TEACHING OF ECONOMICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17730, 15 March 1921, Page 6

TEACHING OF ECONOMICS.

PROFESSOR RESENTS CRITICISM. Speaking at a session of the Workers' Educational Association, Professor J. B. Condliffe, Professor of Economics at Canterbury College. Christchurch, said he claimed the right to teach his subject at the college in his own way. The same claim could be made on behalf of teachers, who were members of the university staff, but who taught outside of the university. Attacks had been made on an external teacher of economics. They were utterly unwarranted "in Tegard to both the facts and the principle. No teacher of economics should nav© imposed upon him disabilities that uo other scientific teacher of the college would stand for one moment. Economists must examine all accepted theories, but it could not be held that teachers of economics at the university should simply sav that one person said one thing, another person said another thing, but he would not state what he himself said. In any case, members of W.E.A. classes were men and women, not children, and, they were men and women with pretty strong opinions of their own. The value of W.&.A. work consisted not in what was put into the classes, but what the students took out of them. Criticisms made at the classes caused persons to be very careful of statements thev made there. A teacher might be asked for his evidence of a certain statement. Each teacher generally obtained from the classes as much education, as was obtained by the students.