One Day’s Work In School Week?

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30529, 26 August 1964, Page 23

One Day’s Work In School Week?

(New Zealand Preet Association) AUCKLAND, August 25. Senior secondary schoolboys should be allowed to spend one day a week in employment, Mr L. E. Adams, principal of Glendowie College, Auckland, suggested in his presidential address to the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association annual conference today.

“While it may not be practicable yet on any scale, I make the serious suggestion that school and work must overlap.” said Mr Adams. “It Is becoming increasingly difficult for parents and schools to maintain the old school disciplines and restrictions on the mature young adults of the sixth form. Even the ablest teaching Is not eonugh at upper levels. “Great mobility, more absence from home, television, modern entertainment, numerous vague reactions to the prospects of lengthy study ahead, of uncertainty of vocation and of the point of financial independence necessary once, but not regarded as necessary now before marriage—these factors prompt me to suggest that if adult education must continue more and more beyond school years, then work-experience should, or could, begin before school days end. Gain Experience

Mr Adams said he would like to see an experiment whereby a group of intelligent and mature senior boys could pursue studies at school four days a week in preparation for university or work, but on the fifth day be employed by firms or by Government departments to gain experience in a field related to the work they might do.

At some time, labour laws would have to allow for a shorter week and the return to school of adults whose general education was incomplete.

“A greater tolerance on everybody’s part of the desire of senior pupils to take employment immediately on the conclusion of their final examinations Is called for, not only as common sense but as a desirable and feasible way of satisfying both the need for work experience and the need for financial help towards higher education,” he said.