Off Equilibrium

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

Off Equilibrium

“The very increase of knowledge itself is becoming a danger. There is a widening gulf between thp expert scientists and the ordinary man fraught with dangerous possibilities for the future.

"Unfortunately, the rapid extension of our educational system has occurred at-a time when our philosophy of life lia s become materialistic.

“We conceive education far too exclusively as a system for the storage of information, and particularly of information gathered from books. In the field of intellectual development the greatest need today is the cultivation of the desire and the ability to exercise independent thought on the problems presented to us In life. “We shall have to be : content with less informative knowledge in order to attain deeper thought, less time devoted to reading in order to have more time for probing with our minds and through discussion what we have read, and more particularly what we have experienced.

“At the present time we are living in the midst of a campaign for national fitness, and we are prepared to spend large sums of money to atftiln our end. While it may be very desirable that our bodily physique Should be strengthened, it is an indication of our limited vision that we are not prepared to make the saine effort for a nobler national fitness —a fitness of mind and soul as well as of body. “We could well afford to devote less attention to man’s control of the world of physical nature in order to. give more attention to man’s control and development of human nature.”—Mr. J. Dudley, chairman of the Educational Settlements Association.