THE WORKERS AND EDUCATION.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16145, 25 February 1918, Page 9

THE WORKERS AND EDUCATION.

ADDRESS BY PROFISSOR J

MACMILLAX BROWN

There was a large attendance at the inaugural meeting of the Workers' Educational Association on Saturday night, which was presided over by Mr H. D. Acland, and addresses on educational subjects were given by Professor J. Macmillan Brown, Mr J. H. Howell (director of the Christchurch Technical College), and Mr C. T. Aschman, and Mr W. Densem gave two elocutionary items. Professor Macmillan Brown declared emphatically that he attached a great deal of importance to the work which was being done by the W .E.A., which he preferred to term the Workers' University. Ho told his audience of the steps which had recently been taken by the New Zealand University Senate to enable a matriculation examination to be taken by a student of mature years, the examination to be taken in two parts, and a degreo available without the usual technical learned subjects, such as the dead languages, etc. He also told his audience how the Senate had appointed a deputation, and how he, with tho Chancellor, had waited on the Minister of Education, in the presence of Sir Joseph Ward, in regard to tho matter, with fairly satisfactory results, it being agreed, however, that it would be as well to defer the appointment of an organiser for the W.E.A. until after the war. Professor Macmillan Brown .said that nine-tenths of the electors left school at about 13 or 14. years of age, and a very large proportion did not get beyond the fourth standard. The}' were launched out on tho sea of life unequipped and undeveloped, and it should be tho aim and object of the W.E. Association to look after them and try to get hold of them later in life, for they had not had even the full advantage of a, primary school education. The speaker said the sutures of a Caucasian skull did not close until four or five years after the sutures of a negro's skull closed, and after thirteen or fourteen years of age there was a great growth of the white man's brain, which in the case of many nowadays was left practically fallow and unused. Ifc was a great pity to leave it uncultivated, as was dono in so many cases in this country, and it was clearly the W.E. Association's object to get hold of this material and give it a chance to develop. The main purpose should be tho development of the reasoning powers so that the individual could meet much that was fallacious in what was told him, and-could understand the problems of politics and society. He would ultimately appreciate tho fact that society was an organisation that had grown gradually, and that it was not an organisation that could suddenly be upset and interfered with artificially without hurt. The Bolsheviks in Russia had not realised this fact. They had tried to alter society in the most drastic fashion, and the result had been dreadful chaos and retrogression. The speaker also emphasised the fact that it was an exceedingly dangerous thing to do anything that might tend to abolish thrift. By thrift man first became man. He also said that the mere muscular effort of toil was of little or no value. The value of toil was to be measured only by tho intelligence displayed in its direction. True value was not to he based on muscular effort, but on intelligence. and our country should see that ifc was to the advantage of all that intelligence should be developed to the utmost, for only by these means could the standard of wages and living be permanently raised. He considered also that no solid material advance could be made without a corresponding moral advance, and he hoped an effort would bo made to assist all classes to regard each other with good-fellowship, and not as was sometimes the case now, with distrust and suspicion.