MENTAL EQUIPMENT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 79, Issue 7146, 16 December 1949, Page 5

MENTAL EQUIPMENT

FIVE NECESSARY TOOLS VIEWS OF AMERICAN \ AMBASSADOR Five tools for their bag of mental equipment were suggested by the • American Ambassador, Mr R. M Scotten, in his" address at the break-ing-up ceremony at Wairarapa College, Masterton. Mr Scotten said the first piece of such equipment was ability to study and think clearly. One of the most disturbing things in the world political picture to-day was the apparent ease with which men could be led into the habit of thinking by formula, and the apparent difficulty they had in drawing conclusions based on clearcut facts. He would then cultivate an active imagination, otherwise one would plough over much of the same ground already worked by others; elasticity of mind gave a broader horizon. ' When the early colonists were laying out the first sheep stations in the Wairarapa, few would have dreamed that New Zealand, as a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, would to-day have representatives at the seat of the United Nations working in co-operation with other nations to build' a worldwide plan for peace and security. Yet changes more striking than those would occur during the lifetime of the students he was addressing. Sense of Team Work A third essential tool in mental equipment of youth was a sense of team work. Tremendous strides had been made in the last 100 years in protecting man’s health, improving his transportation and communication, developing domestic animals and food supply, and so onMuch of this required close team work, not only between individuals but also between nations. It was difficult to understand why similar cooperation had not been possible in building a world community in which one could live without the threat of wholesale violence. That co-operation would come when individuals and nations learned that to play in the world team they must be willing occasionally to let the other fellow have the ball. ' A tolerant viewpoint was the fourth tool in the kit of mental qualities for to-day. Differences of opinion were natural and wholesome enough; the danger point was reached in the attitude of mind that the other fellow could not be right, or, worse still, that he had no right to be right. Intolerance was the trade mark of the narrow mind. People in great areas of the globe to-day were deprived of free expression of opinion. “The final mental tool which I would like to see ineluded in this basic kit is a sound sense of fair play,” concluded the Ambassador. ■“The application of a sound code of ethics in all dealings between nations is perhaps the world’s biggest task at the moment. “It may be the greatest single contributing factor in the re-ordering of our lives and institutions so as to make science and technology contribute to man’s well-being rather than his destruction. It may be the powerful level- which is now needed to lift up our social skills to the level of our skills in the natural sciences and to guarantee to future generations liberty and law as they are known in your country and mine.”