Memorial Lecture Given By Mr H. C. D. Somerset

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30845, 2 September 1965, Page 16

Memorial Lecture Given By Mr H. C. D. Somerset

The quantum of knowledge was increasing more rapidly than the means of acquiring it —with the frontiers of elementary education now almost beyond the university, said Mr H. C. D. Somerset in Christchurch last evening. “The university is more and more a teaching institution, with every teacher, in the arts as well as the sciences, endeavouring to keep up with his specialty,” Mr Somerset said. But students must leave the university and get on with the world’s work. They would need bringing up to date—"what I might describe as the intellectual after care of our graduates,” he said. With this introduction, Mr Somerset, a distinguished figure in adult education in New Zealand, began a review and estimation of adult education in a special lecture arranged as a memorial to Mr Lincoln Efford by the Christchurch Workers’ Educational Association. Mr Somerset traced in detail the history of the W.E.A. movement, with special reference to the Mechanics’ institutes, which were important, he said, because of the voluntary basis of their organisation.

He spoke of the Education Act of 1902 in Britain, which recognised that education should be for all, and secondary schools as well as elementary should be supported by public money. Establishment of W.E.A. In 1903, said Mr Somerset, there came the establishment of the W.E.A. by Alfred Mansbridge, who envisaged the liaison of workers seeking knowledge with both the uni-

versity and the Church. “The W.e:a. began with a membership of two—Mansbridge as chairman and his wife as secretary,” said Mr Somerset. The W.E.A. movement came to New Zealand in 1915, and had immediate success. In New Zealand, it developed its own characteristic of getting out of the towns to reach people in the country. Mr Somerset gave many recollections of the early days of the W.E.A. in Canterbury, and its associated personalities, mentioning particularly Professor J. B. Condliffe and the late Sir James Shelley (then Professor Shelley). What made all the work of the Canterbury W.E.A. “tick?” asked Mr Somerset. He suggested it was the bringing together of people experienced in work associated with those experienced in giving it meaning. That had been the genius of Mansbridge his recognition of the interaction of work and education. “Enormous Task” The W.E.A. now had the enormous task of studying “its whole part" in relation to education, said Mr Somerset. It must remember that education was a process of living, not a mere accumulation of facts.

Mr Somerset said people need not be overwhelmed by the quantum of knowledge. They must be helped to see the pattern more simply comprehended behind it.

One hard fact was that only a third of the world was literate, let alone educated. “There is a field to fire the imagination,” Mr Somerset said.

There was an audience of about 60 to hear Mr Somerset’s lecture in the W.E.A. centre’s hall.