APTITUDES STUDIED

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 144, 16 December 1930, Page 10

APTITUDES STUDIED

VOCATIONAL TRAINING

MUST NOT BE NARROW

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") PALMEESTON N., This Day. "The narrow academic education that we have heard a good deal about recently has for years been extinct in our-schools," says Mrs. Bhodes, principal of the Palmerston North. Girls' High School, in her annual report at the school's prize-giving ceremony. "The change has come about almost imperceptibly, but the day has long gono by when tho child entering a. secondary school, took without question a stereotyped course provided regardless of' circumstances, ability, or aptitude. Nowadays, various courses are provided, and aptitudes are carefully considered beforo tho pupil starts her new school life. No pains are spared to iit the child in. every way for her futuro life. "And in this connection I would strike a note of warning. One thing that must be avoided is a too-early starting on a purely vocational course. Every day we are having it more urgently brought home to us that we are not a unit, standing apart, but that our material welfare is closely bound up with that of other nations, and more particularly with the welfare of other parts of our Empire. "If wo are to hold our own in the increasingly strenuous economic competition, we need woll-trained intelligences, alert and active, with a wide outlook. No narrow vocational training will provide this. "We must have a broad cultural basis on which to work. Even from the purely material standpoint of prospective employment, the trained, alert intelligence is the more valuable. That is what our modern secondary schools aim at producing, and I think I may claim that they are becoming increasingly successful."