More Difficult to Decide

Te Ao Hou, March 1966, Page 8

More Difficult to Decide Then too, there is the opposite case of pupils ill-advisedly taking up a career for which they are not fitted, and failing to succeed. It is often too late to start on a more suitable alternative, and so a career is wasted. Another problem for the country pupil is the lack of first-hand experience of a sufficiently wide range of occupations. City pupils see these jobs around them every day, and they know a lot more about different jobs than country pupils do. The latter frequently have no way of deciding whether or not they would like a particular job. Sometimes I suggest office machining to a girl seeking advice, and then I have to explain as best I can what an office machinist does; but because the girl has never seen an office machinist at work and cannot visualise what it would be like, she discards the suggestion. On one occasion I tried to interest a hefty young fellow in the pattern-making trade in a foundry. I had a job ready for him if he wanted it. He had never heard of a foundry and was quite unimpressed with my description of the pattern-makers' work. He couldn't visualise the work, so he turned it down. He is now working on the chain in a freezing works.