Professor Likes Students To Argue

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31128, 3 August 1966, Page 11

Professor Likes Students To Argue

“The Press" Special Service WELLINGTON, August 2. It was quite proper for university students to argue with their teachers or to attempt to prove them wrong, the professor of accountancy at Victoria University of Wellington, Professor E. Stamp, said in his inaugural address of the university. Professor Stamp said there was nothing more exciting for a teacher than to have his class ready and. willing to argue with spirit and conviction.

Everyone benefited from such encounters; it was not always the students whose favourite habits of thought were disturbed.

Far too many New Zealand schoolteachers seemed to adopt an authoritarian approach to’ teaching, with the

consequence that many university freshmen were extremely reluctant to engage in verbal combat with their lecturers.

“This is not idle speculation on my part,” Professor Stamp said. “In the process of trying to bring a ‘dead’ class to life I have, on several occasions, inquired as to what to do to succeed . ..” He said he had found that one was not encouraged in school in New Zealand to argue with the teacher or to attempt to prove him wrong, and it took time to adjust to the idea that it was quite proper to do so in a university. “I hope that what I have said tonight may encourage some improvement in this situation, though I confess that I am not very sanguine that it will,” Professor Stamp said.