The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1919 “CHAUTAUQUA.’

Taihape Daily Times, 19 February 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1919 “CHAUTAUQUA.’

(With which is mcorpornted The faihape Post cad Walemxlno Newa).

There is no way of knowing what Chautauqua means without seeing it. It has been said that it is a university course brought to our doors, but it is not that; there, is- nothing of dry and hard study about it; there is no great expenditure of physical and mental effort necessary in imbibing the richness and goodness of it; there are none of the difficult fences about a university to get over, no preliminary examinations to worry through. So far as we can make ourselves understood about Chautauqua, it is the acme of scientific, concentration of the most beneficial, useful, and entertaining Information that is required in the evolution of the highest class of citizenship. That it is what it is reported to be there is very widespread unimpeachable evidence which docs not admit of dissidcnce. Wherever Chautauqua has penetrated it is there to stay; before one year’s course is thoroughly assimilated Chautauqua returns with a few more tablets of concentrated knowledge and elysium to keep tbe mind on the upward path to highest citizenship and commercial success; there need be no going back. Of eburse, Chautauqua is an American product; it is the evolution of men of highest attainments in the sciences which are most intimately associated with human progress; it w*as organised into a system with such gratifying success that to-day there is scarcely a town in all America that hasn’t its Chautauqua; it passed over to Australia whem it, at this moment, is triumphantly marching through all the States of the Commonwealth; the Australians arc metaphorically falling down and worshipping Chautauqua. Over ninety per cent of the Chautauqua communities of Australia have entered into contracts for its return; Commonwealth newspapers, city and provincial, are raging about, it, and it has already moved over to New Zealand. There is only one way to fully understand what Chautauqua is, and that is . by having actual experience of it. Taihape is to be given an opportunity to see it, because a body of loading townsmen, realising its value as an educator and solver of life’s chief problems, generously guaranteed the necessarily large cost involved. Sometime in March this epitomised university, academy of music and college of dramatic art will come to Taihape, and there should not be a man or woman or even a youth or girl, who fails to grasp the opportunity of taking the full course. It must be understood that although Chautauqua furnishes entertainment par excellence, pleasure is not its supremely vital object, Its prime purpose is dissemination of that knowledge all should bo possessed of to be thoroughly fitted for the new battle of life the great war has forced upon the whole world. It instills into all a deeply rooted appreciation of duty to Jive his or her life for the com/mjaity, but the beauty and amazing success ofChautayqua lies in it£ sagar-coated method of administering its pellets of concentrated learning, its knowledge of principles and facts. With its help hundreds have been led into schol-

astic, or scientific lives, or into the channels of art they wore naturally equipped for, who otherwise would probably have lived a life of nonentity, have missed ihe character of their real being. Under the guise of pleasure and entertainment Chautauqua insidiously and insinuatingly gets its educative mission home on to the intellects,. the uncultivated brain of high fertility power, of which there is quite an ample supply in this healthful young country. Too often one encounters flashes of untrained, uncultivated natural gift, of stunted genius, in commerce, economics, the various sciences and arts, and he regretfully ruminates over what might have been had the vital touch to that sleeping genius or latent gift been given at the right time. Parents should not fail in giving encouragement to their sons and daughters who are now in course of preparation for honourable and successful citizenship, who are about to enter a battle of life that is going to be so different to anything they or their forbears have any experience of, to fully avail themselves of what Chautauqua has to offer, for if only one or two, even, are helped on to a higher and better plane Chautauqua will have been worth all the few hundreds of pounds the Taihapc guarantors have made themselves responsible for in the best interests of the whole community. Never in the history of the world has the possession of knowledge been so essential to successi in life <as st assuredly will be in the almoet immediate future. The social revolution that is imminent will upset, overturn and change all notions hitherto held about education and what it means to its possessors of the future, when the human element will be supreme. Ignorance is the forerunner of human imbrutement, anclf the heart-breaking state of Russia to-day, as evidenced in a Russian proclamation wo published in yesterday ’s issue, is the result of consecrated crudities of foregone ages. Whatcly foresaw that civilised as mankind thought it was, posterity five centuries hence would look on people of the present day as semibarbarians. Chautuaqua is inimical to and incompatible with the horrifying fruits of ignorance that Russia is now reaping; it is the antithesis of all that debases, immiscible with and opposed to all that tends to degrade and keep down, tethered to the stump of ignorance and superstition. Chautauqua is one of the best approved, most successful stopping stones to the advancement of mechanical art, physical science and refinement of taste; it opens up ' the ■way to a culture that will be indispensiblc in the future changed social and industrial conditions, when the human and the monetary elements in the progress of civilisation will have changed places. The advent of Chautauqua will be awaited in Taihapc, with a curious intorcstednoss.