RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31168, 19 September 1966, Page 28

RANDOM REMINDER

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

The vocational guidance service is an excellent one for young people pushing off from the domestic shore to cross the cruel sea of commerce. But it is a pity that occasionally the work of the department is undertaken, perhaps unwittingly, by those who do not belong to it. Last term at a high school a relieving teacher painted a peculiar but glowing picture of life on the farm. To one of his most attentive listeners, it appeared as if the fanner really did little but use the telephone as a sort of command headquarters. The boy decided that this was tha life for him,

and he left school, found a job on a farm. His arrival there coincided with that of a filthy souwest storm and his first job, in a borrowed oilskin, was to feed the sheep. This task he accomplished without particular enthusiasm. Fencing, a few days later, did nothing to boost his morale either. It seemed to be glacial moraine on which he and his boss operated with crowbar and shovel. He noted with some misgiving the penetrating stare of the boss when he was about 20 boles ahead of the boy. A little later, it was a mat-

ter of wiring up 35 coils of No. 8 wire and next

day, he was left to do the barb by himself. He produced something resembling a western front battle scene, after the battle. But the three weeks of the school holiday, in which he was not, officially, interested came to an end about that time. He has decided to return to his academic career. And he took back with him stern thoughts that the Department of Education should introduce a system under which teachers are required to take up temporary employment in different vocations during each holiday period.