less because some o£ that child's eontemporai-ies are leaving school now, but greater. Provided

that the school of which the child is a pupil is a good school, the old aphorism, "Knowledge is power," is no less true now than ever it was. If a larger number of children than is usual is leaving school with but a smattering of knowledge, then those who remain and avail themselves of the opportunity of a sound general education will have an additional advantage. The opportunity for education comes but once.

Radical changes in legislation are bound to produce effects which cannot be fully foreseen, and this temporary conflict between the advantages of education and those of early employment is a case in point. The Minister of Education, th* Hon. P. Fraser, has said plainly that the Government does not want pupils to throw away their opportunities of a better, education, and he has expressed the opinion that children leaving school too early are leaving "because of a fear or poverty complex that has been carried over from the depression." It is unlikely that Mr. Fraser will consent to the permanent imposition of conditions which would interfere seriously with the successful reorganisation of. the school system.