The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1937. WHAT WILL' THEY DO?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 299, 17 December 1937, Page 6

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

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1937. WHAT WILL' THEY DO?

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

This week many thousands of boys and girls, attending tor the last time the school in which they have spent perhaps four or live years, find themselves answering, and asking, the question, "What are you going to do?" Unlike many of their predecessors of three or four years ago, most of them can give a definite answer. If they are not leaving a secondary school to go to the University College, or a primary school to go- to a secondary school, they are going to work, and "jobs" are not scarce. They are, in fact, from, one point of view, too plentiful, so that more tlian one headmaster is uneasy and regretful because of the number of pupils who abandon their school course after one or two years. For the correction of this tendency the raising of the school leaving age is prescribed, but it is clear that when the school age is raised there must also be an adjustment of the industrial laws. The reason that employers want boys > younger is that, generally speaking, the older they are when beginning work the more they have to be paid. Thus a eonflict is set up between the boy's educational needs and his material, short-run interests. From the national point of view, a* well as the boy's, it is a thoroughly undesirable eonflict, and so fax the Government and Parliament have been slow to appreciate its implications and consequences.

But what occupations will be followed by the pupils leaving school this year I Although particulars are not available, the tendencies seem clearly shown in the statistics for recent years. Of children who left primary schools last year, and did not go to a secondary school, 46 per cent of the girls and 62.2 per cent of the boys entered commerce, trade or industry. Twenty-nine per cent of the girls went home. These were the largest percentages, although 15.4 per cent of the boys went on the land. Secondary school pupils had similar occupational destinations. Seventy-two per cent of the boys went into commerce, trade or industry, 15 per cent to farming, only 2 per cent to the University. In the last four years the percentage of secondary school boys beginning clerical, professional, shop or warehouse work has risen from 34 in 1933 to 52 in 1936; the percentage entering trades and industries has risen slightly, from 19 to 20; the percentage going on the land has fallen, from 22 to 15. There has also been a slight fall in the percentage entering upon a University course.

j These tendencies, and most of all that affecting farming, deserve close attention. They justify the outspoken comment of the principal of Wesley College, Mr. It. C. Clark, [that although there has been much lip service to agriculture, he can see "little of real value, or adequate to the country's needs, being done either to train capable lads for farm work or to encourage them to embark on an agricultural career." Yet the future careers of all the boys and girls who have chosen other occupations depend in some degree—most of t-nem in a large degree—on the maintenance of production, and the increased efficiency of production, on the farms of the Dominion.