CHOICE OF A CAREER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20426, 30 November 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

CHOICE OF A CAREER.

THE HERITAGE OF YOUTH.

BY E. MOWBBAY-FINNISS

XV. It is probably only the historian who can appreciate the full significance of youth's heritage, for only he can usually seo as far ahead as behind. " Every generation," said Macaulay, " enjoys tho use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages." During the last twenty-five years a tremendous " urgo" has been given to life in almost all its departments; the like no preceding years have witnessea. Wo bequeath to our children a wonderful heritage. To appreciate this new world into which our children are entering, and to have that forward-looking mind that

can visualise tho world of twenty-five

years hence, is the first essential qualification of any man or body of men who would seek to prepare youth for life's calling or give advice upon the choice of a career.

In the days long ago, when men were icwers of wood and drawers of water, the

responsibility of parents toward their children was very slight, for little training and education was necessary to enable their boys and girls to enter into tho joys

and responsibilities (and the joys were never sweeter or purer) of that simple

life. But the world as we know it today is so highly civilised, so exacting, so complex, so clever and deep in its de-

vices, that we do our children a grave injustice if we fail to use every possible

means at our disposal to train and edu

cate them to appreciate and make a hundred per cent, use of the wealth that is theirs at the asking. They do their Maker wrong Who. in the pride of ago. Cry down youth s heritage, And all the eager throng , Of thoughts and plans and .schemes With which the young brain teem 3.

Parents, teachers, boards of managers, wo do a great injustice to those wo have honoured iu marblo and stone a great army of men and women of every faculty —if we fail to bring up the children entrusted to our care to make full use of

the gifts that are bequeathed to them, gifts that have been purchased at so great, a price. Our boys and girls will respond if we give them half a chance. The New World.

Historians who record the progress of the early part of the twentieth century will speak of it as the triumph of the mind over the body and our children may witness an even greater triumph, that of the spirit over the mind and body. Even now it is widely recognised that re-

ligion can no longer be regarded as a luxury or extra in human life, but a necessity to man's well-being, without which he falls short of his true destiny and remains in a measure abnormal. Parents, it is not enough merely to train your child to dig to-day, useful as this form of bodily exercise is to any youth. He has a brain that lias been evolved through thousands of years, which, if developed, will enable him to do more than half his digging by thinking. Science and machinery have already put more than half of man's muscular powers out of action. We must train our boys and girls from an early ago to think for themselves and use every opportunity of showing them tho world into which they have shortly to take so great a part. Modern education demands a knowledge of material facts rather than a well-de-veloped logical mind. Wise parents will therefore use every opportunity to develop in their children this first principle of education which is so lacking in our modern system, for to-morrow the demand in any and every calling of lifo will be for tho well-developed mind, the one hundred per cent brain. Youth and Opportunity.

Thero is no more pathetic sight in the world to-day than the tail-end of an unemployment queue. Even tho casual observer can see that these men are capable of doing little more than the men who were hewers of wood and drawers of water a thousand years ago and are therefore economically of no commercial value. But what is even more pathetic still is that youth largely figures in that tailend. God only knows whether tho men themselves, their parents, or their country are most to blame, but we must all take care that the boys and girls who are at school to-day do not drift there. If we send them into the new world so equipped that they will be indispensible links in the chains of circumstance, tho curse of unemployment will be unknown twenty years hence. Happily, another feature of this new world into which our children , are entering is tho high value that is placed upon youth to-day. Let youth rise up and grasp its great opportunity! Camden tells us that " young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to be so," but youth has long since proved by creat thoughts and valiant deeds that they are no fools, but tho chief asset of any community. Goethe, with greater insight than Camden, said that " the destiny of any nation at any given time depends on tho opinions of its young men under five-and-twenty," and if Goethe lived to-day ho would have said young men and women. It behoves those of us who have reached middle ago to look well to our insurance policies and pension allowance! , , " Why will not Youth understand that it is in possession of the thinking period of life? It imagines that Age is full of wisdom and is always developing great ideas as well as great schemes, and, in a word, making full use of the experience to which it has attained. Nothing could be more untruo. With very few exceptions Age is resting upon its oars, and lotting the impulse which it has given to the boat by previous strokes carry it on as far as it will. Talcing the Flood-tide*

The Church is the most glaring example of this, and will never get anywhere until vouth takes hold of the oars. Tho world itself is young, throbbing with power which man has yet to release, and it is youth which must find the key to open the way for humanity to enter upon its full heritage. From age to age youth is the builder, age the guardian and preserver. - New Zealand boys and girls, your heritage is peculiarly great, for you live in a rich and glorious land. Make up your minds that you will use this sacred inheritance wisely and well and not squander it. I will make no apology in altering one word in what may be considered as the greatest words Shakespeare ever wrote: There is a tide in the affairs of youth. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to tortune; , ~ . ... Omitted, all the voyago of their. lif<? Is bound in shallows and in "usenes, And we must take the current ■when serves Qr logs QUf y^ntiVM,