TALENT OF STUDENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20420, 23 November 1929, Page 15

TALENT OF STUDENTS.

ENCOURAGEMENT URGED.

THE' NEED OF SCHOLARSHIPS. RESEARCH TO AID INDUSTRY. SCOPE OF THE UNIVERSITY. [BY TELTGRATH. —OWN CORRF.SrONnF.NT.] WELLINGTON, Friday. 'lf there is one tiling more than another that a country, especially a young country like New Zealand, needs," said the Chancellor of the New Zealand University, Professor J. Macmillan Brown, at a meeting of tho University Council today, ";t is a system that would draw tho most talented from all ranks and, hy scholarships, stimulate their development so that its future may he in the hands of those who are best, able to see beyond the present, to make tho most of its possibilities."

It. was an essential of a civilised comrrunity 'that every man and woman should be educated up to their capacity, but no nation or race advanced unless there was a method of drawing out its special talents and stimulating them to the utmost; for the talented formed the advanced guard who scouted Snto the darkness and discovered the best "route for the nation to take. Scholarships to living tho capable young itien and women from the primary system to tho secondary, and again to tho university, were essential, though Iho system could bo overdone. Obstruction from Crowding.

Teachers in fho secondary schools and in (he University Colleges had their task obstructed by tho excess of average and under average intellects that crowded their classes; and this feature of the system prevented education advancing as it. ought to do. He had heard hnchers again and again complain that they could not do full justice to the talent they felt it their duty to the country to develop, because they had so many mere pass students to train, a proportion of whom never attained success and could never attain it. The most grievous complaint was that the. secondary schools had so many who remained under their tuition too short a period to have much good from it. It was almost as grievous that in the university colleges tho professors, who were eager not only to do research themselves but to stimulate talents for research in the best students, had their hands too full of students who were just up to the level of n pass degree to fulfil their ambition. This wastage would go on/as long as there was so little selection by the entranco examination and too few scholarships, especially post graduate, to tempt the talented to seek the best sphere for their talents.

In all scholarship systems there was n certain amount of waste, but the higher they went the less there was, as the research student had found his true career. It was in the postgraduate system that the wastage reached its minimum. It would ]My the country to take a proportion of what was spent on sending the youth of average or below-averago ability to secondary schools or in bringing them to the pass stage in university colleges, and spend it on the development of talent,, especially talimt for research.

Students Who Go Abroad. It was true that a percentage of those who gained postgraduate scholarships and went abroad dirt not return, because of the wider field for talent in the more developed countries and the scarcity of well-paid posts in New Zealand; but the percentage was not very large and those who remained abroad were often so brilliant that they spread tho name of fho Dorriniori throughout the world and formed the most striking of the advertisements that, they are told, she needed.

It was a wise policy cn tho part of the senate in its early days to save what it could from the fees and the subsidy and lay it up for a time when scholarships would be more and more needed. Now it look no£ only that little store, but the subsidy and all they could afford from the fees to keep the system working. Yet they needed every year more scholarships, especially to encourage research for primary industries, now that moro severe competition jn the markets of the world lowered the price of commodities Some of our citizens have generously come to our help. "Solution Becoming Imperative."

''But this spirit of generosity," said Professor Macmillan Brown, "which is based upon a realisation of the fact that thp surest method of meeting the menace Id our industries is research, will spread, let us hope, not only among our wealthy citizens, but among our politicians; for tho problems before. Ihe country are many, and their solution is becoming imperative; while the resources at the command of the university for drawing out rnd developing talent for their solution by research are conspicuously meagre, especially when compared with those of the other Dominions. "I should like to congratulate the university on the generous and enlightened policy of the new Government and its Minister of Education. Those of us who in the new scale will have to take up the burden of university work, count it (he greatest of good fortune that the subsidy that has been granted by statute t.ince tho beginning of this institution has been again restored; they will not need to abolish scholarships or economise over encouragements to learning. ]f ihere is one thing more than another in the system of education that is stimulative of talent, it is tlie granting of Undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships."