COLLEGE PUPILS AND INDUSTRY

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 204, 26 May 1936, Page 10

COLLEGE PUPILS AND INDUSTRY

Many First-year Students Leaving School “HEAVY COMMUNITY LOSS” "Too large a proportion of the boys leaving are first-year students. Industry and commerce are penalising such lads by employing them, for though they continue in the evening school they are often too weary to benefit as they should from class work, and they miss altogether the more important and immeasurable results of association for a long period with a college,” stated the director, Mr. R. G. Ridling, in his report to the board of governors of Wellington Technical College lust night. “The dispensing of learning is not the most important part of our work in the high school, and unless parents allow these young people to remain longer not ouly are the lads penalised but there is a heavy community loss.”

There was at present a great, demand for youth labour, he continued. Industry and commerce both required young people and this demand was in some instances proving a limiting factor in educational work. Of the 36 boys who left the day classes between March 31 and May 8, eight were firstyear students who had had only one term of post-primary training, six were boys with four terms’ post-primary work, and tlie remainder were boys in their third or fourth year. Of the girls who left to take up work, one was a first-year student, two were secontlyear. and the remainder were third or fourth-year students. "It. is an extremely important matter,” Mr. Ridling said. "It is rather regrettable that, something cannot be done to prevent first-year students going into industry in that way.” The Hon. T. Brindle. M.L.C., said the only way to deal with the question would lie by raising the age of leaving school, and he thought that would be a good thing, too. Reporting on the work of the evening school .Mr. Ridling said: "Steady enrolment continues, but the attendance is not so high in the industrial classes as it should be. Many firms are working a great deal of overtime and the workers are not able to come to the college on such nights. Cases have been reporter! to me of students who have not attended for some weeks because the overtime periods coincide with the nights upon which they should attend the college.

“Few realise that the onset of fatigue is a factor in efficiency, and that much of the work done by wearied craftsmen cannot be up to standard and cannot be done quickly enough to be economic. Even in the college where students are doing something entirely different from their daily work, the effects of fatigue as a direct result of that work are evident.”