HIGHER EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 70, 15 December 1933, Page 11

HIGHER EDUCATION

Training Mind & Spirit RICHEST ENDOWMENT Lord Bledisloe’s Address “Our nearest neighbours to Government House, both in Wellington and in Auckland, are, significantly enough, important scholastic institutions,” said his Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, when, addressing the boys of Wellington College in the Memorial Hall last evening. “The pjopinquity of these two centres of higher education is a constant reminder to me, as the nominal head of your national executive, that the training of mind, body, and spirit in the richest endowment that any country can possess or confer—the, cultivation of that prolific human garden which, if neglected, can so easily become a wilderness, but if rightly cultivated can become a thing of infinite beauty and utility. . . .” “Your headmaster has referred to the need for adapting our system of secondary education to the changing needs of the modern world, to the value of elementary biology as a school subject, and to the danger and inutility of mutual segregation of various branches of learning in separate watertight compartments. These suggestions are all worthy of serious and sympathetic consideration, and I feel confident that the educational authorities will pay due heed to them ... “A good example of the danger of pursuing knowledge in watertight compartments can be furnished by the theory, held and taught by Liebig and other arigicultural scientists a hundred years ago, that soil fertility depended solely upon certain chemical constituents and that the growth of a plant was proportionate to their availability in sufficient quantities; the biologist and the physicist have since taught us that plant growth depends at least as much upon the ‘liveliness’ of the soil and its physical condition as on the chemist’s medicines. The tendency of medical science, as of agricultural science, is to enter into partnership with Nature and to encourage her own beneficent ’ agencies rather than to supersede them. “The problem of the day is to make education sufficiently expansive to secure breadth of vision on life’s problems and at the same time to avoid that nebulous vagueness of specific knowledge which makes for vocational mediocrity and want of thoroughness and accuracy. Danger of Insularity. New Zealand is a great little country with an area only 8385 square miles greater than that of -the Motherland and a population one-twenty-eighth of hers, more British than that of Britain, and more highly favoured by Nature than any other part of the far-, flung British Empire. But it is situated in mid-ocean, remote from- the great centres of the world’s industry, wealth and culture, and in days when the aspirations and activities of all civilised peoples inevitably act and react upon one another, its great outstanding danger for the future is insularity of outlook, reflecting that of its geographical location and calculated to arrest national progress and development. . . . ■ - - “There is a species of so-called broad-mindedness claimed by the selfstyled ‘man of the world’ which ridicules religion or which glosses over falsehood and moral turp/tude, blunting the keen edge of virtue and affrighting weak characters into desertion of principle and the scrapping of those ideals which are fostered at every great public school. This plausible laxity of outlook is sometimes dictated by commercial gain and is wholly foreign to the highest British tradition. ... “True education should not only be the fount of wisdom but also the foe to vanity, self-sufficiency or intolerance. Education is a great outstanding privijlege, and every privilege has its corresponding duty, especially if this privilege is conferred or enhanced by the State. If it breeds intellectual conceit, class segregation, or contempt fpr those less fortunately endowed, it fails in its purpose. Its main function in forming and ennobling human character is stultified and sterilised if it eventuates in a self-satisfied individualist, a social Pharisee. It thus becomes a positive danger to the common weal, a cog in the wheels of communal progress and social evolution. Education should in any normal individual of well balanced judgment evoke and generate not intellectual or social monasticism, but broadminded, tolerant, humble and thankful human sympathy ... Clainja of Rural Population. “The constant self-interrogation of those in this Dominion who receive the priceless,advantage of a good education should be “What can I do for New Zealand, which has done so much for me?’ And in appraising the value of the nation of a good education in a young country like this, let us not be blind to the claims and the needs of its rural population and the sane and sound leadership which it is entitled to look for from the human output of our chief schools and university colleges. Farming is your greatest national industry. Upon its enlightened conduct and its commercial. success depend to a preponderant extent the opportunities and monetary rewards of professional callings and of lother industries. No vocation provides provides more abundant scope for a full, varied, profoundly interesting and elevating life, rich in opportunities for enriching our country or satisfying the various needs of mankind. There is no worse snob, no more narrowminded ignoramus, than he who regards or stigmatises farm husbandry as less cultured than other vocations, or the garb of the rural worker as a badge of social or intellectual inferiority by contrast to the stiff collar and black coat of the urban professional man. “Go forth, bovs of 'Veilington College.” his Excellency concluded, “to the enjoyment .of r merry Christmas, rejoicing in the, conscious vigour of your youth and the enormous power for advancing human happiness that you possess, determined that so far as lies in your power you will each and all enhance and not disgrace by your own achievements, however great or however humble, the great institution whose colours you wear and whose fine traditions it is your duty to uphold.”