— 
APPRENTICE EDUCATION. 
This most important portion of the apprentice agreement has under- 
gone but slight verbal alteration during the whole two hundred years, 
but the apprentice conditions have absolutely changed. Intelligent 
modern work is based on a knowledge of scientific principles, and: 
demands a considerable amount of general education. The work of all 
trades is highly complex, and is in a state of instability, since a fresh 
invention may overturn the whole organization of a workshop. Men 
trained along narrow lines may suddenly find their occupation gone. 
Where hitherto one man worked in a shop, there are now numbers, 
and the foreman and master workman are busy men, who have little 
time to spare for the apprentice. There is no one to specially care for 
him, or to impart to him the general knowledge, the necessary mathe- 
matics, the skill in drawing and interpreting drawings, and the various 
other points that go to make an efficient craftsman. Stated briefly, the 
workshop under modern conditions is not constituted to train appren- 
tices to be thoroughly efficient journeymen. Neither can a school alone 
produce an efficient tradesman. The problem can be solved only by a 
careful and well-considered correlation of school and workshop, 
especially during the early years of apprenticeship. 
With an education system that is considered complete at the age of 
fourteen, or even earlier, and an industrial system that on the whole 
allows entry well beyond that age, there is a period of drift during 
which all the most useful lessons of the primary school are forgotten, 
and the newly-unfolding desires, ideals, and potentialities of early 
adolescence are clouded and dulled by idleness, blind-alley jobs, street 
gossip, and other similar character-destroying factors, There is an 
almost complete lack of purposeful guidance at this important age. 
Those who are fortunate enough to haye some schooling, with possible 
vocational guidance, between the age of 14 and 18, are very few. If we 
compare our latest reliable Australian figures with those of the United 
States of America, we are startled by the comparison. 
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