YOUTH TRAINING

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 110, 3 February 1938, Page 11

YOUTH TRAINING

Fairbridge Farm School Scheme AUSTRALIAN’S APPEAL , London, February 1. 'Appealing for a further developthe Fairbridge Farm Schoo scheme, at a meeting of the RoyJ Society of Arts, Sir IL F-Agent-General for Western _ Australia, said that, although the British might view with hatred the totalitarian method of regimenting men and women for unquestioning service to the Stat , there wa s an obligation of yearly increasing intensity for the ., Brltl ® b other democracies to see that children reached manhood and womanhood reasonably well equipped for self-respect-ing citizenship. . . Britain was not discharging her obligation and it was a reproach to the statesmanship of Britain, Australia and other Dominions that the «chool-leffvlng age had not been raised long ago, enabling the giving of a higher measure of the skill and knowledge essential tor the worker under modern economic conditions. This was all the more essential as the apprenticeship system had decayed. . 1 . He emphasised Australia’s increasing need for more people of the right type. That need would be met by the Fairbridge scheme' better than by any ofher method yet tried, or under present conditions likely to succeed. The Fairbridge Farm School scheme is the outcome of the idea of Kingsley Fairbridge, one of the few Rhodes Scholars who knew Cecil Rhodes. I'airbridge saw the London slums and was moved to found the Child Migration Society which selected Western Australia for its experimental farm and established an institution at Pinjarra in that State. Australia was considered to otter the best chances of success, and a beginning was made a quarter of a century ago. Fairbridge is now dead, and lie is buried in what has become a garden village. The children are chosen voung, and until they are fourteen they do not undeigo any course of training. When they reach that age they are taught everything they would learn at an agricultural allege plus other useful arts, such as builaing in wood, brick and concrete. lhe girls learn to milk, grow vegetables, cook and launder. When the trainees have completed their course, at sixteen or seventeen years of age, they are much sought after by employers. Tn 1934 the then Prince of Wales, appealed for £lO- - to start a similar scheme iu Canada, and various move« have been made to extend the system- elsewhere.