FARM WORK FOR BOYS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21560, 3 August 1933, Page 8

FARM WORK FOR BOYS

Reluctance on the part of boys and youths to* accept jobs on farms is reported all too frequently. For this attitude parents are largely responsible. Evidently many of them prefer that their sons should remain idle rather than leave the towns. In some cases, doubtless, the aim is to keep a boy on the spot in case a job should turn up. Generally speaking, however, the parental objections to boys taking up farm work are that it is beneath them, that there are "no prospects," and that the pay is too small and the hours too long. To these many of the boys themselves would add that life away from a town is unbearably dull and in too many instances parents, with a misguided sense of devotion, support their immediate wishes. What, however, is the alternative to farm work under present conditions? In the majority of cases it is idleness. In the towns there are very few openings with prospects. A boy may wait and wait, and the longer he remains in idleness, which often is undisciplined idleness, the harder will it be for him to settle down to work when the depression lifts. Any work is better than none. The habits of a lifetime are formed in the most impressionable years. It is by no* means essential that a boy now going to farm work should feel that he must make his career on the land. What is important is that he should develop the habits of regular industry, become hard physically and keep himself mentally alert, so that when some degree of occupational choice comes his way he may be equipped to exercise initiative. Parents who refuse to allow their boys to take the chances that offer for equipping themselves for life, which, after all, cannot be ordered for the majority in the best of circumstances, assume a very grave responsibility. Often they do them a serious disservice.