THE W.E.A.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23005, 7 October 1936, Page 15

THE W.E.A.

OTAGO AND SOUTHLAND DISTRICT Conducted by Tntor MEMORANDA "' . Brief comments upon matters referred to below will be welcomed. Letters should be addressed to "Tutor," care of W.E.A. Office, University of Otago. Copy should be in "Tutor's" hands by the end of each week. The W.EA. column appears in this paper fortnightly on' a Wednesday. ANSWER TO CORRESPONDENT "Aldous Huxley."—Thank you. The reference to " Point Counter Point' is printed below. But you should try to get the whole article by C. E. M. Joad. It appeared in John o' London's Weekly, July 25,1936. THE W.E.A. IN AUSTRALIA The following items are from the "Australian Highway." Local officials and workers may derive a hint from them:— i New South Wales.—Ramble, a "Prostanthera Walk," .from Waterfall to Lilyvale, a distance of about seven miles. Lecture by Mr Morey, recently returned from visit to U.S.S.R., " Youth in the Soviet Union." Lecture by Miss Harwood, BA, on "Japan." Series of public lectures on "The Peopling of Australia," on Tuesday evenings, in the Savoy Theatre. Drama Club weekend at Newport from September 11 to 13. Lecture on " Intellectual Background of the Spanish Revolution," and another on " Italy and Central Europe.' Opening of the surfing season. Play portraying scenes from the life of Lenin at W.EA. club rooms, 449 a Pitt street. This play was the result of a composite effort on the part of a number of W.E.A. students, and was for the most part written at the W.EA.. Summer School at Newport. Arranged and produced by Dr Lloyd Ross. "Something absolutely novel in amateur dramatic work." '.' "' . Northern District.—Annual public conference. Subject: " The Decline of Freedom." Addresses: "Freedom in the Era of Economic Expansion," by Dr W. G. K. Duncan, M.A., Ph.D.; and on "Economic Factors in the Decline of Freedom," by Mr W. E. Gollan, B.A. Evening session: "Freedom and the Policy of the State," by Professor J. Anderson; and " Freedom and the Man in the Street," by Mr J. Sweeney. LL.B. - • . ■ t ■; Queensland.—Dramatic Society production of "Street Scene," by Elmer Rice, a financial success. Evening of one-act plays: '?ln the Zone," by Eugene O'Neill: "Arising Out of the Minutes," by Louise Regnis; "The Sisters' Tragedy," by Richard Hughes; and "Mr Sampson," by Charles Lee. THE REAL PROBLEMS WHICH INTEREST THE WORKER The following letter to the editor was printed in the Australian Highway of September 10:—"Dear Sir,—You ask for contributions from students. Here is mine, for what it is worth.' As a new reader of Highway this year, I have been very disappointed to find how small a space is devoted to the real problems which interest the worker. What use, for example, are articles like that one on the Greek theatre. If we want to read about it, there are surely plenty of good text books to which to refer. I believe the paper does not interest half the people who read it simply because it fails to face up to the problems of our times. Who wants to hear about poets like Housman, or what a poet laureate is, when the world is upside down. Even those few articles which do attempt to deal with vital problems are halfhearted and vague, and make me feel that there is nothing realistic about the approach of their writers. Why spend. pages on a bourgeois writer like Forster when there are so many dynamic writers to discuss to-day? We should face up to the basic nature of the struggle which society is engaged in to-day, and help to clarify the issues, not cloud them, as I and many others feel this paper does.—Economics Student." [We have some sympathy with "Economics Student." 7 W.E.A. tutors are anxious to "face up to the problems of our times." But what are these problems? On a guess, we should say that "Economics Student" is interested in one subject only—probably Marxian economics. That is one of the W.EA. tutor's troubles. He meets so many people who see things from one point of view. The Marxian will discuss nothing but his own subject, and he gives everyone else the impression that to discuss any other matter is sheer waste of time. But, unfortunately, there are others who take up the same attitude. They are people of one idea. "This one thing I do " may be a good principle in some respects; but when it becomes an obscession on the part of certain people that they alone have arrived at the truth of- matters, they become a trial to, everyone else. Nevertheless, as we have said, we have sympathy with the view of "EconomicsStudent,"and we feel sure no tutor will wish to spend tune discussing matters that are not of real interest to we men and women who attend the classes. Nor would we wish to insert one paragraph in this column that is not likely to be of interest to many readers.. Now, what are Lhe topics to economics, Douglas Social Credit, prohibiton, Christian Science, disarmament, Fascism, Pacifism, the monetary system, Labour legislation, or what? There are millions of people interested in these subjects, but which one of them touches " the basic nature of the struggle which society is engaged in to-day"? We hope our readers will help us to answer the question.—Tutor.] ADULT EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE IN AMERICA Nearly 1000 educators from many parte of the United States, and from Canada and Europe as well, assembled at New York on May 19 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the American Association for Adult Education. The heroine of the sessions (according .to the Christian Science Monitor) was an unnamed woman, an English labourer's wife, 52 years old., who had never had any "schooling," who was the mother of 10 children, and whcse husband believed that a woman with a liking for reading was a good-for-noth-ing. Mr W. E. Williams, secretary of the British Institute of Adult Education, told of students who had to go six miles to classes, " with a prohibitive shilling fare for transportation"; of students, who had to wait until other members of the family had gone to bed before they could read in the kitchen, the only available room; and of students who had replied to a questionnaire that education is making them "happier, but less satisfied," and that it is " its own reward and its own revenge." Prison education programmes, it was reported, had failed because they had been in the hands of the wrong persons to administer, and also in part because the prison population lagged in social intelligence and social achievement. In Elmira Reformatory, however, college students got experience in teaching, and their presence so improved the institution that it was apparent that teachers on a permanent basis were needed. As a result, 32 new positions had been added to the staff. As a result of educating her citizens to do their share of work and to assume their part in the responsibility for the general welfare (said Antonin Obrdlik, of the Masaryk Sociological Society, Prague), little Czechoslovakia, like an island of democracy in the midst of dictatorships, was able to hold fast to her own government. Study groups, women's institutes, university extension courses, and voluntary agencies were reported to oe carrying forward a widespread programme of adult education in Canada. Mr W. J. Dunlop, of Toronto, president ol the Canadian Association for Adult Education, said that the wealthy ought not to be excluded from the benefits of adult education, but that they shuuld be required to pay, while classes were conducted without charge for farmers and low-wage people.

" Point Counter Point," by Aldous Huxley "Here is a novel of 600 pages upon whose crowded canvas all sorts and conditions of men and women, interested in science and music and painting and philosophy and politics, many of them celebrated, all of them more or less intelligent, and all incredibly articulate, go through a series of complex evolutions. Just as in a piece of contrapuntal music a number of different themes are manipulated, combining, separating, and recombining, yet never losing their musical identities, so in this enormously complex novel the characters are arranged in separate but highly individualised groups, each with its focus or centre of interest which interlock intellectually, amorously, occasionally* even dramatically, with one another. Huxley, using ideas as a skilled juggler uses balls, tosses up now one ball, now another, and complicated patterns are woven in the air. But, though the play of ideas is continuous, the talk brilliant, the epigrams coruscating, the commentary profound, and the juggler's mastery of the whole complex apparatus consummate, there is, nevertheless, no dominating motif. The method has the defects of its qualities, and nobody is more aware of them than Huxley himself. ... In so far as it can be said to have a plot at all, it is concerned to disclose the Nemesis that waits on wrongdoing. Readers of Charlotte Yonge and other eminent Victorian novelists will remember how ruthlessly they killed off their characters, particularly if they happened to be children, in order to point a moral for erring parents. Huxley does precisely the same. There is one child in the book, little Phil, the only son of his mother, whose love for him is the only genuine emotion which this over-intellectualised, neurotic woman seems capable of feeling. Huxley accordingly promptly kills him off with meningitis—in Victorian novels it would not have been meningitis, but a decline—and thereby brings his mother through suffering to repentance. For she is made to feel that the boy's death is in some obscure way a punishment for her own wrongdoing. What, then, was her fault? Just as the boy fell ill she was preparing to go to her Fascist lover, on the ground that her affections were insufficiently satisfied by her husband. The boy dies, and the lover, going to the rendezvous alone, is murdered by an artintoxicated madman. Now, this is not only morality; it is melodrama." ARTS CLASS ACTIVITIES The arts and the drama classes (which will be amalgamated next year) combined last Saturday when plays from each class were presented to an appreciative audience of about 150. The first play, "Glerieorsa," was a Scottish one by John Btandane and A. W. Yuill. Scottish chivalry is the keynote of this fine drama. The scene is set in an island in the Inner Hebrides in the period 1760, and shows two young lairds in love with the same woman, daughter of a neighbouring chieftain. How she finally makes her choice, after the disclosure of clan feud and jealousy, was effectively brought out by the cast. The recklessness of the successful laird is evidenced in a diving game in which he loses everything he has—including all his entailed estates. Later during a lively duel over the woman, he disarms his friend and opponent,... but magnimoniously permits him to recover his sword. Not to be outdone, the defeated laird burns the Deed of transfer of the lands won by him, and then assists the two lovers to escape the wrath and revenge of the girl's disapproving father. "Campbell of Kilmhor," by James Ferguson, was another fine Scottish drama. The time is just about the '45 Rebellion, and a Scottish family, the Stewarts, is assisting the unfortunate Charles to escape. They are visited by officers, the chief of whom is Campbell of Kilmhor, in pursuit of the royal party, b.ut young Stewart and his mother i remain firm in spite of all threats. Pride of her name and that of her son counts for more to the old lady than the death of her son. Misdirected by a girl who, to save young Stewart from hanging, gives information (which the audience knows to be erroneous) to Campbell, the officers move on, jubilant. Campbell kept his word—he did not hang young Stewart, he shot him. Owing to illness of the chief character, the third play "Fritschen," was unable to be staged. ' The last play of the evening *was "Double Demon," a one-act absurdity by A. P. Herbert, which proved delightfully cynical. A jury, consisting of 11 women and one man retire to consider their verdict—" Did the man kiss the girl, or did he not? "—and the interaction of the divergent types was admirably brought out. However, the fact that the man is the husband of the forewoman complicates matters; and it is some time before a decision is arrived at, but this has taken so long that the accused became tired and confessed that he had "kissed the girl." ,