“THE YOUNG FOLK”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4046, 11 May 1938, Page 6

“THE YOUNG FOLK”

EXAMPLES NOT WHAT THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN. MR BOWYER’S OBSERVATIONS. “ I would like to say a few words to the young folk,” said Mr W. I. Bowyer, of Otorohanga, a member of the Auckland Education Board, in concluding his address at Saturday’s gathering in connection with the celebration of the diamond jubilee of Te Rahu school. “ You have,” continued Mr Bowyer, “ been brought up during the last few years when the examples set you have not been what they should.” Things, he added, had been allowed to drift along against the young folk in New Zealand. The Dominion was the finest little country in the world, and with a population of only a million and a half should be able to absorb all the people into work; yet it was found that employment to-day was worse that when the country was right at its lowest ebb. “1* don’t blame you, ’ he said, addressing particularly the children. “ There are so many attractions these days that you are out hours after you should be in bed.” Mr Bowyer counselled the young folk to take notice of the hardships the pioneers of this and other British countries had endured # and conquered. The young people of to-day did not know what those hardships had meant, and now when they were given half-a-crown it slipped through their fingers. When he (Mr Bowyer) was a boy he received half-a-crown only at Christmas time, at which period* his father also bought the family’s supply of boots and clothing, It was no use asking for these at any other time, as his father, like many of the other settlers, simply had ’not the money with which to buy them. The speaker related how on one occasion he “ planted ” his football boots under a bridge, and how, when he later went .to retrieve them, he ds covered that they had been “ pinched.” The result was that he had to play football barefooted for the rest of the season.