DOMINION STUDENTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 June 1938, Page 3

DOMINION STUDENTS

MENTAL CAPACITY PRAISED BY VISITOR (By Telegraph —Press Association.) AUCKLAND June 24. Praise for the mental attainments of many New Zealand University students was expressed by the Rev T. C. Hammond, principal of Moore Theological College, Sydney, and rector of St Philip’s Church, who arrived at Auckland to continue a series of addresses he has. been giving to students in the interests of the Inter-University Fellowship of Evangelical Unions. Mr Hammond also mentioned the disabilities under which New Zealand students worked because they had to mix commercial life with their studies. "I have had only a limited measure of acquaintance with university life in New Zealand,”' said Mr Hammond, “but I have been very favourably impressed with the mental calibre of many of the students. It is a new experience to me to find so many men qualifying for university degrees while pursuing strenuous business activities during the daytime. I have been impressed by the resolute determination of these young men to equip themselves for higher branches of commercial and civic life under what we would look upon as heavy disabilities.” Mr Hammond said the two main disadvantages of part-time university life were the collision of interests which naturally followed because students had to divide their time between study and business and the inability of students to take part in group discussions and other features of full-time university life. In England, he said, it was the custom for fathers to send their children to university for a full-time course, but in New Zealand and Australia there was perhaps a tendency among fathers “not to pay the piper.” If the full-time university system could be introduced in New Zealand it would, he thought, be of considerable benefit to students and their country. There was, of course, the opposite view that a young man derived more advantage from taking the hard knocks of experience in the outside world, but his own opinion was that these knocks could just as well come after university life. For those who could not afford a full-time course, opportunity for taking night lectures should undoubtedly be preserved. In his own subject, said Mr Hammond, he though he had noticed a tendency to emphasise in some quarters practical psychology' to the’ detriment of deeper philosophical study. This might be a prejudice of the older school of philosophy, but he believed that closer attention to the great masters of philosophical thought would prove of ultimate benefit to student classes.

Mr Hammond gave one of his addresses to students at Massey Agricultural College, Palmerston North, and he said he had been greatly impressed by it. The college seemed to meet every requirement, both in its up-to-date equipment and its knowledge of the matters dealt with by students. Taking into consideration the size of the country and the practical problems which had confronted settlers, Mr Hammond said he thought New Zealanders were to be congratulated upon the strides they had made in developing cultural and intellectual pursuits.