THE ECONOMY AXE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 13, 17 January 1933, Page 8

THE ECONOMY AXE

USE ON EDUCATION

PROTEST BY CHANCELLOR

LESSON OF FORESIGHT

The opinion that education, especially advanced education, should bo the last element in civilised communities to be submitted to the axe of depression economy was expressed by tho Chancellor (Prof. J. Macniillan Brown) in the course of his presidential address at the opening of the session of the N.Z. University Senate in Wellington to-day. It was often tho first to suffer, as it had subsidies that applied to definite purposes and might seem to be mere luxuries.

'' The most tempting of all subsidies for a New Zealand Government that finds difficulty in balancing its Budget," said the Chancellor, "has been the annual sum that has been granted to the University of New Zealand from its foundation. It has been the chief means of supplying the scholarships that draw out the talents of the community and enable them, to tackle the problems encountered by civilised communities and find solutions for them. The two essentials for a community to find its way out of such defiles in their march to prosperity and success are first of all, the broadening and deepening of the intelligence of the mass so as to enable them to learn the lesson of thrift and foresight; and second, highly developed, leaders who can see far into the. darkness of the future and lead their fellows to the best goal they are capable of. Of the two the more important for advance in research is tho latter, the selection-and training of the intellectual leaders; and a large proportion of this exceptional material will be left undeveloped unless there are scholarships to select it and carry it through its course. ' AIM OF THE UNIVERSITY. ■ "The University as much .as other institutions must learn thrift from such hard times. It must lay past all it can save from fees and endowments and grants or by economy to meet their recurrence. That they will recur wo may be certain. And that we niust contrive to elicit and, train tho talents of the new generations, if our/country is not to succumb to their devastating effects, is as axiomatic. What is a University for if it is not to harvest the exceptional abilities of tho nation and make the best of them?

"Competition is the method s of Nature to secure progress. For this no two individuals of'the same species are born'alike. And man has forged ahead of all other living beings on our planet because he has made this differentiation deliberate and intensive. If only acquired' skill and abilities and virtues could be made hereditary and passed on from generation to generation,, our progress would bo lightning swift. The nearest approach we can make to that" is by means: of higher education. Universities and institutions that prepare for them store up and improve the methods of one generation in order that those which follow may benefit by them. The. exceptional individuals of one generation may improve Inethods and maps.of research it has recived from its • predecessors and pass on the improvements to thoso that follow. This is the nearest we como to that much-longed-for hereditary transmission of acquired learning, skill, and talent to subsequent generations. ''

"More and -more we- are coming to realise that self-isolation of the mdi the caste, the community, or the nation is, if not suicidal, at least destructive of. this transmission . and hence of all progress. The period of depression that is now upon us brings this out more clearly than man has ever seen it before. The United States, probably the niost advancing, if not most advanced, community of our twentieth century, wrapt its cloak around it in order to keep clear of the infection that "was reducing the rest of the world to famine in the "midst of plenty, but it is suffering from the strange disease perhaps worse than any other nation in the world. So Soviet Eussia, whilst attempting to snow its contempt foj; the other nations of the world and to drag them to its feet as its pupils and converts, is slowly being driven by want into their economic point of view. TRUE LAW OF PROGRESS. ' "It is getting.painfully driven into human consciousness through the long ages of history that man must advance as an organised army and not in isolated units, that in fact, altruism is the true, law of progress. These recurrent depressions are intensified by. the tariff barriers erected by communities against each other. The farther we go back into pre-history tho. more isolation there is; each family or tribe counts itself as mankind. Tho beginnings of history are to bo seen in the efforts to" break down the barriers that separate the tribes of a region and to form empires or federations which allow or encourage .mutual friendly intercourse guided and protected by law." BRITISH COMMONWEALTH. "Probably the greatest stride man made toward his unification was that achieved by his seamanship. As long as he clung to advance over land, great empires could remain unknown, unrecognised. To cross a vast ocean expecting to find peoples he had known by land-transit seperated by a still greater ocean on the other side of a great new continent opened his eyes to the vastitude of the task he had still to accomplish before the unification of his scattered communities could begin. And it is chiefly through sea-traffic that the nest stage of this unification will be achieved. The British Commonwealth of Nations is a forecast of "the final goal, a peaceful combination of self-governing communities eager for the interchange of products and ideas and inventions and able to guide this interchange to the advantage of all. Between the units tariff walls will bo a matter of conference and will ultimately disappear. And when these are gone disarmament will follow.- The settlement'of, disagreements will be easier when the League of Nations'includes all the communities of mankind, and the constituents are the Universities, the most highly educated and most scientifically-minded men of each nation

"Of course this idea is little beyond tho dream-stage hi which Tennyson painted it in "Locksley Hall" half a century ago 'when the war-drum throbbod no longer and the battle-flags are furled, in the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.' But even though, the League of Nations ig incomplete and still faltering in its action, the fact that it has comb into being gives us hope that we are on the road to the ideal. And the hope is strengthened by the British Commonwealth of Nations as a working model and by the spread of Universities and their influence. Those national chromosomes that can transmit the- new acquisitions in skill and talent from generation to generation become more and more practical acd powerful. BEOADEST CULTURE. "Tho Parliaments we have as representing in often too futile a way the opinions of the unregulated unscienti-fically-thinking masses lack not only foresight but practical wisdom. They keep passing laws that fail to get at the evil intended to b.e remedied, and ; have to be later on cancelled or loft impotent. They can never lead to the

rational unification of mankind, such a unification as would sweep away and keep away all • barriers between the communities of tho world and secure the peaceful intercourse of all nations and the rapid passage of the wisest and most practical ideas. With the Universities and their graduates forming the constituencies in every nation and community mankind might mako some approach to a 1 world-Parliament or at least to a conference fit to indicate sanely the conditions that should belong to a Federation of the World.

"But University education must, bo built on broader foundations than the narrow specialism that tends to prevail. It must be capable of selecting the wisest, most developed minds and characters that each community can produce. Every degree, however, ultimately specialised, must have as - its first stage .tho broadest culture that mankind has then attained; even a technician's degree should be preceded by a training in and test of cultural study. It is only thus thai) a University and its graduates could be trusted to help in the election of a world-Parlia-ment."