The Dominion THURSDAY, MAY 2, 1929. AN APPRENTICE’S APPEAL

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 184, 2 May 1929, Page 10

The Dominion THURSDAY, MAY 2, 1929. AN APPRENTICE’S APPEAL

A good many people no doubt read with interest yesterday’s story of an apprentice’s appeal to the Arbitration Court against his dismissal by his employer. As the youth had served four years of his apprenticeship, his dismissal was a serious matter to him. On the other hand, his conduct had been so unsatisfactory that the Court felt justified in dismissing the appeal. In delivering judgment, His Honour remarked that it was evident that the boy had not learnt to discipline himself. “The boy has force of character,” he said. “Up to the present, however, his good points have been obscured.” Then, on the Union secretary undertaking to find the right type of employer for him, the Judge added: “He wants a big man. It is rather a pity that one of the foremen under whom he served did not give him the father of a jolly good hiding.” , Though one may agree that this homely specific for disciplining unruly apprentices may have its merits, it would hardly do for works foremen generally to act upon the letter and spirit of His Honour’s remark. Moreover, corporal punishment as a medium of disciplining refractory youth is coming to be regarded as a sign of the weakness of authority, not of its strength. Moral suasion is considered to be more constructive. The old-fashioned amongst us may differ on that point, and ascribe to the passing of that salutary expedient, “a good hiding,” much of the prevailing laxity in social conduct and industrial discipline? However that may be, there is another aspect of the case under mention which is deserving of attention. The Union secretary had undertaken to find “the right type of employer” for the recalcitrant apprentice. What, in this particular case, is the “right type”? One who would be capable of dealing with him in the manner His Honour suggests, or one who, recognising his responsibility as a teacher as well as a “boss,” would be able to develop his admitted force of character by methods appealing to his own common sense? The latter, surely. . It should be part of the function of the apprenticeship committees, and of the Court as the centre of authority, to see that employers are duly conversant with the moral side of their responsibilities in the training of their apprentices. _ A child may be seriously disadvantaged by the laxity of its home discipline, or laxity in the school. In the same sense a youth may suffer from the conditions surrounding him during his period of apprenticeship, a period which embraces the critical and formative years of his adolescence. To make of the apprentice not only a good tradesman, but a good citizen, should be the aim. It is a commonplace that a child may do well under one teacher and badly under another. The same must undoubtedly be true of apprentice and employer.