IMPERIAL IDEALS

Hokitika Guardian, 26 June 1928, Page 4

IMPERIAL IDEALS

EDUCATION AND TRADE,

WELLINGTON. June 23

With tho aim of securing a fully representative delegation from New Zealand to the National Educational Conference to he held in Vancouver in 1929, ■ Professor W. F. Osborne, of the University of Manitobia, Winnipeg, is now in Wellington on a tour of the educational centres of the Dominion. He is fully accredited by the Canadian Government'and interviewed tho Prime Minister (the Right Hon. J. G. Coates) and the Minister of Education (the Hon R. A. Wright) this morning, hut will be in a better position to announce the suecss of his mission at tho conclusion of bis three weeks’ tour.

“The conference,’’ said Professor Osborne, “aims at the stimulation of citizens’ interests in”education and proving that it may he possible to utilise the schools to inculcate high ideals of personal conduct and business service, demonstrating the use that could be made of them in the fashioning of a high national mentality. Germany demonstrated the disastrous use that could ho made by shaping the national mentality in terms of brutality, aggression and domination. Why should young countries, such as’Canada, New Zealand and Australia not say that they, are determined to accomplish Imperial success with opposite ideals?

“We believe that education tends to deteriorate when left to itself, and that it requires to be stimulated and toned up by the earnest attention ot the whole mass of the citizens, while wo believe that schools are the place where national character and national ideals can best be formed. This will be the fourth conference that has been held. Inasmuch as the conference will he held at Vancouver, which overlooks the Pacific, and as we are desirous of widening' itri British character, wo hope to secure the best possible delegation from the British Pacific peoples of Australia and New Zealand. I am the bearer of invitations from the Chambers of Commerce of Vancouver and Victoria indicating their earnest desire that we should not only have a large delegation from those countries, hut that it will be fully representative of their business interests; The Canadian Council of Education has no propagandist desires, but it must be apparent to every lover of the British race that i.f these widely severed dominions are to l>e kept together wo must increasingly make an effort to understand each other’s menta i-'v and foster common ideals.”

Professor Osborne will de'ivgr addresnes on various subjects of Imperial interest while in Wellin'.t m, including the relationship of ihc races in Canada. and the Canadian attitude towards ' American ponotra’inn. He loaves Wellington for Dunedin, and will afterwards visit Christchurch.'