The Dominion TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 1928. EDUCATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 221, 19 June 1928, Page 8

The Dominion TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 1928. EDUCATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT

In the the midst of our perplexities on the subject of unemployment, the Chairman of the Bank of New Zealand has submitted another topic for reflection. At the annual meeting of the shareholders of the Bank on Friday last, Sir George Elliot suggested, in effect, that amongst the causes of unemployment in New Zealanc the present system of education might be included. Ihe speakei, after stressing the point that the primary producers, numbering onethird of the breadwinners of the country, contributed more than twothirds towards the national wealth, suggested that the failure of the educational system to give an agricultural bias to the ambitions of the school children led the majority of boys to prefer the “seemingly easier and apparently better-paid work of the city to farming occupations.”

“I have no remedy for the unemployment difficulty,” said Sir George, “but I do suggest that, the trend of teaching should have a decided bias towards primary production and all it means to the nation - and the individual.”

The modern educationist would probably reply to bir George Elliot that the. true purpose of juvenile education is to make efficient citizens, not efficient lawyers, doctors, or farmers. A good citizen, following his particular aptitudes, is likely, he would say, to make a better lawyer, doctor, or farmer than an inferior one—an obvious truism.- One imagines, however, that what the speaker really had in his mind was the importance of imparting to the youthful minds in the school period, not the elementary technical facts of agriculture, but the larger and broader facts of our national destiny as a primary producer for the world’s markets. Since this country is first and foremost an agricultural country, and must always be, it follows that its primary industries must always bulk largely in the nation s activities.

Farming is not the haphazard rule-of-thumb avocation it was in the early days. More and more the advantages of scientific knowledge and method are being realised and acted upon. It is becoming a business, a profession, in the same sense as banking, insurance, law, or medicine, and as the industry develops along these lines the rewards will go to those who enter it in the true professional spirit. It is due to the nation, no less than to.its essential industry, that its youth should be suitably and effectively informed about these things. A definite plan should be found in the school curricula and in the school text-books for creating a live interest in the country’s primary industries. The children should be told what they are, what they mean to the nation, how they are conducted, the conditions of rural life, and the prospects which lie before young and energetic citizens, inspired by the pictures presented to them, to venture forth into the free and healthful life of the country to found a home of their own. That is the moral of Sir George Elliot’s remarks, and an excellent one it is.