EDUCATION CONFERENCE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19373, 10 July 1937, Page 15

EDUCATION CONFERENCE

OVERSEAS DELEGATES DISTINGUISH!! D VI SI TORS f'IVTL RECEPTION (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. A large overseas delegation lo the New Educational Fellowship conference, beginning its sessions to-mor-row, arrived by the Mariposa to-day. The delegation included Mr. G. T. Hankin, representing the English Board of Education, Whitehall, which was sent directly by the British Government; Dr. Cyril Norwood, formerly headmaster of Harrow, and now president of St. John’s College, Oxford; Mr. E. Salter Davies, director of education in Kent; and other Englishmen.

Delegates from other countries included Mr. L. Zillacus, Finland; Dr. Paul L. Dengler, Vienna; and also a strong American party, among them Dr. Edmund Do S. Brunner, professor of education at the Teachers’ College, Columbia University, and Dr. Harold Rugg, professor of education at the same university, who turned from engineering to education.

A civic reception was tendered the delegates in the Town Hall this afternon by the deputv-Mayor, the Hon. Bernard Martin, Professor T. A. Hunter, vice-chancellor of the University of New Zealand, and Professor A. B. Fitt, the local president of the New Education Fellowship.

Softly spoken in carefully-phrased English and without a trace of accent, Mr. Zilliaous, of Finland, acknowledged the cordial reception on behalf of all the delegates.

GOODWILL MESSAGES VIEWS OF THE NATIONS BROAD BASIS SIMILAR (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. An official message of goodwill from the British Government was brought to the conference of the New Educational Fellowship, by Mr. G. T. Hankin from Earl Stanhope, the President of the British Board of Education. The message states: “It gives me great pleasure to send my greetings to the conferences of the New Education Fellowship which are being held in New Zealand and Australia. I am sure that, in bringing together from many parts of the Empire and other countries those who are interested in education, cither as teachers or administrators, or organisers, these conferences are performing a most useful service.

“Your agenda, is a very wide one, nothing less in fact than education for complete living. I have no doubt that those attending the conferences will find, notwithstanding the widely different circumstances and conditions of life in the countries they represent, that they are concerned with the same- fundamental educational problems and interested in the same general principles of educational progress. “I am glad to know that you have been able to assemble and take out with you an exhibition illustrating, on however small a scale, the present tendency of English education. This sharing of experience in relation to our common educational problems seems lo me to be perhaps the most fruitful of the forms of intellectual co-operation. It is a kind of international commerce into which no elements of competitiveness or jealousy can enter, save competition in the service of the child and jealousy for the welfare of future generations. I wish the conferences every possible success signed.” Pursuit of New Ideals

The concensus of opinion of representatives of different countries with different national outlooks to the conference shows that the broad basis of the new educational ideals are strikingly similar, probably one result of the inner searching consequent on the post-war, world-wide economic social dislocation. Dr. Dengler, for example, an Austrian, spoke in broad terms and in the same breath of history and education. He said that his small country was all that remained of a one-time large Empire and was seeking to reorientate itself to the new conditions, and it was realising the added importance of women'in the larger sphere outside as well as inside the home. Radio and Films Mr. Hankin spoke of the increasing importance of mechanical aids to education, especially the radio and films He said ho was sent with the goodwill of the British Government which was alive to the importance of similar cultural ideals among the English-speaking peoples, particularly in their own Dominions. This culture was teachable readily by radio and films. Mr. Zilliacus, of Finland, expressed himself as inspired by coming to New Zealand where the ideals of freedom fought for in Europe were taken as commonplace. The American view was summed up by Mr. Rugg, who said: "We arc looking to the schools and what is taught there as the only hope for democracy. We do not hope to solve any critical problem of to-day by education, but it is democracy to the last. It will be the result of a slow infiltration of what is taught m the schools.” He stressed the point that up to the present much of the discontent of the world was due to the fact that people did not understand their problems and it was one ol education’s important duties to make those problems plain.