ADULT CULTURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22398, 20 April 1936, Page 12

ADULT CULTURE

EDUCATION WORK ASSOCIATION'S ACTIVITIES COMING OF AGE MEETING Tho activities of the Workers' Educational Association in Auckland opened just 21 years ago, and the association began tho celebration of its coming of ago at a gathering held in the University College Assembly Hall on Saturday night. The principal speaker was tho Minister of Education, Hon. P. Fraser, who has been connected with the movement ever since it was started in New Zealand. The president of the association, Mr. J. S. Stewart, presided, and on the platform with him wore a number of tutors, members of the executive and officers of the association. The attendance was large enough comfortably to fill tho hall. Tho work of the adult education movement was one of tho reasons, said the chairman, why the people of Great Britain in the main had more social and political "gumption" than the people of other countries. " Had Germany contained a movement such as the Workers' Educational Association there would hav-B been no possibility of Hitler rising to power in the way he did," said Mr. Stewart. "The German people were, backward and lacked that essential education in politics and economics that can be acquired in such a movement as this." Honour to Pioneers The speaker proceeded to recall with gratitude the names of many tutors and others who had given outstanding service to the movement in Auckland and Hamilton,.

The chairman of the Auckland University College Council, Mr. T. U. Wells, who has also been a tutor and lecturer for the Workers' Educational Association, recalled with pleasure that he had been associated with the movement since its inception in Auckland. It was the late Sir George Fowlds, he said, who had first interested him in its activities. The College Council had always taken a very genuine interest in the movement, and was glad that its professors should act as tutors for the classes. He had often been disappointed that the classes had not been larger and that there had not been a greater demand in so large a city, but he hoped that with the further hours of leisure to which all were looking forward more would take advantage of these opportunities for cultural advancement. When so many members of the present Cabinet had been students in the association's classes they could look with confidence for sympathetic treatment. Tributes to the Movement

A member of the first class held in Auckland, Mr. C. J. Bishop, speaking an what the movement meant to the workers, said they were not only celebrating, but taking stock of themselves. They asiked what value the work of the association had. The answer was that it meant the acquisition of knowledge and understanding for the development of self-expression of the individual. The contact made by the workers with the university was all to the good. The first class he belonged to was one of the most virile that had ever been associated with the movement and they used to get Professor Grossmann with his back to the wall and keep him arguing until half past oleven at night. v %

Another student of the first local class of the movement, Mrs. E. W. Moore, recalled happy memories of the stimulating lectures she had -attended in those days. Women, she said, were grateful to the association because it bad always encouraged them to take their place on an equality with men. The coming-of-age of the association will be further celebrated at a social gathering to-morrow night and at an evening of one-act plays on Thursday.