SCHOOL DAYS TOO SOON OVER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23222, 16 December 1938, Page 10

SCHOOL DAYS TOO SOON OVER

Many girls and boys leave the secondary schools at 15 and 16, too early if they are to derive full benefit from higher education. The complaint is not new. It was being made at prize-givings by the headmasters of 30 years ago, just as it is to-day. The working world has always lurked just .around the corner, waiting to put the yoke of labour on the slender shoulders of lasses and lads, a yoke that few can put off for all their lives thereafter. That is why many parents, this week and next, will be able to make no more than a poor attempt at sharing their children's joy in the thought: "Schooldays over at last." But the call of the working world is imperious, "a start must be made sometime," and the effect of the new labour laws is to compel many to make the start earlier than used to be the case. "Wage awards take account of ages and the minimum wage must be paid at 21. A girl or boy must acquire sufficient experience and qualifications to justify that wage before they reach 21 and so it becomes necessary to leave high school a year or two earlier than they would otherwise have done. So their higher education is being cut short just when it should begin to bear fruit. The Minister of Education should not permit such a wasteful condition to continue. He should go to the new Minister of Labour, who is a man of perception and administrative skill, and explain what is happening. He should point out that it need not happen if wage awards are related to experience and that New Zealand cannot afford to truncate the education of youth because labour awards are inelastic. Schooling should be given the right of way for every youth. As Miss E. M. Johnston told the parents at Auckland Girls' Grammar School only yesterday, a sound foundation must be laid "if New Zealand is to hold her own in the world of to-day and to-morrow."