CHILD MIGRATION ADVOCATED

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22317, 3 February 1938, Page 11

CHILD MIGRATION ADVOCATED

o SUPPORT FOR FAIRBRIDGE SYSTEM PLEA FOR RAISING OF SCHOOLLEAVING AGE LONDON, February 1. Appealing for the further development of the Fairbridge cf child migration at a meeting cf the Royal Society of Arts, Sir Hal Colebatch said although the British might view with hatred the totalitarian method of regimenting men and women for unquestioning service to the State, there was an obligation of increasing intensity each year for the British and other democracies to see that children reached manhood and womanhood reasonably equipped for self-respect-ihg citizenship. Britain was not discharging this obligation. “It is a reproach to the statesmanship of Britain, Australia, and the other Dominions, that the schoolleaving age was not raised long ago. enabling the giving of a higher measure of the skill and knowledge essential for a worker under modern economic conditions, which is the more essential as the apprenticeship system has decayed,” he said. He emphasised Australia’s increasing need for more people of the right type, which was more likely to result from the Fairbridge system than from any other method which had yet been tried or which seemed in the present conditions likely to succeed.