YOUTH AND WORK

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 130, 26 February 1929, Page 13

YOUTH AND WORK

Sir, —So far as they go, the opinions of Mr. Geo. Burney are eminently pertinent and suggestive of methods which might be employed towards the amelioration of the conditions which are causing those of serious mind so much concern. But, I would submit, a still more fruitful cause of our youths’ unemployment, a cause, .moreover, for which the Government itself is mainly responsible, and which, it is most astounding to observe, is disregarded by almost all contributors to the unemployment discussion. This is that too many girls are employed by the State and private employers alike. What a sorry spectacle is presented

to us by our education authorities,

year by year, training at terrific public cost, a vast overplus of teachers (I believe the cost to be about £3OO each) to be thrown immediately on to the labour market, and it seems filtile to expect any diminution of this wasteful procedure until a Minister arises courageous enough to move fearlessly. This one abuse, among many, is aggravated by the fact that a far too large percentage of girls are appointed to the teaching service, and herein lies my complaint, and one of the reasons why so many boys and young men find it hard to get a start, and, in the alternative, why there is so much unemployment generally. Society’s first duty is to provide work for the real breadwinner, the male, and it becomes the first charge of a Government by example, or by legal enactment, to compel employers so to regard this duty. Instead, the Government Departments swarm with girls, to many of whom is paid a wage that many a young potential father would welcome, but which is frittered away on gaudy lingerie and other emblems of feminine vanity. There are thousands of girls in offices and shops, because of wrong social and economic values, who should, if the ordinary fitness of things were consulted, be at home helping their overwrought but too indulgent mothers with the housework, and, incidentally, learning that art themselves. Hundreds more, whose parents are quite able to maintain them, are crowding out, and usurping the places of males superior to them alike in eligibility and efficiency. Our much-vaunted, but sham, education system, with its veneer of efficiency, amounting only to a standard of precocity and actual deficiency, and its mock proficiency and other examinations, is mainly responsible for the chaotic and unsatisfactory state of affairs, and no improvement presents itself 'until our education machinery is entrusted entirely to those who are equipped and qualified for the job, and to whom emolument is of secondary importance. Above all, abolish education boards, readjust the functions of school committees, and make it impossible for appointments to the service to be decided by preference and influence, and also reduce the ratio of females to males very materially. If all employers acted thus, then, to use Mr. Burney's words slightly corrected, boy and adult male unemployment would disappear—l am, AN xiOUS.” Lower Hutt. .