We Must Find "Quality" And Use It

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 233, 10 December 1943, Page 13

We Must Find "Quality" And Use It

(The second of a recent series of talks from Station 3AR by

J. D. G.

MEDLEY

M.A., Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University )

N my first talk I tried to set, out the thesis that reconstruction on democratic lines is concerned basically with persons and not with machinery. This being so, it is clear that the educator is legitimately concerned with its problems, But it is most important that we should be clear how much he is con-cerned-the more*so as we are starting late and must be selective, if we are to do any good. He cannot do miracles in any case and he has no one panacea for our troubles. Raising the school leaving age, increasing the number and improving the calibre of teachers, revising the curriculum and so on-all these are excellent and essential in their way, but must all be subordinate to a true understanding of their real end. And that, I think, can be simply stated. After this war there will be another war to be fought-the war against the ideas that the Nazi idealogy has let loose upon the world and which will not perish with the Nazi armies. That war can be fought in only one way by a democracy with any hope of success-a way which for want for a better name may be described as Quality Control. The Search for Quality To Survive as such in the world of the future a democracy can afford to neglect no smallest fragment of quality that may exist in the minds of its citizens. It must be discovered, trained, and used, and in the first two of these activities the educator is most intimately concerned. As ° regards the meaning of quality there is no need to be more explicit. We all know that there is a grave wastage of it in the community, that children leave school too early in order to satisfy the economic gospel in which they have been nursed, that reinforcements of the right calibre are most urgently needed in the ranks of those who will direct the future of this country. There must be an incieasing and an insatiable demand for technical and administrative skills of the highest grade, and they must be supplied if we are to run any chance of emerging safely from ‘the wilderness. Quantity, of course, has its importance; there is much to be done before we can say, for example, that the average elector is capable of exercising his privileges with the maximum of intelligence and the minimum of passion. But it is even more important to ease his task by bringing it about that issues are presented to him in a way that gives him some chance of understanding them. I am, I suppose, an educated person and I am; I know, talking to educated people, but I admit without shame, and expect you would agree with me, that I found it difficult during the last Federal election to feel that I was a really intelligent citizen. And I do re think that it was entirely my own fault. This concept of Quality Control will dominate the rest of what I have to say to you, but before I come on to more

general questions I want to intersperse a few remarks on the immediate situation that will confront us as soon as demobilisation begins to loom and reconstruction becomes our main preoccupation. Unless the short-term problems that will arise are solved, we may as well stop thinking and talking now, for we shall, in that case, be at the mercy of uncontrollable events. Dislocation Is Inevitable I make no idle prophecies concerning dates. Demobilisation, when it comes, may be more or less gradual, but it will not, I,am sure, be susceptible to very scientific staggering. There have been those who have, believed that it will be possible to retain men and women in the services and to organise education for them there until jobs are available in civil life. I do not believe it. I am sure that, whatever the education and the amenities provided, it will not be practicable to prevent them from coming home-A.W.L. and on foot, if necessary. There will be an inevitable dislocation, which you can envisage just as well as I can, and in the interval that must necessarily elapse before many of them can be absorbed there will be a pressure upon _ educational facilities, the contemplation of which, I admit, makes my blood run cold, There will, no doubt, be a Public Works programme of housing and delayed construction which will deal with large numbers. The technical schools, whose facilities for training have, of necessity, greatly expanded during the war, will continue their magnificent service to the nation by rehabilitating to their old or to new trades those whose inclinations lie in that direction, The universities will strain their limited resources to the utmost to cope with the inevitable demand for intensive professional training and for intensive refresher courses that must arise. But these resources are limited, and it is to be hoped that in the interest of the individuals concerned, the professions, the university and the Nation-for the universities must be the main ganglion of Quality Control-they will not be taxed to complete exhaustion, and that the numbers of those entering professions will continue as they are now to be subject to. a quota based upon the estimated needs of the profession concerned. . There Will Be Others But, be all this as it may, there will be a surplus consisting of those who whether for lack of qualifications or lack of accommodation cannot be admitted to immediate training and also of those who, without professional ambitions, are simply waiting for a job-a clerical job for example-that may well not be available until months or even years have elapsed. They will no doubt be in receipt of a subsidy, but that will not solve the problem. What they will need above all else is education of some kind -but in many cases of a particular kind. (continued on next page)

Education and Reconstruction

"S (continued from previous page) For some of them a university arts or commerce course may fill the bill but not, I think, for many. What they will really need is a course which wil rehabilitate them to the outlook and the responsibilities of civilian life-any of you who remember the end of the last war will agree with me as to this-and that is something which does not at the moment exist. If nothing is done for them, they may well become an acute danger. There are, in fact, two avenues available for dealing with the problem. In the first place, the universities might organise special arrangements for them. It may be necessary to provide for university annexes in existing camps in which such rehabilitation courses of varying duration could be devised. The universities themselves could not cope with them in their existing accommodation, save at the risk of complete disorganisa-tion-and it will be of paramount importance that we should disturb as little as possible our existing-very defective -technique of Quality Control. But-though the proposal has many disadvantages-Universities could be of very great service in organising and supervising courses, discovering the necessary staff-inevitably in most cases from outside their own overworked per-sonnel-and assisting in administrating. Future of Army Education The alternative is to use the existing Army Education Service for the job. That service has done yeoman work in the face of great difficulties, and it has built up an organisation which must not be dissipated when peace comes. Its present contemplated function is to provide for those in the services until they ate demobilised. The main difficulty is that, as was abundantly proved at the end of the last war, the moment demobilisation sets in, education carried out in the Army acquires a flavour of unreality which deprives it of all stimulus or inspiration. Education for civilian life must be done in a civilian environment and, I think, by civilians. It may be that a combination of the two agencies could best effect the solution. But the solution must be found for, unless it is, the part to be played by education in reconstruction may well be confined .to cowering in the wings while virtue lies prostrate on the stage. From Indifference to Prophecy I said in my first talk that the educator has been content in the past to toil panting after the status quo. He has in the main, taken his conception of the future for which he is training his victims from other people or alternatively has not thought about it at all. The result is that education has always been behind the times, and it is this fact, as much as anything, that is responsible for the present condition of the democratic conception of life. It is now as certain as anything can be that the status quo ante bellum will never come back, and I believe it to be the educator’s duty to forsake his past indifference and to become his own prophet. He will get little honour out of it. Prophets are never popular and, when they prophesy change, they have stones thrown at them. But neither in universities nor in schools ‘has cloistered seclusion any more relevance to real life, and we owe it to those who will

man the future to have our definite picture of it and to train them purposefully to fulfil their functions in it. Four General Conditions Now there are certain general conditions which are to my mind clearly prerequisite for the continued existence of any kind of democracy in the world of to-morrow, and our systems of education must be remodelled to the extefit that these conditions necessitate. They are, firstly, that an efficient technique of Quality Control be developed; secondly, that genuine communal effort for the ordinary person is possible; thirdly, that a living culture that is relevant to its particular environment is actively fostered; and fourthly that a scale of ethical values which is based upon firm foundations and not only taught but practised underlies the whole structure. Volumes could be said on each point. I mean nothing highbrow by "Quality." I am not talking in-a narrow socalled "cultural" sense. There are at present some seven and a-half million human beings in Australia, and among them is some of the finest human material in the world. Latent in that material there is enough quality to provide us not only with the writers, and the artists, and the critics, and the musicians, and the teachers, and the researchers that we must have to make our democracy a live, coherent, and inspired thing, but with the technical, administrative, and political ability which is necessary to enable it to continue in existence at all. We cannot afford to lose or to waste one iota of this, the most essential of our resources. To compass this end, three things are imperatively necessary and many others, which will no doubt occur to all of you, are essential. These Are Essential The first is a permanent continuance and an extension of the principle of educational subsidy which has been introduced as a war measure by the Federal Government. My own viéw is that all education should be free and compulsory up to the limit of the capacity of the individual to profit by it. But until that comes, as it will, we must see to it that no one is debarred by economic considerations from the full realisation of his intellectual equipment. The subsidy range must be extended to cover income groups higher than its present upper limit of about £600 p.a., for you know as well as I do that nowadays the dreams of avarice are not automatically dissipated at that level. It must be extended to cover the years between school leaving age and matriculation, for it is here that the biggest wastage occurs. And it must be accompanied by a serious attention to the development of psychological aptitude-testing services which, if suitably intermixed with common sense, have proved themselves an invaluable ally for the educator. The second is the disappearance of the widely-held conviction that education is something to be*done with at the first possible opportunity. Our bias toward economic motives has imbued too many people with a desire to see their children out in the world and earning money as soon as their minimum schooling is completed. — The third, linked closely with the second, is the provision of a really efficient system of Adult Education. I shall develop this point in my final talk. ( To be continued)