THE PROBLEM OF THE BOYS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 56, 9 March 1929, Page 8

THE PROBLEM OF THE BOYS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Your articles on the lack of em« ployment offering for our boys must be arousing great interest,. but many .of the opinicus thererh cited are quite besHe the point. . Parents wish to'place their boys .where there is a resonable opportunity o£ earning a moderate income, say £500- £700 per annum, and when we say that there'& an academic bias in the schools, that merely means that parents consider that it i* in professional or senii-profesuinial occupations that their boys have the best chance of attaining' that goal. If, for instance, ■ dustmen were paid £1000 annum, the course in the technique of shovel-handling and methods of dust-shift-' ing would immediately oust in popularity any Latin or French course.

If Mr. Atmore wishes to change popular sentiment in favour of agricultural courses, ( all. he has to do is to make agriculture pecuniarily attractive, which it is very, far from being at present. ' How many farmers to-day are making 5 per *cent. on the capitalised value of their land, even if we allow nothing for the farmer's own wages? It is no argument to say that land is too high in price. That fact merely shows how strong is- the natural bias towards the land, in spite of its poor ' returns. . It is not the manual labour, or the intellectual bias given in schools that' frightens off- the potential farmer; it is the poor monetary return.

Again, the very men who deplore the way in which the matriculation examination dominates our schools are.the very menwho bring about this unfortunate state of affairs. The poor parent is in a cleft stick. - He knows that the bank or busi--1 ness firm, will give preference to those who have performed this extraordinary intellectual feat, and he demands,in his turn that the schoolmaster shall put his sou through the hoops if possible before, his son has passed 16. Hence the rush' iv the school to put a boy through a four-year course in three years; hence the inordinate amount of home work demam-.ed from the unfortunate boy, ajid as a necessary'corollary the true aims of education are largelyobscured.

Of course it is easy, to blame others for a state of affairs for which 'it is 1 admittedly hard to find a remedy, but it is hard for me to believo that boys of 17-19 are too old to start in as office boys. As a general- rule it is true that a boy who matriculate's at 16 is smarter than a boy who matriculates at 17 or 18, but these same • firms who will not take ,on the matriculated boy of 18 would'have taken .him non-matriculated at 15. Surely with, liis two or three years extra education he will be ultimately of more value to his employer. If not, it is high time we returned .to .the prehistoric ideas of Mr. Brandon, scrapped our free place system, and kept our secondary schools only for those who had* displayed sufficient insight to select as parents those who could afford to send them there.—l am, etc., .' ', * ' ' T.