TRAINING OF ASIANS

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30057, 15 February 1963, Page 2

TRAINING OF ASIANS

Travel Club Address

The Colombo Plan bursary system enabling Asian students to study in countries of the West has not been an entire success, according to Miss K. O’Connor, programme organiser for the Pan-Pacific and South-east Asia Women’s Association in New Zealand and past Dominion president of the New Zealand Catholic Women’s League. Speaking to members of the Canterbury Travel Club yesterday, Miss O’Connor said that although the problem of poverty and undernourishment was acute in many parts of the world, money alone could not help to the full without the accompaniment of education and training in basic skills. There was, however, a danger in the giving of nonmonetary assistance to the peoples of Asia. Too often Asians were expected to absorb too much Western culture and to live too different a life in too short a time. This applied especially to those students studying abroad under training schemes such as the Colombo Plan.

In their own countries also, the impact of a more advanced civilisation did not always give the results expected. Too often those giving aid from the West were apt to patronise the backward nations, forgetting that the Eastern culture was older than their own. There was no doubt that the West could learn much from the East in this respect, Miss O’Connor said. She cited the greater care for the aged given by many so-called primitive tribes. The value of contemplation was another facet of the non-Westem character which could well be emulated today, she said. Above all it was essential that all countries of the world learned to forego their isolation and to share more fully the uninhabited areas of the world.