legislative Assembly

Honourable Gordon L. Bennett: Coming back to our Vocational School, Mr. Speaker, it has been a very active one as I say, and, like attendance in our academic schools, it has been moving ahead. We are not very interested in statistics but I have been told that the Vocational High Schools in this province this year have a total attendance of 740 students as compared with 585 a year ago. Most of the increase arises from the fact that we are operating this year for the first time a Grade Eleven class in the Institute just outside this city. Now despite increased enrolments I am told that there is a heavy drop-out rate in our Vocational Schools. It appears that many of the students registered there, and perhaps my predecessor in office ob- served the same situation, many of those registered in the Vocational School are not particularly vocationally minded. They are there not because they like vocational education more, but they like academic education less. And the “cast-offs", if we refer to them as such, from the academic stream will for the most part, become drop-outs and failures in the vocational stream. It is anticipated that an expanding program, and a continuing program in Guidance at both the Elementary and High School level will help to remedy this situation. I think we are all aware that there is a very extensive adult training program underway in this province at the present time. Approximately twenty-five courses for adults are being given in a great many Island centres, including, working from the West, Tignish, Alberton, O’Leary, Mount Camel, Egmont Bay, Wellington, Kensington, North Rustico, Rollo Bay, Montague, Murray Harbour, Murray River and Souris. A total of approximately 1800 adults have been attending these classes either as night or day students. This large number of adults, “back to school” so to speak, indicates pretty clearly that we are on the threshold of important changes in the approach to Man Power Development in this country. Not long ago. in terms of civilizatinn’s timepiece, a man’s trade usually lasted a lifetime and often his son followed in his footsteps. The way people lived when a man died was very much the same as they lived when he was born, but today this is ceasing to be true. For most of as things change more in ten years now than they did earlier in a hundred or even a thousand years. We are only be- ginning to appreciate the significance of this, we are only beginning to realize that skills become obselete very rapidly. More and more of us must expect to spend part of our working lives retraining and reeducating ourselves for new jobs. This thought was presented very pointedly by an anthropologist who said, with regard to our present development in vocational and technical education, “We are now at the point where we must educate people in what nobody knew yesterday, and prepare in our schools for what no one knows yet, but what some people must know tomorrow." Quite a feat, I am sure we will admit and quite well recognized by all of us as we observe the rapidly changing world.

Some Member: New mathematics.

Honourable Gordon L. Bennett: That might be included there, Mr. Representa- tive from Second Kings.

I would like, Mr. Speaker, to raise the question how then do we educate the youth for a nonpredictable future. and how do we prepare our students for a world where changing occupations will be very frequent for the average individual? The answer I submit is obvious, the man who is truly educated rather than narrowly or specifically trained is prepared then for any change that he might encounter in the future. And this, Mr. Speaker, is the reason why we have been examining our pro- gram in vocational education in this porvince. We feel that there must be a very high level of general education coupled with vocational skills in which these young people are interested. We have been examining these programs and we will continue to examine them to make sure that our vocational school program contains the high level of general education that is necessary in this age of rapid technological changes. Our vocational and our technical training must keep pace with the changing times.

I would like to say a word, Mr. Speaker, about Consolidation in view of the fact that much has been said on this topic recently. When we accepted office in mid-summer last year there were four consolidated elementary schools well under construction and it was my privilege late in the fall to participate in ceremonies associated with the official opening of these schools. It gave me the opportunity, and I was happy to seize this opportunity, to pay tribute to my predecessor the honourable member from Second Prince for the work that he had done in the program of consolidation and assisting in designing and promoting the construction of these

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