FREEDOM IN EDUCATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 239, 9 October 1928, Page 6

FREEDOM IN EDUCATION.

The Minister of Education has conceded this much to the opponents of his attempt to increase the hold of the Goyernment on the University, that where the State is not called in to pay any part of the salary attaching to a new chair the right of Ministerial veto shall not exist. The Minister, however, will have such right in respect to other new chairs, and apparently the Government is also persisting in its proposal to make the grant to the University an annual instead of a statutory appropriation, which that the financial control of the Government over the University will be made stronger. Protests against this policy have conje from all parties. Mr. Sidev, who probably knows more about University education than any other man in the House, urges, the' Minister' to drop the veto clause altogether. * Mr. Savage, of the Labour Party, finds in the Bill a tendency to bring the University under the control of the Minister. The Christchurch "Press," a Reform newspaper, says that "the excessive interference of the Education Department with the local administration of primary and secondary education is bad enough," but "it is particularly necessary that the University, which is supposed to be a refuge for fearless and independent thought, should be allowed to develop with a minimum of political and official control." In the opinion of the "Press," the Government, as : a • Government, is "utterly unfitted" to decide what fields of knowledge a college may or may not enter into. However, centralisation is the order of the day, and most of the Government's followers in the House are too indifferent to the issues involved to keep the Government in its proper place. |