LIFE PROBLEMS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 144, 15 December 1933, Page 10

LIFE PROBLEMS

BREADTH OF VISION

VALUE OF EDUCATION

ADDRESS AT COLLEGE

"Our nearest neighbours both in Wellington and in Auckland are important scholastic institutions," said his Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, at the annual prize-giving ceremony at Wellington Collego last evening, "The propinquity 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 is 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 infinito beauty and utility. "I have studied with interest the repoM of your much-respected headmaster. It shows that during the past year of economic tribulation your numbers have been more than maintained, employment has in most cases been found for those leaving the school, a high standard in school games and athletics has been reached, and several records broken, and new enterprises, notably the Travel Club with its yearning after fuller knowledge of the world, have been initiated. All this indicates commendable vitality and progress in face of financial handicaps ami occasional shortage of teaching staff. The same report refers with gratitude to the loyal and generous support accorded to the school by the parents and by the Old Boys' Association, and with pride to two former students who have by well-deserved public recognition brought lustre to the school and justification to the efficiency of its past scholastic training. Sir Alexander Gray was a righteous and lovea'ble man and an eminent lawyer, and both his great profession and the community at large are the poorer in consequence of his lamented death. The appointment of Theodore Bigg to the directorship of the Cawthron Institute- —an organisation notable throughout' the Empire for the thoroughness, accuracy, and economic value .of its agricultural researches—was a wellmerited recognition of scientific genius and administrative,, capacity, which, unless I am much, mistaken, will carry him in due course to the highest rungs of the scientific ladder. I join witn you in wishing him all success in his new and responsible position. "SCIENCES OF LIFE." "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 aro all worthy of serious and sympathetic consideration, and I feel confident that the educational authorities will pay due heed to them. Apart from the fascination of biological study and the wonders which biological research, is every year revealing to us in larger measure, the increasing recognition of biological factors as influencing almost every department of human activity is opening up possibilities of Tomunerative vocational employment which were undreamt of even a decade ago. The study of 'the sciences of life' is calculatod to stimulate our imagination, broaden our outlook, and evoke our creative zeal. I can well remember the awe which I felt and the mental tonic which I derived a few years ago after driving through the middle of one of the big trees (the sequoia gigantea) of the Mariposa Forest in California whose trunk stretched right across the roadway, on realising that I was in the presence of the oldest living things in the world, which commenced their lives from 5000 to 7000 years ago. A similar stimulus to my imagination is evoked whenever I call to mind that cultivated land, whether pasture or arable, is iio lifeless inert mass, but that in every square foot of its top four inches there are myriads of minute living creatures (micro-organisms) eternally active in the process of fertilising the soil which yields food for man or beast, and carrying on' a constant battle with other minute organisms which are intent on depriving it of its fertility. Similar activity on the part of living germs within our own bodies is affecting our physcal condition for good or ill. One of the problems of the biologist is to destroy or reduce the latter without killing the former. ' "A classical example of the danger of pursuing knowledge in watertight compartments can be furnished by the theory, held and taught by Liebig and other agricultural scientists a hundred years ago, that soul 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 organic 'liveliness' of the soil and its physical conflition as on the chemist's medicines. As the outcome of biological research, 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. These reflections are evoked by your headmaster's report. PROBLEM OF THE DAY. "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. "Now Zealand is a great little country with an area only 8385 square miles larger than that of the Motherlaud and a population only 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 situate 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 most outstanding danger for the future is insularity of outlook, reflecting that o£ its geographical location and calculated to arrest national progress and development. Boys, be ever on your guard against narrowness of vision, whether in religion or in ethics, politics, economics, or social' relationships. But, while using your own good judgment (trained in the wholesome atmosphere of this renowned school), regarding the right solution of the new problems which are confronting mankind, hold on courageously and tenaciously to those fundamental anchorages of honesty, truthfulness, and morality, without which no nation can attain to greatness and no civilised being can secure true happiness or maintain his entire self-respect. There is a species of so-called 'broadmindedness' claimed by the self-styled 'man of the world' which derides religion and praises or glosses over falsehood and moral turpitude, blunting the keen, edge of virtue, and affrighting

weak characters into desertion of principle and the scrapping of those ideals which aro fostered at every great public school. WHAT EDUCATION MEANS. "You come h<?re to be educated. Education does not mean the mere acquisition of knowledge, but rather the means of applying wisely and usefully the faculties with which you are endowed. Its aim should be the attainment of human wisdom and the ultimate benefit of the body politic rather than the self-satisfaction of the individual. Indeed, knowledge coupled with human conceit may effect the breakdown of civilisation. It is noteworthy that the Bible —the best of all books —does not extol knowledge, but it does extol wisdom and sternly denounces human vanity. It moreover appears to rank truth in "front of all other virtues. In this Dominion, which is pre-eminently the laud of Nature's gentlefolk, the splendid definition of a gentleman in Psalm xv (known sometimes as 'the Gentleman's Psalm') is well worthy of constant repetition and reminder. It is the attributes of the man of character there portrayed—who above all ' speakcth the truth from his heart' — which are particularly distinctive of our British race, and have resulted in all important contracts in the South American Bepublies being executed 'on the word and honour of an Englishman.' If- you are faithful to the great traditions of our race you will never pretend to be what you are not or say what you know to be untrue. Closely associated with truth is the love of beauty and purity, and above all the beauty and purity of unspoilt Nature, from which you should seek pleasure and inspiration and which, as part of your national heritage, yon should ever scrupulously protect from desecration and spoliation. A GREAT PRIVILEGE. "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 privilege, 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 for 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-sat-isfied individualist, a social Pharisee. It thus becomes a positive danger to the commonweal. 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. Let it prepare every young New Zoalander who enjoys your good fortune for his vocation in life, but let that vocation and the cultural leisure and pleasure for which collegiate experience so richly equips him be made the step-ping-stone or the opportunity for promoting the greater happiness, contentment, and edification of the community at large. The constant self-inter-rogation 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 dono so much for me?' And in ■ appraising the value to the nation of a good education in a young country like this, let us not be blind to the claims of its rural population and the crying need for 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 all professional callings and of other industries. No vocation provides more abundant scope for a' full, varied, profoundly interesting and elevating life, bounteous in its opportuntics for enriching your country and satisfying the various needs of mankind. There is no worse snob, no more narrow-minded ignoramus than he who regards'or stigmatises farm husbandry as less cultural than <)ther 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. "It is considerations such as these which only last week induced the Bhodes Scholarship Selection Committee, over ■which I preside, to select, for the first, time.in the history of tho Trust, a young agricultural scientist for one of these scholarships. It is our earliest hope in the best interosts of this Dominion that the experiment may prove to be successful and justify its repetition in the future. "Go forth, boys of Wellington College, to the enjoyment of a Merry Christmas rejoicing in the conscious vigour of your youth ancl 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 noble or however humble, the reputation of the great school whose colours you wear and whose fine traditions it is your duty to uphold."