WORKERS ’ EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION

Otago Witness, Issue 3555, 2 May 1922, Page 20

WORKERS ’ EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION

LITERATURE AND LIFE.. A series of public lectures under the auspice's of the Workers’ Educational Association v.-as commenced on Saturday night in the Upper Oliver Hall, Otago University, Miss M. 11. M. King, tile Principal of the Girls' High School, holding a crowded audience entranced for nearly an hour and ahalf on the subject “Literature and Life : The Heritage of the English Classics.” Mr W. Eudev. who presided in the absence of Mr J. C. Stephens, stated that the course had been organised in order that the members of the various classes of the association might come to know one another better and that means of recreation might be provided giving a change from the difficult studies of the week, recreation that still might contain in itself matter of real benefit and culture to all concerned. The general public would be most welcome, and it was hoped, that many who did not attend the association’s classes would accept an invitation to be present at some of the ordinary lectures. lie felt sure that if they did so it would lead to some of them joining the classes permerientlv. He mentioned incidentally that Miss King had taken great interest in the W.E.A. at Invercargill. conducting an English class for a number of years. Miss King opened with a general review of the common attitude of students to the classics, this being summed nn in (lie expression of one. who termed Paradise Lost as “swat stuff.’’ She mentioned the view of Arnold Rennett that great literature was appreciated only by a few. but strongly dissented, holding rather that there was a much wider interest taken in the classics than many supposed. She had known of classes becoming so absorbed in the study of' an English classic as to forget to ring the bell. Literature was the expression of life, and in its highest form an expression of life at its best. Tin's being so she was much cheated in her estimate if it did 11 ot prove of interest to most people The saying that man could not live bv bread alone was much older -than the 20th century-. but people were becoming more yividly conscions of the fact. The close relation between literature and human progress was dwelt much upon, and to bring the matter

home Miss King dealt particularly with three great periods ot English literature, those which gave us Tennyson and Browning, Shakespeare. Milton, and the authorised version of the English Bible. Over and over again the lecturer found the fullest expression of her thought in quotations from the authors with whom she was dealing and afterwards asked what we were to do with our great heritage of the English classics. Was it to remain “swat stuff,” and an intellectual luxury to be appreciated only by the few ? We were to-day enormously intent upon education, and o-ur attention was directed consciously and universally towards the achievement of something greater in human brotherhood, higher in hufiian enlightenment, than had ever been achieved before. We were convinced that to this achievement education was the key. But it would not be the education that had obtained in the past. They were not going to aim at turning people into encyclopedias or dictionaries. They were going to aim at enabling people to live more keenly, widely, higher than they had lived before The greatest instrument and handiest tool for this purpose was the classics. In literature lay the means whereby people could be brought into living contact, with the highest and best the race had produced. Literature, properly used, would enable people to work and to enjoy as they never Had worked and enjoyed before. If this end was to be achieved, however, it would be necessary to proceed on very different lines from those followed in the past. The great thing was living contact of spirit with spirit. Educational results were not to be measured by percentages in examinations Miss King enforced the principle that in literature was to be found the expression of the highest achievement of man, and in the classics spirit c-ould meet with spirit, communing in the highest planes, each generation reaping a harvest from those that went before and leading ever forward to higher achievement. in the generations to come. A hearty yote of thanks was accorded to the lecturer. Chief Inspector Fleming, in moving this, referred to the neglect of literature by the local W.E.A. in the past and expressed the hope that Miss King’3 lecture would bear fruit. He also said that the lecture augured well for the oourse, but those following Miss King would have to look to their laurels.