TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21224, 2 July 1932, Page 8

TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

The Minister of Education has made a welcome announcement concerning technical bursaries and fees for technological examinations. In these times many a youth is suffering hardship through loss of opportunity to learn a trade and inability to pay the relatively high fees ruling for the attendant examinations in efficiency. To moderate that hardship is desirable. It is well, too, that there should be encouraged a development of craftsmanship ; in the fact that openings for employment are scarce is a reason for providing inducement for the good use of enforced leisure. Manual occupations will show the earliest response to better times, and equipment for that return of opportunity ought to be sought in anticipation. In any event, there has been too general a turning to other occupations, of less importance for the economic welfare of the Dominion. If that tendency be decisively checked by the depression, its total effect will no£ be altogether bad. The Minister's reference to a better allotment of bursaries in future, having regard to the encouragement of technical education of various sorts, indicates a wiser use of this method of aiding deserving students than has obtained. What is now in view, while not costly, promises a salutary emphasis on handicrafts instead of academic scholarship, which has been excessively fostered.