TOPICS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 129, 5 June 1929, Page 10

TOPICS OF THE DAY

All parents will support wellconsidered steps to facilitate placing youths in employment. The latest proposal in this direction is that of the Technical Schools' Association that a vocational guidance officer should be appointed from thetechnical staffs to watch boys and girls and guide them into the right channels of employment. The Minister of Education favours the proposal and thinks immediate action might be taken if the cost involved is not great. At present the work which would be assigned to such an officer is undertaken by headmasters of secondary schools and directors of technical schools. But they have many other duties, and are often compelled by pressure of work to miss opportunities of directing youths into suitable channels. If vocational officers can help materially in bridging the gap between^schpol and work, the experiment should be worth trying. It is encouraging that this subject has been receiving sympathetic attention from Chambers of, Commerce, manufacturers, and others on the work side. The school side has always been interested. If employers and teachers-can be induced to work together, they can do much more than by working separately. The confidence of employers requires to be strengthened. Just now there is a certain hesitation in making use of hew methods of engaging boys because of a fear that the youths sent may-be unsuitable. If employers can be convinced that the right type of boy will be sent to them they will be more ready to co-operate.

No doubt the members of the Hutt County Council will be pleased to hear from the District Medical Officer of Health, Dr. W. F. Findlay, that "a great opportunity exists in the county for the application of the best town-planning principles, thus removing in some instances serious administrative difficulties in the future." As a rule, those closely-set-tled areas that have their birth in a county do not derive from that fact many town-planning advantages; sometimes the reverse. It too often happens that a county council's mixed business-hoovering, to use Dr. Findlay's words, the administration of "rural areas-and more closely-settled areas"—results in something being left out. And that the Hutt County Council is not altogether above reproach may be gauged from the following:—

There is at times a tendency for houses to be erected which are not altogether what they should be as regards structure and sanitary appliances. The Council must watch this matter carefully.

Unfortunately, the Council, and other county councils, may take Dr. Findlay literally. On the whole, his report on the local bodies is very merciful. He writes that Upper Hutt borough sewerage "must not be lost sight of." Most people will echo this modest hope. In mentioning that the population of Upper Hutt Borough is 3050, Dr. Findlay does not say how many other boroughs of over 3000 people, with a night-cart service, exist in New Zealand. Are there any? If there'are not, the Health Department might whisper the fact to the Local Government Loans Board. But it should not, of course, be said but loud.

Australia is proposing to simplify its industrial legislation, and probably to reduce the number of authorities maintained for the purpose of ensuring industrial peace. There is a strong argument for this in the fact that peace has not been maintained and suspicion that the peace-keeping machinery has served instead to engender strife. But Australia has yet to grapple with the task of substituting something for the legislation and Courts that it is proposed to suspend or abolish. A member of the Victorian Legislative Council, whose views we published yesterday, suggested that arbitration would not be: wholly abolished, but would be retained for certain larger industries. This partial abolition was suggested in New Zealand and was strongly advocated by the farmers. Here,' however, the distinction was to be made not between the big industry and the small, but between the urban and rural occupations. At the time we pointed out that this would produce certain anomalies, inasmuch as the farmer's labour costs were not fully covered by the labour which he employed directly. Possibly he paid less for labour in this way than he paid for labour indirectly, in various forms of transport, for example. It will be interesting to follow the Australian investigation, but we think it will show that more is to be achieved by strengthening the machinery for conciliation than by weakening the arbitration processes. This does not apply, of course, to measures designed to end duplication of machinery and to avoid the inconsistencies in awards, which are a source of great trouble.

"I am strongly of opinion that if we are to preserve the purity of our English tongue, drastic steps must be taken to keep out of these lands of the Southern Cross those of the Ame-

rican talking films which do violence to our Saxon speech." In this uncompromising fashion the New South Wales Director of Education, Mr. S. H. Smith, interviewed for yesterday's "Evening Post" on his return from America, assailed a certain tendency in that continent to not only "twang" speech, but to unconsciously or deliberately speak ungrammatically, as though double negatives and mixed tenses possess some special humour of their own. Mr. Smith's horror of such murder of English will strike a sympathetic chord in a country where the schools still make some effort to keep speech reasonably pure and dignified. Fortunately, side by side with this interview, there was published in yesterday's issue the evidence of the "Evening Post's" New York representative that both announcers and talking film artists are making serious and not unsuccessful efforts to improve their elocution and language. In doing so they will only be doing what common sense would appear to dictate, because— apart from the possibility that Mr. Smith's exclusion plan may be adopted—in all English-speaking countries not hopelessly Americanised it is to be expected that preference will be given by the public to artists who speak English. Part of the decay of the legitimate stage is due to loss of elocution, even' some reputedly good English actresses of the day being mere gabblers of hasty sentences full of clipped words. Speech is still potent, provided that the actor is equal to it, whether he treads the boards or lives in a studio.