THE MODERN APPRENTICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13148, 10 April 1906, Page 4

THE MODERN APPRENTICE.

It is well to apprentice boys and -gills, but as a teaching system apprenticeship alone cannot be relied on (says the Saturday Review-. In teaching lawyers or doctorsit is not deemed sufficient; and the articling to a solicitor, or the reading in chambers of a Bar student, or the apprenticeship of a medical student to a practitioner, has had to be supplemented by wider and more organised systems. So it will have to be with the training of youths in all grades of manual labour if they are to become accomplished crafts-men. Actual work in tne shop is necessary, but the work must be first of all preceded by a suitable elementary education; and thereafter there must be schools whose teaching is an accompaniment and ground work of the work in the shops; the youth passing to and fro between both in the years of his apprenticeship. If the public are convinced that it is worth while i to have better trained workers, it will agree with tie County Council that its elementary and secondary and technical schools should be closely connected with the workshops. The Council's education programme has too often seemed unsuitable for its pupils; and the public will sympathise more heartily with its views on improving the apprenticeship system than with some others of its experiments. Sympathy must mean approving rates, not for premiums indeed, but for suitable schools and teaching, which will enable boys and girls to learn what cannot be taught them in the workshops while at the same time making a more intelligent use of the workshop than they are able to do in present circumstances. The co-operation of employers, too, will be required, and will probably not be refused when they see how the apprentice system, , modified according to modern requirements, may still give the best results. No less important will it be to secure as well the sympathy and assistance of workmen themselves in the training of their successors; and tire spirit of the old guilds must be preserved so that apprentices shall not be used to depress the wages of workmen.