PUBLIC EDUCATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 44, 19 January 1935, Page 10

PUBLIC EDUCATION

IMPORTANCE TO THE WORLD. A PROFESSOR’S WARNING. CHRISTCHURCH, Jan. 17. “It is the surest precursor of retrogression and decadence when the Government of a country resorts to tho funds of educational institutions to bolster u]) its failing finances. It prefers the filling of empty stomachs to the filling of empty heads. As Napoleon thought armies advance on their stomachs, so do they think a nation advances. To meddle with the main public means of developing intelligence is to place a premium on stupidity and incompetence. And that means the decay of civilisation. The people will soon become yahoos, and not merely the fine arts but all arts will slowly disappear. It is the last act of despair to tamper with the finances of education. It means the suicide of a nation.”

The foregoing were the remarks of Professor J. Macmillan Brown in his capacity as Chancellor of the University of New Zealand in his address at the annual meeting of the Senate at Canterbury College to-day. The theme of the Chancellor’s speech was the danger inherent in a policy of stagnation in education. “It is a matter of the greatest importance to this university and its colleges to know whether this depression which has been weighing us down for the last three of four years is going to lie long or not,” the profesor continued. “For the easiest resort of a Government that lias to modify its evil results and especially its widespread unemployment with its usual accompaniment of distress in households is to the grants it has to make to educational institutions. Such periods have recurred again and again in history, especially after devastating wars. . . . “As for the depression which drives our politicians to make raids on the resources of our educational institutions, it differs from all those that have periodically preceded it in two respects. First, it has now tho whole world to oppress with its plague of unemployment and under-consumption, and second, the armament-makers have their grip on tho throat of mankind. To get rid of the former there is needed the spread of international, altruism till it covers the whole world. Unfortunately this cannot take place as long as the second is allowed to continue. The profit and life of the arma-ment-makers depend upon the prevention of international altruism ; for that would mean the abolition of war and of preparation for war. And never will their grip be undone till all the nations of the world have come together and become united in their re--solve to take command of them and their intrigues and abolish their network of factories. WORK OF EDUCATION.

“The only chance of suppressing or even limiting the scope of this destructive art is greater intelligence in the human race. And this can be attained chiefly by education. Educational institutions should therefore he the last to have their finances reduced in times of depression. They have the youth of a country in the formative or plastic stage, and that is the stage when it is easiest to develop intelligence. It is on this that the keen outlook and wisdom of the succeeding generations depend. And without tins keenness of outlook and wise penetration in mankind, war and the preparation for war, the source of most human misfortunes, will never be traced to their true source, the network of arma-ment-making. And when the human race as a whole see plainly whence their disasters come, they will, led by their wise statesmen, take measures to extirpate this destructive art and its masters.

“Next to experience and competition during the lifetime it is education makes the intelligence of mail to increase. Whether the heredity passes on that acquired by one generation to those that follow is still a disputed question amongst evolutionists. One thing they are agreed upon is the influence of the environment upon the intelligence of the human race. Improve the environment and man grows more intelligent; the morons grow fewer and fewer. And education is a deliberate attempt to improve the environment. Races, ages, and nations are more truly distinguished from each other by their system of education than by any other feature. Its growth is the growth of civilisation. “Nor is it impossible for a highlyeducated and swiftly-advancing nation or race to swing back into barbarism. A striking example of this is being enacted before our eves by Hitlerised Germany with its persecution and extrusion of its most cultured scientists, artists and educators because they are not of the Nordic Aryans. The result has been a return to savagery of the most sanguinary type. “We have another instance in our own day that has not yet fully worked out its effect on the world. The Bolshevik revolution drove out of Russia all the halo of refinement and bold thought that encircled the Court of the Czars; it left the huge empire the breeding-ground of poverty and misery; whilst it retained the old tyranny and oppression, changing only its centre and spirit. The Scandinavian nations, Switzerland, the United States and the British Empire alone remain the homes of liberty, justice, and tolerance. Britain especially remains the refuge for fugitives from oppression. “These are the nations that have not relaxed their efforts to make all classes educated. Nor have they even when hard pressed dipped into the finances of their educational institutions. They have been the first to recognise the capacity and rights of women to advanced education and to the franchise. If there is one thing that will ensure the retrogression of Germany into barbarism, it will be the exclusion of women from higher education, from public life, and their immurement in household duties. It will withdraw from the boyhood and youth and meetings of men one of the chief refining influences, that of highly educated women. The purpose is to make the men more inclined and fit for war; it will harden and brutalise them till it reduces them to the level of the savage fighting men of primeval times.”