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The Dominion. FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1935. EDUCATION AS A CURE-ALL

4 - The Chancellor of the University of New Zealand is privileged, as the head of an important educational body, to make on stated occasions a public deliverance on any topic which may seem to him worthy of attention and discussion. One of these is the annual meeting of the University Senate, at the opening of which yesterday the Chancellor’s address, owing to his indisposition, was read by pi oxy. The address was a survey of the present problems and dangers wit.i which modern civilisation is beset, coupled with an earnest appeal for the recognition of education as a curative factor. The Chancellor referred especially to the exploitation of the universal fear of war by munition-makers, and the need for fostering through education a higher degree of intelligence in the human race as a means of combating this destructive system. How is this higher degree of intelligence to be fostered ? Professor Macmillan Brown declares that “it is the surest precursor of retrogression and decadence when the Government of a country - he means this country, does he not? —“resorts to the funds of educational institutions to bolster up its failing finances. . . ._ It is the last act of despair to tamper with the finances of education. It means the suicide of a nation.” Does this observation help us to see how education can be made to supply the remedy for the present ills of civilisation? It implies in effect that the more money is spent on education the better off in almost all respects humanity will be. Inherent in that is a dangerous fallacy. It by no means follows that liberal expenditure on education will produce commensurate results in a higher degree of intelligence. That depends entirely on the kino of system upon which the money is spent. If the system is wrong, it will make no difference whether two, four, or ten millions a year are spent on education. If it is sound, then it may be asserted with ample justification that the utmost expenditure the country could afford would hardly be enough. If ever a higher degree of intelligence were wanted it is to-day, but a system of education that assesses intellectual efficiency by memory tests —which is what we have to-day—will never enable this community to attain it. Defenders of the present system have instanced in its justification distinguished graduates who have attained eminence abroad. That is a poor argument, because these men in truth have succeeded, not with the assistance of the system, but m spite of it. We will never be able to reform the system as long as its products, in defence of their parchment status, have a vested interest in perpetuating it. Is it to be expected that the graduates of our University, the coping stone of a memory system that has been condemned by competent critics, to say nothing of at least one distinguished Royal Commission, would frankly and unanimously admit that their degrees had no intrinsic value? Can they explain why it is that so many men who were stigmatised as blockheads at school have risen to eminence in later life through their own efforts? Professor Macmillan Brown’s proposition that a more generous endowment of education would rid the world of most of its problems and all of its terrors misses the point. The case is. not so much a question of intellectual efficiency as a question of ethics, the simplest rules of which, if universally applied, would suffice to solve, all problems and banish all wars. A higher degree of intelligence in a nation might no doubt enable it to solve the problems of peace with greater efficiency, but. unless its moral attitude was of a kind which would strongly discountenance the rule of force, it would also be capable of carrying on a war with all the advantages of its higher intelligence. It takes intellectual capacity of a high order to organise and carry out a war, but simple faith and altruistic ideals alone can advance the reign of peace. If, then, education is to be made an effective instrument for the salvation and welfare of mankind, it must have a new basis, a new objective, and a new system of evaluating human intelligence. Its basis should be the correlation of thought with human experience, not the “mugging up” of facts that can be obtained from reference books: its objective should be altruistic; and its system of evaluation aimed at the assessment of human virtues as expressed in character, personality, and efficiency in doing. Such a system, it is conceivable, would found a new type of citizen, a new breed of men and women to whom service, rather than personal gain, would be the highest aim in life.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19350118.2.45

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 97, 18 January 1935, Page 8

Word count
Tapeke kupu
796

The Dominion. FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1935. EDUCATION AS A CURE-ALL Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 97, 18 January 1935, Page 8

The Dominion. FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1935. EDUCATION AS A CURE-ALL Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 97, 18 January 1935, Page 8

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