THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1936. THE W.E.A.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22894, 30 May 1936, Page 12

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1936. THE W.E.A.

The “ coming-of-age ” of the Otago branch of the Workers’ Educational Association, which will be celebrated at the University next week, is an event well worthy of public attention and consideration. It may fairly be said of the W.E.A. —an “ adventure in working class education ” initiated at Oxford University in 1903 through the vision and practical idealism of Dr Alfred Mansbridge—that it is a movement or institution characteristically British. The essential facts relating to its development in Britain and its spread throughout the English-speak-ing world, including the story of its coming to Dunedin and its subsequent growth in Otago, are outlined in another portion of this issue. The Association in Otago has cause to remember, and no doubt will remember, with gratitude the untiring and unselfish service rendered to it by several leading personalities in the history of Dunedin. For any healthy organisation such occasions of celebration are inevitably also, in greater or less degree, occasions for stocktaking and self-criticism. This is the more marked in the present instance because the past year has been one of quite unusually vigorous self-criticism by the W.E.A. movement throughout the Dominion. The Association has naturally been hampered in recent years by the fact that it has had inevitably to share in the general curtailment of educational expenditure resulting from the depression. But it has been widely felt that the causes of dissatisfaction go deeper than lack of adequate financial support. In particular, it is urged that if the work of the Association is to improve the

quality as well as increase the quantity of adult education in New Zealand, much more systematic attention than hitherto must be given to the problem of attracting and holding the minds of adolescents. This is felt to be of especial social importance at a time when so many adolescents are faced with the contraction of occupation and opportunity that have accompanied the depression. In Auckland, which has the advantage of possessing a fulltime provincial director, a junior section of the Association has already been formed, and other centres, including Otago, are exploring the possibilities of following suit. But recent discussion among leaders in thd Association has raised more fundamental issues, of a kind possessing far-reaching social significance. Mr N. M. Richmond, of Auckland, has bluntly raised the question of the validity of the “Liberal” or “democratic” ideal of “impartiality” in the study of the social sciences, with specific reference to its bearing on traditional methods of tuition in the Association, which has always remained avowedly and determinedly “non-propagandist” in official attitude. In one sense the question is an old one, but it has never been satisfactorily settled. It has a significance to-day which it never possessed before, not merely because the doctrine of “impartiality” has been officially repudiated by both Communist and Fascist expositors, but because responsible thinkers in the leading “ Liberal ” countries are questioning more and more those nineteenth century formulations of the doctrine which implied a divorce between “ facts ” and “ values.” The philosophical problem raised is really that of the objective validity of value judgments and their bearing on economics and the other social sciences. It is more than possible that a full and frank facing of the issues involved may result in a far-reaching revitalisation of what the Marxists call “ bourgeois economics,” and the restoration of intellectual leadership to the « Liberal ” ‘ tradition in economic science.

But, pending this development of the science itself, it is difficult to see how its exposition by adult educationists can be seriously revolutionised. And, on the immediate practical side, it is impossible not to share Mr Richmond’s unwillingness to see the Association become a “ propagandist organisation.” The root of the matter has been well expressed by both Professor Sewell and Professor Gould. “ The W.E.A.,” says Professor Sewell, “ has to be an organisation which may be tolerated in the Liberal democratic State. If we think of it as anything else, we cease to talk about the W.E.A. and we begin to talk about some other perhaps possible, perhaps desirable, but non-existent organisation. We are concerned with what to do with an organisation in being. The W.E.A. needs State funds; it must therefore have no political views nor must any political discrimination be used in the choice of tutors and directors. Can it, within these limits, be a vital organisation 7 I believe it can.” Professor Gould, while holding that “ the 1 impartial ’ teacher is simply a humbug and not worth wasting ink over,” takes the same view. “I am thinking,” he writes, “ of the organisation as a whole, not of the teachers it employs. These should be men and women who have made up their minds on the problems they are teaching, and should fearlessly express their minds. Having dealt with their subject as far as they are able from all angles, they should be perfectly definite where they themselves stand. But in the selection of those teachers the organisation should be careful not to weight the selection too heavily in one direction.” It is perhaps only necessary to add that in matters concerning which he feels it to be more scientific to suspend judgment than to “ make up his mind,” the teacher should be equally sincere.