VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19807, 30 November 1927, Page 10

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE.

A pamphlet giving information as to avenues of employment open for boys aud girls when they leave school is to be issued by the Education Department. It is to be compiled with the help of the Labour Department, and to bo distributed among all Standard VI. pupils in primary schools. Along with the information concerning avenues of employment will be given a description of each type of post-primary school in the Dominion. The idea is excellent. If it be carried out with adequate thoroughness, care being taken to set out clenrly the advantage of pursuing education beyond the primary stage and to make the pamphlet up-to-date in each annual issue, a highly useful purpose shoidd be served. The prevalence of unemployment has accentuated, not created, the difficulty of placing young folk in occupations for which they are suited. That is a perennial problem, often baffling to parents and the young folk themselves. Too often there is no real attempt made to solve it: the line of least resistance is followed, the only clear objective being to avoid immediate economic hardship. This way of doing things works havoc, to the young folk themselves in many instances, and as surely to the economic life of the community considered as a whole. The injury will continue to be done so long as there is lacking adequate co-ordination between education and industry. To avert it is a task demanding effort from both the educational and the economic sides of the maladjustment. A pamphlet, however full of information, cannot work the needed cure; but it can do much by way of diagnosis of the ill, and even mitigate some of its harm. It should certainly help parents—in so far as they are able —to choose intelligently the path of their children's post-primary study and to seek for them the occupations for which they are best fitted As a practical contribution to the solving of a problem with many complex elements, the informative pamphlet should be welcomed.