VERY LOW STANDARD

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 75, 25 September 1941, Page 5

VERY LOW STANDARD

APPRENTICES AND THEORY

A sharp criticism of the education of apprentices and of their response to education and interest in their work was made at the conference of electric power board and supply authority engineers yesterday.

Reporting upon the results of examinations for wiremen, Mr! J. A. Smith, the association's representative on the Wiremen's Registration Board, said that the written part of the examinations showed a very low standard of work. Of 191 who sat for the examination in March only 41 passed. The majority of those, who failed showed "complete ignorance of the rudimentary principles and applications of electricity, and in the simple arithmetic examples, and had taken little, if any,, interest in that part of their work during the apprenticeship."

Certain boards had suggested that, because of the shortage of wiremen, the standard of examination should be lowered, said Mr. Smith, but the standard was within the reach of any apprentice who would apply himself in any degree, and if it was to be lowered further they might as well simply hand certificates out.

Mr. H. F. Toogood said that registration conferred a privilege, and those who hoped for privileges must be prepared to work for them. Ther.e was something very much wrong with education, and he suggested that too much time was spent on teaching the mazurka, as he had heard over a radio educational talk" and not enough on education. He cited the struggle of one examinee, answering a question about restoring respiration after shock, who had four shots at spelling "stomach," then crossed all his attempts out, and used a slightly shorter and less polite, though correct enough, word.