THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1932. DEPRESSION AND EDUCATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21542, 14 January 1932, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1932. DEPRESSION AND EDUCATION.

Practically every aspect of the life of the community is coloured by the prevailing depression. It is not surprising to find that circumstance reflected in Professor Macmillan Brown’s address at the opening yesterday of the session of the Senate of the University of New Zealand, of which he is Chancellor. On that ground the address should possess more than an academic interest. Indeed, as a sagacious utterance respecting the problems that are pressing upon all countries of the world, it is to be commended to the attention of thinking people. Professor Macmillan Brown renders useful service in placing perplexing present day manifestations in a helpful perspective. One effect of the depression, he suggests, is to bring out for the first time in the history of the world the essential unity of mankind

and his interests. A little consideration will reveal the accuracy of that assumption, and it is reasonable to suppose that civilisation will be able to profit from the lesson that is being brought home to it with unpleasant force. If it fails to do so its case must appear rather hopeless. War is identified as the primary, cause of these infertile periods of depression, through one of which the world is at present passing. It destroys capital or the accumulations of thrift, which constitute the first essential of industrial and commercial progress, and it creates fears, suspicions, arid the animosities “ which obstruct and disease the circulatory system.” Disarmament, it is logically reasoned, stands out as the first step towards the revival of that mutual confidence which is the primary basis of all commercial and industrial intercourse. The date fixed for what will be the first great test of the preparedness of the nations to admit the force of this conclusion and to act accordingly is drawing very close. As regards the lessons emphasised by a period of depression, Professor Macmillan Brown has something practical to say. He gives expression, incidentally only from the viewpoint ox a scholastic institution, to some plain truths that should be the concern iof all sections of the community. l|he recurrent aspects of periods of depression must not be disregarded. “ Thrift, the maker of man, must never be abandoned in any period of prosperity for those pernicious substitutes inflation and unproductive borrowing,—substitutes that all governments, but especially Labour governments • and colonial governments, have a strong tendency towards as the easiest way out of financial straits.”

If at any juncture a politicoeconomic flavour may be said to be an appropriate ingredient of a university chancellor’s address then no doubt it is justified at the present time. If the State Treasury is impoverished the university is liable to suffer, for the cost of education is heavy and the taxpayer has his fretful moments. Professor Macmillan Brown’s homily on foresight, economy, and tuition in thrift is particularly applicable to the generation which, not taught by personal experience, is always bent on riding upon the crest of the wave. There is much in it that could 1 be emphasised for the benefit of ithe thriftless and the extravagant. The pursuit of pleasure is too conspicuously a manifestation of the present day—depression notwithstanding. That it is an age of distractions mayi be allowed, but, as Professor Macmillan Brown puts it, there is no political or economical magic to conjure away the results of the present financial blizzard. “We shall have to replace the vanished capital by the same 'toilsome work and thoughtful thrift as slowly built it up. It is only by hard work, aided by thought, that a stable basis of prosperity is attained.” i As regards thrift an interesting illustration in point from the history of the New Zealand University, its Chancellor reminds us, consists in its obligation to its treasurers, and in particular to “ that capable and fore thinking Aberdonian,” Professor Shand, .who contrived so well to build up and keep hold of a fund to serve scholarship purposes in time of need, a liquid balance upon which the Government has not refrained from casting at times a slightly rapacious eye.

For* the rest, Professor Macmillan Brown experienced no special difficulty in finding a moral to be drawn from the economic difficulties of the time applicable to education. The prosperity of: the Dominion depends on the prosperity of its primary production. If our produce does not go bach to its old price, or near it, the only , alternative is to improve it both in quality and quantity. This, it is pointed but, means increasing research into the pils of the country and the elements in each that need strengthening. ‘ This brings the educationist to the fore in a plea for generosity in the provision of scholarships and fellowships j that may enable the finest minds of the rising generation to be discovered and drawn into research for the benefit of thd community. “ Times like those we are now passing through,” Professor Macmillan Brown says,demand economies, but the least economical and most unwise of economies is to stint the system that selects and develops the exceptional talents; demanded by the fundamental industries.” One of the anomalies of periods of depression seems to be that the number of students at the university colleges shows an increase at such times. And as a final argument it is advanced that as periods of depression demand all the brain power of the country to pilot it through them, and in the past they have raised invention and organisation to a higher level—as witness some of the products of barren, hard-driven times—it is one of the functions of a university to set the talents of a country in this direction. There is a cogency about this that will not be disputed.