ADULT EDUCATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3754, 23 February 1926, Page 29

ADULT EDUCATION.

THE WORKERS’ MOVEMENT. JHE RURAL ASPECT. “New Zealand cannot be healthy if you demand that people do country work anl have town minds,’* was the opinion expressed by Professor Shelley (Canterbury) at the meeting of delegates to the W.E.A. on Saturday, when the policy aud the scope of the association were under discussion. Professor Shelley deplored the general practice of demanding weekly esays from the students, contending, that the essay should be confined only to those who were accustomed to expressing their thoughts in writing. “It seems to me,” he went on, “that the work now being done in the tutorial classes in England is the same work that is being done in the University here. I have not that particular bias in demanding essays, and personally I have the utmost objection to putting anything down in writing. The average person not in the University is not in the habit of putting anything down in words, k and why should we demand that particular thing if it is not in his line? We have developed a means of communication in the picture palaces,” he went on, "that puts the average person in possession of a mere muddle of information, and there is no basis on which we can sort out the different material. The picture proprietors, however, say that they will give good pictures if the public demand good pictures, and it is the W.E.A.’s business, therefore, to raise that standard. We in New Zealand are an agricultural and pastoral community, and that being so New Zealand cannot be healthy if you demand that people do country work and have town minds. We have got to prevent people in the country from thinking in terms of life in town. If we can get them to demand better conditions in this respect the W.E.A. is doing the work it should. The point is, how ar* we going to spend the money? (for it is a question of money). Would it not be better spent in giving people in the small backblocks something worth while of a cultural nature?” To illustrate his point Professor Shelley quoted an incident in the country where two settlers had so keenly felt the need of something out of the ordinary that they had rung up their friends and beseeched them to put the gramophone on the end of the telephone so that they could hear something. The W.E.A.’s business, Profes sor Shelley added, “is to meet the needs of all. I am at present formulating a scheme which I hope to have ready in time to report to the Dominion Council. it is to reach the little remote groups m any old place with material, which they can study week by week, and which they'may come to regard as a social occasion. Chatty lectures will be duplicated, and this material will be supplemented by gramophone records, etc., and put into circulation There is no reason why we should not family groups doing this sort °f thing every week. We must give cultural interest. Years ago people away in ’ the backblocks of Canterbury provided much of that themselves by producing plajs* good pin vs they were too. Now, however, fhey don’t have those things, aivl eve*. the companies don’t visit them. The people “ho ought to he the leaders . o country culture take their motor cars into Chnst church and see the latest Pictures and plays themselves. There is no one to lead country culture.” , , , P , The speaker went on to say that if they could induce the person of low mentality to demand higher literature it was clear y their business to do so. It seemed to him, however, that the tutorial class simply took one little bit of the range and said. “We’ll stick to that. That might be all right in England, but it would not do here. It was all light for those who were used to. writing essays, but if the W.E.A. demanded weekly essays from its members it would eventually kill the Professor Segar ((Auckland) said that a working man could not afford the time required bv the university, and that was why the W.E.A. founders took one night a week instead of throe nights a week for one session, as in the university. They aimed to make thinkers, speakers, and writers, and if they abandoned the essay they abandoned a most important Professor Shelley: I don’t want to abandon the essay, but to put it in its place. Mr Morrell (Otago): I take it that the essay is a means to an end. It seems to me, however, that it is regarded as an end. There are others apart from those who express themselves in explicit thought who should be considered, and there is no reason on earth why that different type could not come within the purview of the W.E.A. I thoroughly agr,e with Professor Shelley. Mr Martin (Auckland) declared that thev should one 1 vouc to embrace both forms—the elementary and, for those who are fitted the higher intellectual. The subject of control was raised by Mr Forde (Wellington). It had been laid down by the organisers, he said, that the workers should control the movement, lie -had iv fault to find with the idea of extending into the country, but if they were going to stand to their, principles they should keep to the class for which the association was originally intended. There was a tendency among the academic section to break away from the movement and establish tutorial classes In Wellington University tutorial extensions had been advertised, and lie thought he was right in rayin'* that the university had not that right. "Is that not so?” he asked. "No,” said Professor Shelley, "but your point is. There is a regulation by which it can be done.” There was a tendency for the people attached to the university, Mr Forde went on, to strive for a different organisation, and he said, as one who was a trade unionist and one who knew the mind of the trade unionist, that if that were going on there would not be a W.E.A. and the worker would not come in to it. There would be a parting of the ways. The W.E.A. seemed in some coses to be coming undflf the control, as far as administration was concerned, of people who were not in sympathy wit! the movement and with the workers. "Why, in Wellington,” he said, "one class is under Vice-regal patronage, not that there is anything wrong in that, but you

see the tendency. The worker has no control over the W.E.A. except in administration, and even in that semblance of control it seems that some of the academic people want to ride over then entirely.” In reply to Mr Forde, Dr Thompson (Otago) said that he would not like it to go forth that the W.E.A. in Otago was tending to make the worker subservient. A great many of Mr Forde’s strictures did not apply in Otago. Professor Shelley remarked that at the present time one of the leading Communists in Christchurch was a member of the controlling body of one of the tutorial classes It was in the workers’ own hands, he said. If the trade unionists got really keen it was in their hands to do what they liked—no one could gainsay them. He was opposed to the W.E.A. being controlled other than by the people themselves and to any attempt to dominate it by academic people “One of our difficulties is the definition of a worker,” said Mr Withers. "Mr Ford© seems to think it is a trade unionist, but I say it is anyone at all who works—a lawyer’s clerk or anyone. The W.E.A surely cannot be confined to the trade unionists. Mr Forde says that in Wellington the trade unionist has been antagonised by certain interests. I say that depends on their own attitude. They have repre sentatives the district council. Surely the members should have confidence in their own representatives ! Wellington *is a very large district, embracing New Ply mouth and Napier, and part of the South Island, and it should have representatives that really do lapresent the whole district. Part of the trouble in Wellington, how ever, is that the district council is purely a local body. It may not be known to this conference that in Wellington the local committee is really the district council, and the country districts have no representatives on the council at all.” Mr B Martin said that the chief trouble as far as the movement was concerned was the apathy of the trade unionists. He per sonally did not fear the influence of the academic section Mr o‘Kane (Wellington)- said that the problem was to try and induce the workers to join the association It was quite wrong to say, however, that the control of the W.E.A. was shifting out of the hands of the trade unions. This was not so. although many of the classes might only be attended by a small proportion of trade unionists. Professor Fisher (Otago) said that their difficulty in Dunedin was to find out what the people wanted as far as the W.E.A. was concerned The control of the movement was in the hands of the workers—that is. if (hey wanted it. No attempt was being made to dominate anyone and they were only too pleased to give the trade unionists control of the movement in Dunedin. Professor Segar stressed the need of keeping in view the fact that the W.E.A was a trade union movement. Mr Geo. Manning (Canterbury) said that the W.E.A. was attracting more members to classes than the trade unions were get ting to their own meetings. In some unions in Christchurch, which had a membership of 1000 and over, they found great difficulty in attracting more than 25 members to a meeting.