PLEA FOR MENTAL INDEPENDENCE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27213, 3 December 1953, Page 10

PLEA FOR MENTAL INDEPENDENCE

ADDRESS BY MR G. H. BATTERSBY STANDARDISATION DEPLORED

New Zealand’s educational system was efficient in putting “facts into your heads and skills into your hands,” but he feared that standardisation was tending to abolish mental independence, Mr G. H. Battersby, assistant engineer-manager of the Municipal Electricity Department, told evening and part-time students of the Christchurch Technical College at their prize-giving ceremony last evening. Some attitudes which could not be fostered adequately under the present school system reacted more powerfully on character and ways of living than any formal teaching, he said. Acceptance of “mob rule” was a tendency which threatened to defeat progress in New Zealand when this country could set an example to the world. Mr Battersby continued. An

advertisement that “60.000 women ' can’t be wrong” did not necessarily . set the seal of quality on a washing ■ machine or a “home perm,” It simply meant that many had been persuaded 1 to buy. Such a trend of following suit : [might be responsible for a lot of van- ■ idalism and hooliganism in the com- ; Imunity. i There was an unconscious tendency ! to belittle and discourage independence of thought and action, and this, he thought, was one of the weaknesses in education, said Mr Battersby. Teaching was standardised, trade trainees were told that “this is the way” to do a job, instructors with large classes had little opportunity to foster individual development, and wage rates standardised workers. “This apparent aim of our system to make you alike as peas in a pod should, like the devil, be resisted at all times and in all places,” he said. “Don’t let anyone give you prefabricated heads. The second-hand market for them flops badly.” People looked with some pity on the old or very young who required assistance, but anyone who was not happy away from the crowds was equally to be pitied, Mr Battersby said. “If you can’t entertain yourself with your own thoughts for a day you are , as dependent as the old or very young , and a disgrace to your day and generation. This is a hateful state of : affairs.” ; Teachers in their enforced system of mass production should try not to curb ’ originality, and parents who found ; their child different from those in the , rest of the street should not be alarmed. He was probably better. ' Parents today were so engrossed in . educating themselves to changing b standards that they scarcely had time ■ to educate their children, Mr Batters- ’ by said. The widest possible reading by students was the remedy Mr Battersby I recommended as an antidote. The ; Bible, poetry, novels (old and new) . and “even textbooks” gave stimula--5 tion. “Association with the great • minds of the past and present through i reading will help you develop mental independence,” he said. An old Scot- • tish proverb said: “Every herring must i hang by its own hook.’’ If 'young people could go out into li'e fearless 1 and unperplexed and find work they . could love, they would be on the way . to happiness.