ARMY EDUCATION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5604, 12 April 1943, Page 2

ARMY EDUCATION

VISITORS STIMULATE LIVELY DISCUSSIONS

BY MEANS OF A “ QUESTION PARTY ”

A novelty in adult education in New Zealand has been introduced to the South Island by the Army Education and Welfare Service. It is a “question party,” which visits the camps prepared to answer and discuss any question the men may care to ask The members make their replies bright and interesting, and do not hesitate "to argue among themselves. The men join in the arguments if they care to—and they usually do. A wide range of subjects is covered, and the experience so far is that the visit of a question party leads to a desire among some of the men for further information. And so new study courses are introduced.

The first essential is that members of the question party must represent a wide variety of interest, knowledge and experience, and must be able to make their answers sufficiently interesting to arouse a desire for further information. The personnel of the party varies, but the one constant member is the organiser, Dr. O. H. Frankel,, in private life acting-chief executive officer of the Wheat Research Institute. He has more than his scientific attainments as qualifications for the job, because he has had as much experience of a soldier’s life as many of the men he visits. He joined the National Military Reserve more than a year before Japan entered the war, was mobilised in December, 1941, was “nuanpowered” into the Home Guard, and finally was seconded to the Army Education and Welfare Service in a part-time capacity. Still a private, he has the unusual distinction of being a welcome guest in the officers’ mess at a number of camps.

Members of Party Members of his party so far have been: Miss Ngaio Marsh, novelist and producer of plays; Mr Winston Rhodes, lecturer in English at Canterbury University College, and student of foreign affairs; Professor I. L. G. Sutherland, professor of psychology at Canterbury University College and a well-known ethnologist; Mr L. W. McCaskill, lecturer in biology at the Christchurch Training College; Mr A. C. Brassington, lawyer and lecturer in international law; Mr E. Hullett, chief chemist at the Wheat Research Institute; Mrs L. G. Pocock, teacher of history at St. Andrew’s College; and Professor E. Percival, professor of biology at Canterbury University College. Many others have promised to help. The question party covers a wide field. Sometimes no individual member can give the full answer to a question, but among them they can throw light on almost any subject, and from the discussion that follows comes at least an indication of the lines along which study could usefully be followed.

Often there is a touch of levity, but when the discussion on any question ends it is usually at a point where something solid has emerged. Take, for example, the reply given an artillery subaltern when he asked if meat three times a day were injurious" to a soldier’s health, and if so, what should replace it. Mr Hullett said he was biased because he was employed by an organisation financed by wheat, but he could honestly say that meat three times a day was probably too much. There were other sources of proteins; it was not a bad thing when the Army gave them a meal of bread and cheese. This was the cue for Mr Brassington to recall that the Roman soldiers were given just the wheat, which they prepared as best they could. From that had developed the old English dish of frumenty, where the wheat was stood in a jar and cooked slowly overnight. He suggested it was better than Mr Hullett’s concoctions, because it was the whole wheat, germ and all. The men who won the battle of Waterloo were given their wheat whole as rations. When they could grind it and cook it they did; otherwise, they ate it whole.

“Hoops for the Officers” “I have been told that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” began a man in the audience and one of the party interrupted him: “They must have been overgrown with wheat.” “I don’t know about that,” the soldier went on, “but I have read that the games of the period were hop-scotch and hoops. Perhaps the way to win the war is to feed the

troops on grains of wheat and give the officers hoops.” After that the discussion centred more seriously on the subject till it reached its close with the summing up of Dr. Frankel: “Meat three times a day seems too much, and a great deal less than that might stijl be too muWi. It may be that the cause of malnutrition is often not bad feeding but overfeeding.

Miss Marsh was not flippant when she talked of the advantages of joining a repertory organisation, but she phrased her reference to the growth of the movement in a way that the men liked. “With the coming of sound pictures one could hear the desolate slam of stage doors all over Australia and New Zealand,” she said. “Then came a curious renaissance. Many people found they wanted to act, and from their anxious indecision among clumps of aspidistra has grown the repertory movement of to-day.” She suggested that the peculiar fascination of the theatre was the unity which developed between players and audience, possibly because the audience knew the play was being stage for it, not for yesterday’s audience, not for to-morrow’s. After hearing what she had to say about dramatic work, some of the men were keen to try themselves, and a promise of help was given them if they wanted it. Miss Marsh told them that the Army in England was more and more providing its own entertainment with its own stage productions.

Mr Brassington had the task of giving the same unit some idea of the difference between civil law, military law, and martial law. The point that interested most of the men was that they could not excuse themselves for any infringement of civil law by pleading that they had acted under the orders of a superior offiers. That was why special regulations and legislation were necessary, but even then he doubted whether the soldier was always fully covered in the course of his duty. “Perhaps the law on this will never become really satisfactory until we have been invaded a few times,” he concluded. The commanding officer joined in this discussion, mainly to tell his men that they had better obey his orders without worrying too much about possible legal pitfalls. Birth-Rate Discussed

All the question party and some of the audience had something tp say about the low birth-rate when this was raised in a question about the advisablity of maternity bonuses. After economic and social factors had been well argued, a senior officer said the trouble was that young women had too much freedom and amusement. They did not want to settle down as their grandmothers had done and raise families, because it would interfere with their freedom. This brought Miss Marsh to her feet. “You can’t turn the clock back 60 years,” she said. “You are getting women to do a good job of work and they have become emancipated. Women are different now. You may not like them as they are, but they have gone too far to go back 60 years,” She said the proper thing to do was to put the clock forward. Motherhood should be made easier for women.

“If you are concerned for the perpetuation of the human species, this is a serious question,” commented Dr Frankel. “I agree that motherhood must be raised to an honoured position, but there are many angles to this subject. Soldiers are prepared to die for their country, but some of them are not prepared to raise families for it; why I don’t know, because it is far pleasanter. This is an individual responsibility.” It has been remarkable how many discussions, whether on scientific subjects, foreign affairs, currency, economics, heredity, or any one of a dozen others have arrived at the same point, individual responsibility. This method of “selling” the idea of education to the Army is still in the experimental stage, but its promoters believe that it is already successful. In the first place, they have apparently created interest among the men, because at each camp they have visited there has been a request for their return. In the second, each visit they have made has been followed by some development of the educational scheme.