The Press SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1959. Sharing Knowledge In The Commonwealth

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29010, 26 September 1959, Page 12

The Press SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1959. Sharing Knowledge In The Commonwealth

In an address to a Christchurch audience, Sir Sydney Caine, Director of the London School of Economics, emphasised the power of education to bind the Commonwealth together. He urged co-operation among the Commonwealth countries to widen educational opportunities and to foster intellectual ability to assess the ideological merits of democracy. Through the Colombo Plan, New Zealanders have been able to help the emergent nations of South and South-east Asia; New Zealand itself has benefited from knowledge acquired by its scholars in other Commonwealth countries. Education is a bridge linking components in the Commonwealth’s multi-racial society. Guy Wint, an English historian, describes the Commonwealth as “ a civilisation as “ much as a political institution”. To preserve their community of interest, members of the Commonwealth need to pool their educational resources so that the less-developed countries may share the knowledge of those better equipped. In this way, they will ensure that the Commonwealth remains “ an “ area of like-mindedness The concept of sharing Commonwealth educational facilities is not new; but until recent years it was applied almost exclusively to the training of an intellectual elite —prospective leaders of an empire, more or less in the Cecil Rhodes tradition. The transition from Empire to Commonwealth has created an enormous, insistent demand for well-educated men in strata below the level for which Rhodes destined his Scholars. Each of the newlyindependent Commonwealth countries is developing its own indigenous civil service, m which expatriates from Europe will have a rapidly diminishing importance. Each country is building up its own official cadres, expanding its schools (usually from a minute

nucleus), and establishing medical, legal, and other professional services. Recruits are hard to find, partly because constitutional progress has usually far outstripped basic educational advances; partly because of a world-wide shortage of professional workers and technicians. To alleviate this shortage must be an urgent task for the Commonwealth. Constitutional, social, and educational gains ought ideally to be

complementary. It is noteworthy that a fresh impetus towards improving education throughout the Commonwealth has come from beyond the United Kingdom. On the initiative of the Canadian Government, the Montreal conference of Commonwealth Finance Ministers in 1958 agreed to arrange for an educational conference at which an ambitious scholarship scheme and an intensified campaign for training teachers could be launched. The conference—the first of its kind for more than 30 years—met at Oxford in July; and a worth-while foundation was laid for an unprecedented sharing of the Commonwealth’s knowledge. The Montreal conference had hoped that 1000 scholarships would be provided by Commonwealth countries; in the result, this number was exceeded. Britain committed itself to providing 500 of the scholarships, Canada 250, and New Zealand 25. Expenditure on the scholarship scheme and other proposals adopted by the Oxford conference, will total about £lO million during the first five years. Of this amount, £6 million will be found by Britain. The United Kingdom’s example is especially praiseworthy because places in the universities can be reserved only by denying them to some of Britain’s own scholars. Already Britain is host to more than 26,000 Commonwealth students, including 7000 at the universities, 6000 at technical colleges, and 730 teacher trainees. During the last 12 years Britain has contributed £35 million towards education in the younger nations of the Commonwealth. The Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth, founded in London in 1912, has done much to promote educational exchanges. The Oxford conference agreed on the necessity for establishing a permanent educational liaison in which the governments as well as the educationists of the Commonwealth could participate. It decided also that progress should be reviewed at another conference in 1961. In its present form, the imaginative Commonwealth scheme imposes heavy additional burdens upon the United Kingdom. By 1961, other countries may be ready to accept some of these burdens. New Zealand, especially, should not be backward in offering help.