South Centerbury Times, MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 1882.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2934, 21 August 1882, Page 2

South Centerbury Times, MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 1882.

The conferring of degrees upon certain students of the Otago University, was fitly attended with a certain ceremony borrowed from the usage of the Universities of the Mother Country; and the proceedings had additional interest imparted to them by the speeches of the professors audl others. It is surely a matter for congratulation that in this young' colony we should possess academic: institutions in full working order, and that these should already hare borne substantial fruit. New Zealand is producing —we are proud to record the fact—-a number of young people whose, love of learning, scholarly tastes, and proud ability, are of incalculable value to the country, and to the cause of sound learning. JTor already «-

standard of attainment is fixed in the colony, and means of training aspirants provided which help to make the colony self-supporting in the professional department of literature and science, just as much as new industries in the commercial world help to make uo commercially self-supporting. We no longer depend upon such crumbs of scholarship as we may receive from the Mother Country; we are no longer at a standstill for want of the imported article. We have native productions of equal, often superior merit. This ceremony of conferring degrees brings us to a consideration of the functions of a University which it seems most important should bo thoroughly understood and rightly defined. The modern idea of a University is that it should be an examining body with the power of conferring degrees. The University of London may be taken to be the chief embodiment of this modern idea, and she has acquired a world-wide reputation, by dint of setting ultra-difficult examination papers. Crowds of students go up to her for examination yearly—it matters not whence, in her examination hall is an omnium gatherum. He who has the biggest supply of facts at command, gains the most marks, and is invested with a distinction. But, when all this is done, how much remains undone, how insufficiently is the mission of the university fulfilled! What, in fact, has been done, beyond giving certain persons academic handles to their names? How and where the requisite knowledge has been acquired,the examiners know not. It is not their business to find out. We do not want this sort of thing in New Zealand. We want the university not merely to confer degree®, but to guide the course of education, to mould systems of instruction. If it effect nothing of all this, it is not Alma Mater, it is costly and useless ; it absorbs too much, and yields too little. It is most important that young people entering upon a uni. versity curriculum, full of enthusiasm, and blindly devoted to it, incapable of reasoning or analysing on the subject, should be guided aright. That guidance it must be the function of the university to afford. It is, or ought to be, the cultivator-in-chief of the national mind. And the mind is a more complicated thing than seems to bo generally understood. It has a receptacle, and an assimilating department. Any system which crams the one and ignores the other- is radically wrong. It is not the reception, but the digestion of knowledge that forms, nourishes and fortifies the mental powers—and the true test of learning is not “ How much do you know ?” but “ How do you know that which you have acquired ?” Take the knowledge of history for example. Every student knows the facts of the Norman Conquest, the darkness of the Middle Ages, the events of the revolutions of the Cromwellian age in England, or of the age of Louis XVI. in France. But every student does not know the far-reaching varied influence of the Conquest upon the people of England; everyone does not perceive how strangely the densest mental darkness and bondage of medievalism preceded the dawn of surpassing brightness and glory; everyone marks not the progress of events leading up to the revolutions or how far the national character in each case influenced the character of the Revolution ; everyone marks not the stately working of immutable laws, over and above the frantic efforts of men. “History is philosophy teaching by examples” said the greatest thinker of even the Elizabethan age. It is not enough to know the examples by vote, one must imbibe the philosophy. The examples are but petrefactions, how they come there is what the true student seeks to know.

Professor Sale spoke with much earnestness against “ cram ” that bane of trne education, that curse of modern school systems. It would be well if onr teachers considered this, and were content to lay “ line upon line ” down in youthful minds ; better if onr public school syllabus had been modified under such guidance as Professor Sale’s ; best of all if onr Universities bruise its head with their heel. Then the spirit of investigation would supersede hasty generalisation. There is no royal road to learning; the way is open to all, but it is long an 4 difficult. A. rs longa vita brevis, is the heartfelt exclamation of the (me student. And these are the patient workers who, in laborious days, “ and nights devoid of ease,” lay the foundation of a nation’s greatness. We commend these considerations to our university authorities, our teachers, and our students.