SHOULD LEAD WAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 90, 13 October 1937, Page 5

SHOULD LEAD WAY

TECHNICAL COLLEGES

— * INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

The belief that technical colleges should by research work act as leaders in industry and commerce was expressed by Mr. R. G. Ridling. Director of the Wellington Technical College, in an address at the Rotary Club luncheon yesterday. It was not possible, he said, for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to do all the necessary research work, much of which must eventually be carried out by the technical colleges. He would never rest until the time came when by such work the technical colleges would give a lead to industry and commerce.

If more people in Wellington understood ,the work bemg done by the Technical College, said Mr. Ridling, a great deal more public Interest would be taken in it. There were between 3000 and 4000 pupils at the college, which had a staff of about a hundred, all real specialists in their own particular lines. . , _ , "In the Wellington Technical College we are prepared to do almost anything to improve the conditions of our fellows and to assist in giving that instruction which is essential in all branches of the professions and industries," said Mr. Ridling. Students were taken from the primary schools and could stay at the college as long as they liked or as long as the college could be of service to them. They had in one class a man and his son, and the son was 30 years old. The college had three aims. The first was to take the students and guide them through the period of instability usually associated with adolescence. Many employers liked to engage boys and girls at about the age of 14, but Mr. Ridling said that that was the most unstable time of their lives, when they needed somebody. with experience and sympathy to guide them, and to make them fit in a few years to give that assistance to industry which they ought, to give. The second object of the college, continued Mr. Ridling, was to provide facilities for the educational advancement of the pupils and for the discovering of their aptitudes and to make them dexterous by suitable training. The third and last object was to see that the pupils were put into positions for which they were suited and to watch them for a while afterwards to smooth over the difficulties that nearly always arose when the pupils first went to work. In this last object great success had been attained. Mr. Ridling said that at the Technical College a pupil could train in almost any subject to a standard high enough to enable him to present himself for examination for an associateship. The college was assisted by advisers in many professions and trades in the city, and one of the duties o£ the heads of the various departments at the college was to keep the curriculum abreast of commercial and industrial needs.