OFFICIAL BLESSING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22777, 10 July 1937, Page 17

OFFICIAL BLESSING

BKITISH AUTHORITIES

LETTER FROM MINISTER A CULTURAL HERITAGE Greetings from the president of the English Board of Education, tho Rt. Hon. Earl Stanhope, to the New Zealand and Australian regional conference of tho New Education Fellowship, were brought to Auckland yesterday by Mr. G. T. Hankin, one of the board's staff inspectors, and its official representative at the conference.

Earl Stanhope's message is contained ill the following letter:— "It gives me great pleasure to send my greetings to the conferences which are being held in New Zealand and Australia. I am sure that in bringing together from many parts of the Empire and from other countries those who are interested in education, either as teachers or administrators, the organisers of these conferences are performing a most useful service. Your agenda is a very wide one; nothing less, in fact, than education for complete living. I have 110 doubt that tlioso attending the conferences will find, notwithstanding the widely different circumstances and conditions of life in the countries which they represent, that they are concerned with the same fundamental educational problems, and that they are interested in the same general principles of educational progress. Sharing Experience "I am glad to know that you have been able to assemble and to take with you ail exhibition showing. 011 however small a scale, the present tendencies of English education. Ibis sharing of experience in relation to our common educational problems seems to me to be perhaps one of the most fruitful forms of intellectual co-operation. It is a kind of international commerce into which no element of competitiveness or jealousy can enter, save competition in the service of the child and jealousy for the welfare of future generations. "1 wish the conference every possible success."

The exhibition to which the letter refers consists of 250 photographs and diagrams illustrating nursery, infant, primary, post-primary, secondary and further in Britain, also special services to physically and mentally defective children. British Government's Attitude

Mr. Hankin said yesterday that this was the first occasion on which the British Government had officially recognised such an educational conference. The Government fully realised that a common traditional culture was one of the strongest bonds joining the nations of the British Commonwealth, and particularly as between the Dominions and the Mother Country. The present conference was particularly important, because it was being held in two Dominions where British culture was strong. At the same time, the British Ministry of Education attached value to the conference, because it was international in scope. The broad aims of education in every country were the same, and the welfare of the child knew no national boundaries.

AIMS OF FELLOWSHIP INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK NEED FOR CO-OPERATION The international and democratic outlook of the New Education Fellowship and its aim of co-operation were outlined by Mr. L. Zilliacus, headmaster of the Experimental School, Helsingfors, and chairman of the executive board and of the fellowship, when he replied to a welcome extended at a civic reception to the visiting speakers at the Town Hall yesterday. # Mr. Zilliacus said the fellowship was founded in England in 1915 as an English educational organisation of very modest dimensions, by Mrs. Beatrice Ensor. It was extended into an international body in 1921 at a meeting held in Calais on the idea of a brotherhood of all interested in the progress of human society and particularly in utilising the means of education in striving toward this aim. _ The new education, which was born in some of the schools in England; was from the start directed. by an international outlook, a feeling that the only way was "to hang together or hang separately." It was considered that the problems and aims of those who were attempting to build a happier, saner, more free and more just society could only be approached bv co-operation. . . . . , '"We are democratic m outlook ann aim to give every child in the world the best possible chance, Mr. Zilliacus continued. "Our definition of education is the provision of the best possible conditions for growth and development. Wo must have with us the parents and those persons who are specialising in the voting child before it steps inside the school, and we have to take seriouslv the problem of adult education. There is no boundary line to be drawn between any age whatever in the education problem. _ . .. | "Tno democratic and international outlook of the new education is not easv to uphold in our world to-day, but all of us feel that it is the only possible line for us to go on, Mr. Zilliacus added.