The Hawera Star. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1926. CAREERS FOR BOYS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 6 October 1926, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1926. CAREERS FOR BOYS.

Delivered every evening by 5 o’clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltbarn, Mangatoki. Kaponga, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley Mokoia, Whakamara, Ohangai, Meremere, Fraser Road and Ararata.

The suggestion to institute hoards of advice in each of the larger centres, to guide parents in the choice of careers for their boys, is fully deserving of the warm commendation received from iMr Justice Frazer when it was offered in the Arbitration Court at Auckland yesterday: The lot of the misplaced worker is pregnant with tragedy, and anything which can* be done to lessen the number of square pegs in round holes will be a real service to the country. And, no matter how concerned they may be for their boys’ welfare, many parents are not. sufficiently seized of the opportunities offered by various callings to make the wisest choice of career. It has to be recognised, of course, that many more considerations than this enter into the question—a boy’s own inclinations, for instance, or any special ability which he may have displayed along certain lines —and the function of the board would be to advise by the furnishing of information rather than by active proposal; it should state the case for the several trades or professions possible, then leave decision to parents of boys. Always there will be some who consider themselves superior to all advice, while others again may be forced by immediate economic necessity to disregard the guidance offered. .But the majority of parents, while they might not welcome advice as such, would appreciate the opportunity of ascertaining the actual position, as regards openings and prospects, of anv calling which they had in view. If a boy’s mind is divided between electrical fitting and carpentering at a time when one trade is over-supplied with journeymen and the other shortmanned, it is most important that he and his parents should be made aware of the facts. Tt is too much to hope that a scheme such as that proposed will place every boy in the sphere for which he is most suited. So long as fond parents are prepared to spend unlimited money on the so-called education of their sons, there will be doctors who should have been bnshmen, and lawyers who c-ould not be less successful in anything else. But these deserve no sympathy; that should go to the boy who, for want, of wise guidance at choosing time, has drifted into an occupation which does not appeal to him, one in which his talents are not exercised to the full, or one already overcrowded. Tf he can be helped, no effort should be spared to help him. A busy and contented worker is an asset to the country; an unemployed man with a perpetual grouse, traceable to an uncongenial trade or calling, is a burden to himself and a nuisance to all around him.