WOMEN’S EDUCATION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 3 June 1926, Page 7

WOMEN’S EDUCATION.

NEW ZEALAND’S ENTERPRISE. The second Wilding memorial lecture at Canterbury College was given last night by Professor J. Macmillan Brown, chancellor of the New Zealand University. The Wilding lecture is the result of a gift to the college by Mrs. Wilding as a memorial to her daughter. Miss Gladys Wilding, and her son, Mr. Anthony Wilding, both of whom were students at the college. The first lecture was given by Professor J. Adams, of London University, when he visited New Zealand. Mr. H. I). Acland, chairman of the Board of Governors of Canterbury College, presided at last night’s lecture. Professor Macmillan Brown’s lecture was on “Women and University Education.’’ He said that it was not until the nineteenth century that progress was made in respect to the position ox women. The idea of woman as a chattel was widespread to-day, even in some civilised countries. In Japanese factories, women and children were worked to death. If factory laws were needed in the West, they were needed ten times more in the finst. Co-edu-cation, perhaps, had done more than anything else to raise women’s position. It helped to modify the great differentiation produced by sex. It gave a girl a feeling of independence to know that in the competitive examinations she had beaten the hoys. Co-education, beginning in the primary schools, had extended to the universities. The University of New Zealand was the first university in the British Empire to admit women to cocdfucntion with men, and to degrees, tvxnie American universities still kept women from their borders and their degrees. He agreed that women’s proper sphere was the household, but not that the fact implied that university education limited or lowered her power of dealing properly with her household. As it, was very important that the first seven years of a person’s life should bo carefully guided and developed. the greatest power over individual lives was in the mothers’ hands. It would benefit the nation to devoto the best education it could command to the maternal profession. Too little attention had been given to the intellectual side of women. They should be trained not only on the emotional side, Hut also on the intellectual side, jn order that they might meet all the emergencies in the development of a child.

He said' that the recognition of coeducation by Canterbury College started the movement for the extention of the- Parliamentary franchise to women; the first petitions praying for the enfranchisement of women were sent to Parliament from Canterbury. Although no woman had been elected to the New Zealand Parliament, the women's franchise had immensely, influenced this Dominion’s legislation, giving New Zealand the reputation of being the most progressive country in the world in regard to social laws. A vote of thanks was passed to Professor Macmillan Brown, on the motion of Miss Chaplin; seconded by Mrs. A. •T. Merton, both former students or his.—Lyttelton Times.