THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1933. ADULT EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22066, 23 September 1933, Page 10

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1933. ADULT EDUCATION

Striking arrangements for post-school education are disclosed in the winter programme which has been organised by the London County Council. Altogether, 20,000 classes will be provided, dealing with all types of knowledge and skill, and these classes will be attended by a quarter of a million persons from youth up to old age. A proportionate number for Dunedin on a population basis would be about three thousand persons in evening classes. The magnitude of the adult education process is all the more striking when it is recollected that the figures above mentioned refer only to the activities of the County Council. Such a movement as this is, in reality, world wide. When the Workers’ Educational Association, under the inspiration of Mr Albert Mansbridge, began to organise adult education, the chief object was to bring the treasures of modem knowledge personally to the eyes and ears of those who had missed their chance in youth and had thus

never drunk, except in small sips, of the great streams of modern culture. These classes arose chiefly under university guidance. But in the course of this century two new forces, each as important to civilisation as the invention of printing was, have come upon the stage of the world and of the theatre. These two forces are radio and the talking picture. Primitive man relied for communication on gesture and then on oral sounds. Later, pictures wore drawn on the rocks, and pictures were used also in hieroglyphic writing. Modern man is returning to the primitive with two new organs. One is a world-mouth or speech audible everywhere from Greenland to Stewart Island for anyone who possesses the requisite hearing instrument or world-ear. The other is a world-picture, capable of indefinite multiplication and intelligible to anyone who has an eye in his head. These two forces have quietly created an immense world-public eager not only to hear and see some new thing, but eager also to learn all that science and exploration and art have to offer for the popular mind, and eager, as well, to meet and to discuss.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has provided the stimulus to this nation-wide movement. The official opinion in England is, however, that the time has now come for the initiative to pass into other hands. One difficulty in a change-over of authority lies in the immense variety of adult interests, and consequently in the difficulty of devising a generally acceptable policy. Of course, it has to be recognised that there are all sorts of societies whose interests, though not predominantly educational in the old or narrower sense, are certainly so in the newer and broader sense. There is even in New Zealand a large body of youthful and adult intelligence eager for mental pabulum, and ready for expert guidance. In this city the Workers’ Educational Association has done good work through the Broadcasting Board; but more can be done if the scope is widened and an educational advisoiy control set up. Undoubtedly the organising of the work for the primary schools should rest with the Education Department in co-operation with the Education Boards. But adult education broadcasting needs a university organiser. The profits accruing to the Broadcasting Board from the numerous licenses that are issued must be so substantial that it should be possible to allot, say, £SOO a year to each university college to be devoted to organising and providing regular and graded educational programmes for adults. It would be advisable, also, that the university should have the control of some at least of the programmes for secondary schools. This is altogether a vast subject. There is a new university arising—-the university not of books which Carlyle called the university—but the university of radio and pictures. We are in a new world, and we must think the thoughts anduse the contrivances of this world.