COUNTRY EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23953, 31 October 1939, Page 2

COUNTRY EDUCATION

VALUABLE WORK MAY LACK FINANCE CARNEGIE FUNDS END THIS YEAR (Special to Daily Times) WELLINGTON, Oct. 30. When the grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York on which the experiment of an Association for Counti Education has been running in the Dominion for the last 10 years ends on December 31, the valuable work of the association will cease, unless funds are found within New Zealand itself. The two bodies which jointly administer the fund are the University of Otago and Canterbury University College, which have co-operated with the Carnegie Corporation New Zealand Advisory Committee. The position was explained by the chairman of this committee (Professor James Hight) when inquiries were made. The fund, he said, was provided by the Carnegie Corporation to show what could be done in giving an efficient service for rural areas —in culture (such as music and art), library service, home science, and kindred subjects. The experiment, he said, had been eminently successful, and it was to be hoped that those bodies responsible for adult education in the Dominion would be able to carry on, and to extend to other university districts the work which the association had been doing The Carnegie grant had. in thg last five years, been diminishing, and it would finaliv disappear at the end of the year. There was. however, a Government fund for adult educational services, and the service provided by the Association for Country Education wou'd have a claim on part of that fund. “The whole question.” he said, “is under the consideration of various bodies now. but no decision has yet been reached. It is certain that l he work cannot go on after this y p ar unless funds are found in New Zealand itself.”