PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19976, 19 June 1928, Page 11

PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRY.

BEARING ,OF EDUCATION. TIMES RAPIDLY CHANGING. Discussing before the Auckland Educational Association last evening the relation of education to industry and industrial problems, Mr. T. Bloodworth strongly advanced the view that it was essential we should obtain a better understanding of our community life. To that end, ho believed, the educational system should be broadened to the greatest possible extent, not so essentially in the direction of vocational training as in a manner to build good citizens fitted to develop their individual bents and keep abreast of rapidly-changing conditions. While admitting there were many young people unable to find employment, Mr. Bloodvvortb said: "It seems as though there ought to be little difficulty in this country in absorbing the 25,000 or so scholars who leave the schools each year, New Zealand is approximately as large as England—its total population is not greater than that of some of the biggest cities of England." On the .other nand, since 1923 there had been an annual average decrease of 3395 in the people employed on farms, while the increase in factory employees—--2846 a year—still left an average displacement from labour in these two sections of industry, of 549 persons a year. It, was facts of this kind that called for consideration in an attempt to decide what was needed to bring our educational institutions more into harmony with our community life The trained child should be taught the relation of its work in maturity to the social and industrial life of its country. " I have no definite plan of education for industry, apart from the best education for life," the speaker said. It was no use having an educational system with an agricultural bias unless farm occupations were mi.de a_s profitable and attractive as those of the city, and that was a problem for legislators rather than educationists. "I am not so concerned that the child should leave school with a better industrial training but that he should leave as a good citizen, with the will and the desire to apply his or her knowledge."-