STUDENT FREEDOM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 196, 20 July 1937, Page 9

STUDENT FREEDOM.

MOST PRIZED PRIVILEGE. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, July 19. Freedom was above all things the most prized privilege of the European University student, said Dr. Paul L. Dengler, director of the Austro-Ame-rican Institute of Education, Vienna, in a New Education Fellowship seminar address at Y T ictoria University College, Wellington, to-day. In the Vienna University there was freedom from State interference, freedom of learning and freedom of teaching, tiltspeaker 6aid. Dr. Dengler stressed the fact that autonomy was an essential feature of good University life, and lie deplored the wave of Fascism which was destroying the traditional freedom of his country’s Universities, There must be freedom from State interference and complete freedom for the University professor to choose his method cif teaching the matter he taught and his way of presenting it, and there must be freedom for the student to choose his course and attend the lectures as wished ,t.o select his teachers and to travel from University to University as his search tor knowledge dictated . This outstanding characteristic of the Austrian University represented complete freedom of speech for all. . Dr. Dengler thought the Universities must arrive at a balance between the individual and the community as warring trends in society and guarantee con7plete freedom of the. Universities to assist in taking the world out of its present intpasse. Internationalism could only lie a valuable feature of education if grounded upon true understanding of one’s own national life.