GOING ABROAD TO LEARN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 227, 25 September 1928, Page 6

GOING ABROAD TO LEARN.

The "certain amount of nervousness about sending men abroad" to which the Prime Minister referred in his address to the Railway Officers' Institute, should not trouble him greatly. It should go without saying, of course, that there should be no favouritism in the giving of these trips, no expenditure without a reasonable certainty of a profitable return from the education of the official selected, but it should be equally obvious that it pays the country to send the right kind of civil servant abroad. The man who will go, say, to Australia, and say on his return that we have nothing to learn from Australian railways, should be kept at home, but we do not believe that such a type would be chosen to-day. It is to Mr. Coates' credit that he has promoted relatively young men in the Department, and sent officers abroad to learn from the methods of the great world. The value of travel and experience in schools overseas has long been recognised in our educational world, and the money spent on travel by teachers has been an excellent investment. We are an isolated community, and our conditions of life are very different from those of the parent country. That there is a risk in importing men and women to fill posts here has been proved over and over again, but it is easy for the reaction against this policy to go too far. The cry of "New Zealand posts for New Zealanders" may produce a dangerous narrowness. The problem is how best to keep in touch with ideas abroad — there is always a tendency for this country to be self-satisfied and to drag behind the rest of the world —and while it would not be wise to shut the door on appointees from England and the other Dominions, it is a sound policy to encourage the best of our men and women to seek experience elsewhere. When they return they will still understand and sympathise with our conditions, and they will have seen something of a vastly greater world. We must see to it, however, that due value is placed upon this education. Are we, for example, making the best use of our returned Rhodes Scholars! Is the State sufficiently eager to utilise the services of these picked menf