WHY SPECIALISE?

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 277, 22 November 1934, Page 6

WHY SPECIALISE?

VALUE OF VARIETY.

(By the RT. HON. LORD GORELL, C.8.E.)

I am a "Jack-of-all-Trades" and not for ■ the world would I change places with the master of only one. Our fanatical desire for 1 specialisation is killing not only a great deal . of our initiative, for people dread the long and often unnecessarily tiresome training involved in specialisation, but it is taking the 1 fun out of our work. Most of us spend more - time at our work than at anything else, and therefore I consider it of the utmost importance that we should be able to introduce into that work a spirit of enjoyment. If we fail to have a good time when we are working, the chances are against our having very much reason for living. I know that I am a rebel in an age which bows before the expert and the specialist. I realise, too, that so far as actual moneymaking is concerned, the specialist may have an advantage over the broader and more general man. But money is not the only consideilition. The work itself matters a great deal. The tragedy of the expert, as I see it, is that he knows all about one tiling, and , practically nothing at all about anything else. I agree with Disraeli, one of the most versatile of men, who on';e said that variety was the mother of enjoyment. A Man of Many Trades. As a result of this point of view, I have played a variety of parts in my life and hope to play several more. I played cricket for Oxford, where I studied history, and I was called to the Bar. However, after a big game hunting trip in Africa, I went in for journalism, and was given a post on the editorial stall' of "Tlie Times." Journalism offered so much variety that I was happy—until the war came along. I joined up, of course, and got almost too much variety that time. Although I have always regarded my authorship as the most permanent of my many "trades," I have been careful to carry into this iield also my beliefs about nonspecialisation. I want to look at life from as many angles as possible and to express each phase in the medium that I think suitable. Thus I have written several volumes of poems, some novels, some detective stories (over which I paid myself the compliment of becoming very mystified and highly excited!) and also treatises on education. I am a little afraid that when I say that I am a "Jack-of-all-Trades" I may give the impression of being casual and slipshod over my work. As a matter of fact, lam intensely interested in anything that I am doing, and to each task I have always brought the same enthusiasm and upon each I have concentrated with all my mind. But I would like very much to make young people, more especially those to whom a job is a very serious thing, realise that it is a mistake to trust too much to training rather than to common sense and the will to accomplish things. I see that therj are so many girls and boys, and, for the matter of that, men and women, who embark upon a task in a depressed frame of mind, feeling that unless they have had years of training and have been taught every detail of their trade tliev are at a hopeless disadvantage. This sort of discouragement reacts .very badly upon the individual, and | develops into a form of embarrassed modesty that does more harm than good. Personally, I think that it is right and good for people to have their whack at several things, and discover those at which they are good; and then, once they have decided, a few weeks —at the most a few months—should sufTico to give the rudiments of training necessary, and sound sense and determination will do the rest. The Human Element. We see so much unliappiness because a man lias been taught to do a certain job, and has spent years learning the work—only to discover that it is not at all the sort of thing that appeals to him. And, because he fears the competition, of "specialists," he will not attempt to change his job. 1 call that sort of thing slow murder of the joy of living, and I am not at all sure that it is not quite as serious a crime as murder in any other form. The mos-i dangerous adage handed down to us is that in this life "one has time to do only one thing thoroughly. I am convinced that we have time, all of us, to do half a dozen or more, and that it would be to everybody's benefit were we to do these. We do not pay suflieient attention to the human element in work; for, if we did, we should see at once that it is terrible to condemn anyone, more particularly anyone young, to the deadly monotony of performing only one job during the whole of his span of existence. We overvalue knowledge of technique and under-ostimate the natural ability and desire to do well that is inherent in most people. When we say, with the scorn intended to emphasise our already exaggerated respret for the specialist, that a man is a "Jack-of-all-trades and master of none," we should be wiser perhaps to ask ourselves how many people there are who, although they are not "Jack-of-all-Trades," are tlie masters of the one they have taken up.— (London General Press.)