CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 290, 7 December 1943, Page 2

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

SOFT EDUCATION (To the Editor) Professor A. C. Keys' article In your Saturday's issue was a fine, defence of the status quo in our university education. He is fearful that "traditions" associated with arts degrees may be jeopardised. What are the "traditional elements of an arts degree?" Do they include the culture which the knowledge or a modern foreign language purports to give? Will such a microscopical accretion of culture that might possibly thus be gained, add anything to the sum total of the happiness of the people of New Zealand? More might possibly be gained from a study of the "dead" languages, or of tlie Maori. Ask any graduate of the last generation Avhat he reallygained, from a cultural or a utilitarian point of view, from studying the prescription in French or German in the "good old days," and I doubt if he could be explicit on the matter. Do New Zealanders who really think about the matter view with complacency, as Professor Keys suggests, the possible extinction of the language compulsion? I think not Anyone who has studied the elements of educational psychology knows that the spur of all learning i's interest. Unless that interest is inborn or emerges as the result of wise teacher-guidance, all learning is forced or stultified. It is most unlikely therefore, that such an essential element in all successful learning will ever be the heritage of any but the exceptional in the sphere of modern languages. Would Professor Keys, then, ruthlessly close the gates of the higher branches of learning to hundreds of his fellow New Zealanders because a precious, somewhat ethereal idea may be in danger of being uprooted? TWICE CAPPED.