A DEFERRED PROBLEM.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4462, 11 August 1941, Page 4

A DEFERRED PROBLEM.

IT cannot be reasonably doubted that the extent to which the demand for what has been called juvenile labour is being met by the abandonment of their school courses by boys in or below their middle teens in and around Te Awamutu as elsewhere in New Zealand will create a problem that will prove somewhat troublesome in time to come. Comment is made on it in the report of the Public Service Commissioner. The temptation to step at pnce from a classroom into a position that offers good wages is one which, it may be admitted, it is difficult for a schoolboy to resist. But the immediate advantage which he thus gains may’ be secured at an ultimate price that may prejudicially affect his whole future. Though the danger of this may 7 not be apparent to the boy dazzled by the prospect that is opened up before him, it should not be beyond the powers of comprehension of the parents. Conceivably the economic factor governs in some cases the decision to take a boy away from school before he has completed his primary educational course in order that he may become a wage-earner, but the opinion which the Public Service Commis-

sioner expresses, that it is a pity that boys are being attracted away from their schools before they should leave, is one that is generally wellfounded. The effect must be, if these boys prove incapable of retaining their positions, that their educational deficiencies must handicap them severely when they have to seek fresh employment. In the meantime, the succession of secondary school pupils qualifying for better jobs has been interrupted. Another regrettable tendency is noted in the report of the Public Service Commissioner. “It is a pity,” he says, “to see boys enticed away by 7 offers of higher salary, often to dead-end occupations, which offer neither a training nor a career.” The Public Service itself has suffered from the operation of this tendency. Of 68 lads who resigned last year in their first two years of service 49 left in order that they might receive higher wages. It is to be feared, as the Otago Daily Times observes that the lure of good pay often overshadows other considerations 4uch as the probability of permanence of tenure of office and the prospect of advancement that should be taken into account before an appointment is accepted. A youth’s career may in such circumstances be sacrificed before it can be said to have been actually begun. The danger that is associated with the employment of immature and unsuitable labour is so far from fanciful that it is well that the existence of it should be fully realised. It threatens a problem that will be among those that will require investigation after the war is over, when the men on active service return to claim the positions they have temporarily vacated.