The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1915. EDUCATION OF WORKERS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 134, 9 February 1915, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1915. EDUCATION OF WORKERS.

(With which is iuco'poratfid The Taihapo Post 'j.n 3 Wuimarixiu News.)

An effort is now being made in New Zealand to extend what is kiion'ii in England as the “'Workers’ Educational Association,” an Association that seeks to provide facilities for those who desire to attend tutorial classes. This movement has spread very rapidly in England, which is an earnest, of the want that existed for the class of instruction it provides. Our young men,, and also our. young women, not belonging to the wealthy classes, have never had the educational advantages that some other nations give to men and women after the ordinary school days are past. The subjects taken are those that have been woefully neglected in our country, but which are of the very first importance to have taught among any progressive people if they arc to retain a position among the high cultured, foremost nations of the earth; they are chiefly economies and industrial and social history. It is universally admitted that the “Workers’ Educationa 1 Association” is putting within our reach an "exceedingly interesting and fruitful form of education, one which is capable of being developed to our advantage in every way. By virtue of these classes studies in economic science and history are taking their place with those in physical and natural science, and also those in languages, as avenues to a liberal culture, and to fields of intellectual interest to young men whose higher education has to be obtained after their work in life has begun. We understand that students who attend these classes usually do so for a period of three years, and, if the English course is adopted, there will be twenty-four meetings held each year, one hour of each meeting being devoted to a lecture and one to class-work on questions arising out of the lecture. The regular writing of essays fortnightly is also a feature of the scheme, and, to quote an English authority, the teachers are usually men of exceptionally high qualifications; and as they almost invariably take more than- one tutorial class, and as class-work and

ossavs arc an essential part of the coin sc, they arc enabled to get into a peculiarly close relation with the students. There is some misapprehension abroad with respect to the teachings of the Association, as was evidenced rcGently at a public meeting in Wellington, when one man asked whether the class would give informal ion that would enable the workers to heat the capitalists. It is in a democracy such as our.'i that classes of the kind should be of incalculable value; we arc striving for legislation to give social and economic improvement; the self-installed leaders of parties and factions arc mostly men who have never given any attention to the study of those subjects in which they essay to lead, and so we drift into almost hopeless economic and social muddles from which the only escape seems to be by the strike. With a course in these classes the man who wanted to beat the capitalists would learn that want, of knowledge was the parent of his question, and this man is really one of thousands who view the.economic and social question from such a standpoint, undeniably showing how important it is to know what remedies have been tried and how they have failed; how schemes that have appeared full of promise have proved to he charged with disaster. There is a delegate from the English Association now in New Zealand with a. mission to place the value and claims of the “Workers’ Educational Association” before our people and Government, and it is certainly in this young country’s best interests that a deaf ear should not he turned to what he has to say We are so eially and economically drifting along in darkness and we shall continue to stumble and blunder along- until we have that knowledge which only can illumine our path.