PEACE INSTRUMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27515, 9 October 1950, Page 6

PEACE INSTRUMENT

Educational Problems Discussed

UNESCO CONFERENCE The study of how education can be used as an instrument for international understanding instead of one for building up competing nationalisms was the subject dealt with in a broadcast address last night by Professor F. L. W. Wood, of Victoria University College, Wellington, who has recently returned to New Zealand from a UNESCO conference at Brussels. The main business of the conference or “ seminar ” was discussions on what should be done about the text books which are used in schools throughout the world. Professor Wood was chairman of a group of 15 delegates discussing the teaching of world history. Although there was a language difficulty to overcome, there was a much deeaer problem, he said, and that was the difference in points of view among the delegates. The answer reached at the Brussels Conference was that the job of using education as a means of peace could be done provided that there was goodwill and time enough to " nibble away at problems and not get too impatient ana afraid if there is little to show in the way of spectacular results,” he said. The conference lasted six weeks, but the problems were too big to be mastered in that short time. “We caught a glimpse of the way in which teaching must and can be brought into harmony with the needs of world unity, just as in times past it was harmonised with the necessity for national unity. What was really exciting was to see an international group feel its way towards an agreed solution for a tangled problem. The reports and suggestions we sent in to UNESCO, and which will be circulated to all member States, could have been reached in no other way. “ I could take these documents and point out the contributions made by each member—and every member of my group is certainly represented by some useful idea. There was one interesting occasion when a possible solution to a particularly knotty problem was found by a Belgian in a Mexican text book. It was translated by a Canadian and finally redrafted by a New Zealander into a joint report which caught the sense of the meeting, and was accepted by the seminar as a whole. “ There is no revolution tucked away in these suggestions, no startling -achievement or brilliant discovery. We were no even really representative—men and women from 28 nations were there, but to everyone s regret no one came from the ‘lron Curtain countries,’ and the Far East had only two spokesmen. Again, though I think we found clues to some probleins we finished up with a long list of brand new difficulties which we merely unearthed and handed on to our successors. Above all, the main work is still to be done. We in Brussels helped in a modest way to lay bare the facts, and point out a strategy; but action must come from member States, pushed on by those of us who believe that education can really help. “I must emphasise .that the practical use of it will depend on what is done now. Individuals can do something, but the key is held by Governments. The quality of the men and women who go to seminars depends on the wisdom of the choice they make, and on whether they are willing to spend a few pounds on sending the best persons. This kind of thing is unspectacular, but it is concrete; it brings results in a modest way, and it costs a few hundred pounds as against the millions we all spend more or less cheerfully on the military kinds of defence.”