ENCOURAGING STUDENTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 828, 23 November 1929, Page 6

ENCOURAGING STUDENTS

developing research TALENT SCOPE OF UNIVERSITY A system tUat will draw the most talented from all ranks, and, by scholarships, stimulate their development so that the future of the Domini ion may be in the hands ot those who are best able to see beyond the present and make the most of its : possibilities, is what New Zealand | needs. i This opinion was expressed by the Chancellor of the New Zealand University, Professor J. Macmillan j Brown, at a meeting of the University j Council yesterday. ! It was essential of a civilised coni- | munity that every man and woman j should be educated up to their capacity, but no race or nation ever developed unless there was a method of drawing out its special talents and stimulating them to the utmost. The talented formed the advance guard who scouted into the darkness and discovered the best route for the nation to take. Scholarships to bring tile capable young men and women from the primary system to the secondary, and again to the nni- | versity, were essential, though the system could be overdone. ”He had heard teachers again and again complain that they could not do full justice to the talent they felt it their duty to the country to develop, because they had so many mere pass t students to train, a proportion of j whom never attained success and could never attain it. In the university colleges the professors, who were eager not only to do research work themselves, but to stimulate talents for research in the best students, had their hands too full of students who were just up to the level of a pass degree to fulfil their ambition. ’’And this wastage will go on as long as there is so little selection by Ihe entrance examination and too few scholarships, especially post-gradu-ate, to tempt the talented to seek the best sphere for their talents. Of course in all scholarship systems there is a certain amount of waste, but the higher we go the less there is, as the research student has found his true career; it is in the post-graduate system that the wastage reaches its minimum. It would pay the country to take a proportion of what is spent on sending the youth of average or below average ability to secondary schools or in bringing them to the pass stage in university colleges, and spend it. on the development ot talent, especially talent for research. "It is true a percentage of those who gain post-graduate scholarships and go abroad do not return, because of the wider field for talent in the more developed countries and the scarcity of well paid posts in New Zealand; but the percentage is not very large aud those that remain abroad are often so brilliant that they spread the name of the Dominion throughout tho world and form the most striking of the advertisements that, wo are told, she needs,” concluded the speaker.