BUSINESS AND EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 March 1922, Page 3

BUSINESS AND EDUCATION.

BRINGING THEM TOGETHER. SOME GOOD ADVICE. Mr. P. A. Best, director of Selfridge’s, speaking at a meeting, presided over by Sir Charles Stewart, director of Marconi’s Wireless, and arranged by the Association for the Advancement of Education ,in Industy and Commerce, urged that education should not be merely an activity of the school or university, but a real and powerful factor of life It should go on through life, hanjl in hand with a man’s daily occupation.

There was another conception of business than that those working with the employer were merely instruments for profit-making and the public simply a source of revenue. It was far truer, historically and ethically, to> regard it as a group of human activities organised and directed to the public service. We gave, say, ten hoursS a day 7 to it, and in this view it was the greatest influence in life to-day, so we should work for our business, and not expect the business to work for us.

Travellers in Germany were coming back with straight faces after having observed how that country was working with the definite ideal of na'Jionai efficiency. Their splendid vocational training had caused all countries to view with some anxiety the apparent unanimity on the part of German labor to work hard and work well, and German labor was turning to its education as the source of its future greatness. The great problem of the next few years for us was to bring the world of business and the world of education into closer connection, and the solution of tne difficulties between capital and labor wouiv. ultimately be not in the sphere of wages at all, but in the enlightenment brought about by education. We ought to have* a keen appreciation of that when we remembered how infinitely sxiperior was the British to the German child.

Every boy, girl, man, and woman entering factory, workshop, or business should be made aware of the policy and principles governing that business, of the service that the commodity manufactured rendered, or the standard of service behind its operations, thereby building up a sense of responsibility, and a feeling of pride; no boy or girl should be left to pick up knowledge from experienced workers. In the continuation schools simple economics should be taught the children, so that they would understand the value of capital, the science of organisation, an.l their place in it.

If unions opposed effort on the part of employers to improve the mentality of the workers, the time would come when they would lose their interest. The great forces of instinct and passion must be intelligently harnessed to creative effort if we wanted to prevent bloody revolution. The days of suppression were over; the days of enlightenment were at hand.