CLASSICS IN BUSINESS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, Issue XLI, 15 October 1921, Page 10

CLASSICS IN BUSINESS

4 GERMANY'S EXPERIENCE. Merchants and men of commerce hold very firm opinions on the claim made by Mr. Walter Leaf at the Classical Association meeting at Cambridge that "classical education ia the best training for the realities of life." Classics are technically called at Oxford "Humane Letters.'' but do they help men in business? asks the London Daily Mail. One of the first b:g businesses to enrol first-class men^-some both classical and l scientific—from Oxford and Cambridge was the firm of Guinness, and they consider that the knowledge and good sense and hard work of these men, both on the technical and general side, have been proved to the hilt. Some of the great railways, on the other hand, began tbe policy of enrolling university men—though generally not men of high accomplishment in classical examinations—but soon gave it up.' The state ot tneir business Derhans suggests that they were wrong. ■ The strongest claim of the classics has come from Germany, where statistics show that men who have taken classics can within a year catch and pass those who have spent years on technical subjects. They do better in the examinations on one year's work than the technical students' on three or four years' work. •* I During the war our big glass firms , and others acquired a new appreciation ot a university degree, but preferred the science to the classical scholar. It is education, not any particular education, that matters/ said one iamoug merchant. —— " I