TEACHING THE YOUNG IDEA
Page 65
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CHILDREN in some schools are now being taught to drive. When there is so much talk about co-ordination of effort and integration of plans it is easy to suppose that before this step was taken the Ministry of Education sought the advice and even the permission of the Ministry of Transport. Whether the Government departments have closed the ranks in this way or not there is scope for a possibly whimsical protest from commercial vehicle operators and from other forms of transport.
A vice-chairman of the Road Haulage Association recently gave a not much relished reminder that roads, and particularly motorways, were built primarily for the benefit of trade and industry and not for the private motorist. Elsewhere there have been hints in high places that somehow or other traffic must be found for the denuded railways. It cannot help very much if the plastic minds of children already .disposed to welcome the joys of motoring should be actively encouraged as part of their school curriculum.
PILL WITH THE JAM?
Transport operators could at least insist on administering a pill with the jam. They could ask that the whole field of transport should be taken more seriously in educational circles. The subject has seldom been given academic status, but it could easily be linked with the interest shown by the boy or girl who is receiving driving tuition.
If proposals on these lines were ever put forward the transport industry must expect to have requests for information, visual aids and other material. Road operators, it must be admitted. have badly neglected the keenness which is often there irrespective of any direct association with motoring. Every year there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of school leavers who would like to come into road transport as drivers or as administrative staff. At school they can seldom find much on the subject and their outside inquiries, one suspects, produce very little more that is useful.
With full employment the problem can become serious. For long stretches of time in the past operators have had no difficulty in filling vacancies. Advertisements for drivers and other staff have automatically produced a crop of applicants. How the situation has changed. Good drivers are becoming scarce and the competition for them becomes all the fiercer when it is joined by other interests, such as the car manufacturing industry, prepared to pay higher wages than the average operator can afford. The intrinsic interest in transport as the essential conveyor belt on which civilizations and industries run provides another reason why the subject should be attractive to the teaching profession. As it is, because the older forms of transport have adopted a more enlightened attitude towards education, most children leave school with the general idea that the golden age of transport ended with the heyday of the railways, that road transport has made an ineffectual nuisance of itself over the past few years and that no doubt before long everything will move by air, or underground—in short, by a vastly superior method which will take up no space on the roads.
Even those enthusiasts who would like to be trained in road transport find the opportunities slender. Mr. R. E. G. ,Brown, secretary, London and Home Counties division. Traders Road Transport Association, has given a comprehensive survey which is required reading for anybody interested in the subject. Mr. Brown was addressing the European study conference on vocational training in the transport industry in Dusseldorf last week. He cannot disguise .the fact that facilities in Britain are inadequate for the demand, excellent though some of them may be in quality.
FINGER ON THE DIFFICULTIES He puts his finger on some of the difficulties. For some industries, including the railways, says Mr. Brown, it is possible to have uniformity in training. This is not so easy in road transport. There is almost a complete division between passenger and freight carrying. Mr. Brown also recognizes a very wide variation in size of organization on the goods side and a distinction between the needs of the haulier •and of the C-licence holder.
Hauliers might be prepared to argue with Mr. Brown when he continues that their training requirements are "fundamentallymore straightforward" than those required for transport on own account. Hauliers have been known to complain that traffic managers they have taken a good deal
of trouble to train have been lured away by customers, often in order to set up a transport department to handle the goods which the former employers have carried in the past.
Mr. Brown is conscious of this particular problem. The companies who pay for training, he points out, "often find their trainees lured away by those who do not". He goes on to say that the Industrial Training Act, and the road transport board to be established this year, will to some extent even the score. Employers who provide training will be able to claim the cost from the board. Mr. Brown accepts with no great enthusiasm that the work of the board will not cover the drivers of C-licence holders.
PROBLEM NOT PECULIAR TO BRITAIN The dissipation of the benefits of money spent on transport education is not peculiar to Great Britain. Even in the USA, which on many points is far in advance of this country, there are complaints that not enough students are taking transport as a subject and that of those who go on to take degrees less than half decide in the end to choose transport as a career.
A report published recently by the Battelle Memorial Institute shows how far ahead the Americans are. Educational opportunities for persons seeking administrative careers in transport are said to be declining. "Only" 245 out of 1,230 US and Canadian colleges and universities either offer or plan to offer transport courses. Operators in Britain would be pleased if anything like that proportion were available. As the report points out, however, transport in the US is a £40,000m. industry "which is growing steadily and is recognized as an important element in production costs".
A three-level educational system is suggested for transport administrators. On the technical level, where automation is almost certain to take over many activities, a twoyear programme is proposed, followed by re-training within the company. On the middle management level there would be a four-year programme leading to a degree and including the study of a wide range of subjects, including political science, calculus and computer technology. For top management a graduate course would lead to a master's degree or a doctorate.