MR SKINNER RETURNS

Evening Star, Issue 19782, 4 February 1928, Page 2

MR SKINNER RETURNS

ETHNOLOGY RESEARCH ABROAD [Special to the ‘ Stas.’] WELLINGTON, February 3. Mr H. D. Skinner, lecturer on ethnology at Otago University, left Wellington to-night for Dunedin. He has had an eighteen months’ tour, which gave valuable opportunities of securing information hearing on his special subject, including visits and in some cases long stays at leading universities — three and a-balf months, for instance, being spent at Yale. “At that time,” remarked Mr Skinner, when interviewed by a ‘ Star ’ correspondent, “ they were collecting twenty-live million dollars from the alumni for improvement in staff salaries and conditions, as there is a growing appreciation in America of the need to free teachers from.the burden of routine, or from non-teaching work.” “ One cannot help appreciating the good points of the Americans, and, as for this money campaign, they went out after the old students, with the knife so to speak, and gave no quarter; they got the money.” At other universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, and London, the New Zealander obtained opportunities of seeing how anthropology is taught in these institutions. He was also able to learn the methods of archeological work in the field by assisting in work in Central Ohio and Illinois, and for three and ahalf months in New Mexico.