NEW IDEAS NEEDED

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 66, 20 March 1933, Page 6

NEW IDEAS NEEDED

EDUCATION POLICY

GOVERNMENT CRITICISED

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Post.")

CHBISTCHTJKCH, This Day!

Professor Shelley, director of the Workers' Educational Association, at the opening session, declared, "The whole University' education, of New Zealand cost each person the price of a packet of cigarettes in 1932. It is a disgrace. The people^ pay Is 6d or less, since the total sum includes endowments they do not supply." If New Zealanders could not afford more money than that it was a sure sign that they did not believe in education. The Government, he said, had no education policy; and it did not hold itself responsible. It regarded the education system as something out of its ken. It should regard it as its mental office, which gravely needed expert attention. The expert attention was not to be carried out by stuffing buildings in Wellington full of forms, filed away never more to see the light of day. New Zealanders were not a nation of clerks, and needed something more satisfying and effective than paper work. Someone should give the Government some new ideas. In good' times the Government would subsidise £ for & any scheme to which the public liked to subscribe; in hard times men could give their brains and their experience and their time entirely to the cause of education. They could sacrifice themselves and bleed for education, and the Government would say they were welcome'to bleed. It was not fair, concluded Professor. Shelley, that New Zealand should have a Government so little interested in the real welfare of the people.