FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 1928. A NEW ERA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20501, 31 August 1928, Page 8

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 1928. A NEW ERA.

Feom time to time we have drawn attention to great movements in Great Britain, particularly in business and scientific projects, in educational changes, and in inquiries into the relation between industry and school. Mention need only be made first of the great combinations in scientific industry under the guidance of Lord Melchett, secondly, of the epochmaking proposals of the Board of Education announcing the end of the present elementary education, and, thirdly, of the Malcolm Reports—the first part issued in December, 1926, the second part a few .weeks ago—dealing with the important problem of establishing contacts between the nation’s schools and the nation’s occupations. There is no doubt about it that the Mother Country is wide awake to her needs and her possibilities. The croakers who lamented her decadence must, if they trouble to view the evidence, realise that, so far from crumbling away, the Mother Country is entering on a new phase of increased solidity and progress. The short view is the wrong view.’ The movements to which we have referred will not show results in one year or two. There must be the courage to wait. In addition to these movements we may refer to some others that are proceeding simultaneously with them. For instance, a Royal Commission to inquire into University Education in Wales issued a report in 1918 which led to the establishment in the principality of a National Council of Music under its first Director, Sir Walford Davies. Students from the Welsh colleges constituting the University have already on their tours given over a thousand instrumental concerts . accompanied by lectures. Among other results of this movement is the formation of a National Orchestra financed by the British Broadcasting Company, with the assistance of the National Museum and the city of Cardiff, to broadcast the best music and to hold daily concerts with a salaried orchestra. For the first time in the history of a music-loving community, Wales will have a daily supply of the finest music in existence, so that even the remotest miner’s cottage in the hills may receive an aesthetic enrichment that was impossible of yore. Sir Walford Davies is a public benefactor whose name will be gratefully remembered. But not in music alone, not in Wales alone, is the potentiality of broadcasting being manifested. Adult education and secondary education in Great Britain have now reached a stage where the doubting is over and the certainty of valuable progress is patent. At first it was only with diffidence that educational subjects for adults as well as for schools were attempted. The British Broadcasting Company, as its director-general, Sir John Reith, stated, while ready to help, will not assume educational responsibility; its main province is the providing of entertainment, not the “ follow up ” process essential in any educational scheme. Co-operation, however, with educational authorities is being rapidly established so that full use may be made of the broadcast. The British Broadcasting Company has begun to issue pamphlets containing an outline of approaching wireless lectures, called “ Aids to Study,” so that the impression made by the microphone voice shall not be evanescent. Sir Henry Hadow, Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University and Chairman of the Consultative Committee of the Board or Education, has recently issued a report on “ New Ventures in Broadcasting,” in wh:*b it is stated that adults are becoming much more responsive to educational effort. At present in England no fewer than 1500 adult education societies are helping in the distribution of talks upon economics, biology, social science, astronomy, and philosophy. It is no exaggeration to say that advanced learning, once the prerogative of the privileged, wealthy few, will soon be brought almost gratuitously into the homes of all. The daily bread may soon mean much more than it means now or than it has meant since the time when “ our fathers ate manna in the wilderness and are dead.” The wireless does not, of course, limit its spiritual fall of manna to the eiuers, for the schools receive abundant measure. There are now 4000 schools receiving courses of lectures. Knowledge alone, of course, will not save mankind. Sir Alfred Ewing, Principal of Edinburgh University, after descanting in a recent lecture on what the closing years of last century had brought into existence—the X-rays, radio-activity, and the electron —sadly confessed that his hopes of a society purified and ennobled by the discovery and diffusion of scientific benefits had been falsified. His forecast was that the best intellects of civilisation will turn from perfecting the applications of science to mechanism and will betake them to the fundamental problem of altering man’s nature for the better. Once again the thinking world turns to the poet’s admonition and realises that ‘‘ the proper study of mankind is man.”