APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13905, 17 May 1909, Page 6

APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM.

BRIDGING THE GAP IN LIFE

Mr Winston Churchill received on March lUth, at the offices of the Board of Trade, a deputation from the Apprenticeship and Skilled • Employment Association on the desirability oi instituting, co-operation between the association and the proposed system of labour exchanges. Miss Adler said the association, established in 1905, had nineteen committees looking after children after they left school. The work of the association was closely related to that of labour exchanges, and last year 950 children were placed in skilled trades. !70 improvers and assistants were placed, and many others received advice. Their work did .much to prevent youngpeople entering "blind alley" occupations. - ' - * . Mr Churchill, in reply, said the machinery connecting national education with the industries of the country was deficient to an extent that was highly injurious. A gap occurred between the period when the State had spent great sums of money for the education of children and the period when those children, then grown up, were able to take- tlisir places as grown men and women in the productive businesses of the country, and in that gap, now almost entirely unbridged or very unsatisfactorily bridged, a groat deal was lost which had been painfully and expensively- gained—knowledge, training,- health, and character. Young people found it extremely ea.sy to get employment of one sort or another in which 110 disciplinary improving element entered, and when the precious years between 14 and 18, when young persons ought to be subjected to the most severe and careful forms of disciplinary training, had slipped away, the young 'people found themselves without a profession of any continuity, and very often with the marks of a, shiftless existence deeply, if not indelibly, imprinted oil character and physical health. That was, to his mind, one of tlie greatest evils of our existing unorganised, or imperfectly 'organised, condition of society and he felt verv strongly that in t-he near future, when labour exchanges had beeYi called into being, they ought to endeavour to establish a connection tvith the schools of the country, and they should certainly look for voluntary help, and endeavour to associate with the work which the State would ,undortake such spontaneous and sympathetic forces as those represented that day.

. For sonic time past lie had been in communication with Mr Runciman at tlio TCdncntion Offices, and this aspect of tlio problem was not;being neglected, but lie should lie telad to confer uitb ibe members of tlio demitiition more in detail at a later period.