LEAVING SCHOOL TOO EARLY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22892, 22 November 1937, Page 8

LEAVING SCHOOL TOO EARLY

Unfortunately the alarm expressed by the Christchurch Boys' Employment and Vocational Guidance Committee at the tendency of children to leave school for work at too early an age raises echoes in every part of the Dominion. The same backward trend has been noted and deplored by similar committees and by headmasters of high and technical schools in most of the centres. A good deal more will probably be heard on the subject a few weeks hence when secondnry school headmasters deliver their annual reports. Certainly it is one of the deepest import to the Dominion from both the social and economic angles. One suggestion from Christchurch is that the provision, now 15 years old, for raising the school-leaving age to 15 should be given effect. Such action would be generally approved but, as the Minister of Education has pointed out, it cannot be taken all in a moment. The way must be prepared bv the provision of necessary staff, buildings and bursaries. In any case, the higher leaving age would not help to solve the problem of the exodus from secondary schools at earlier ages. The Government should first consider the effect of delivering more half-baked minds into the workaday world. Education is the key to the successful working of democracy, the beneficial use of increasing leisure, and to the making of good citizens. The Government should also consider the effect on employment when so many are tending to commence their Avorking life earlier. It should ask what kind of prosperity is it that forces boys and girls into offices and factories at an earlier age. A large part of the answer will be found in the new industrial laws and their insistence on high wages at 21. Amendments making allowance for experience, or the lack of it, would do much to check the present drift away from the secondary schools.