EDUCATIONAL INVESTMENT.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18845, 7 April 1931, Page 9

EDUCATIONAL INVESTMENT.

STUDENTS AS AN ASSET. His Excellency the Governor-General (Lord Bledisloe), in an address at the Hutt Valley High School, gave the students some helpful and stimulating advice. Large sums of public money, at a time when it could be spared with difficulty were, he said, being spent on their training. How did they propose to show their gratitude? Idleness, indifference, lack of ambition, self-neglect, self-conceit all constituted ingratitude. The money expended on their training was a national investment. Was each student going to be a national asset? “New Zealand stands at the crossroads—at the parting of the ways,” he said. “Is she going to march forward with strong confident tread along the path of progress, or is she going to sink back—unequal to the intense pressure of world competition—into *he morass r%f the world’s failures? The answer to this question is to be sought in the schools and colleges of this Dominion. It is above all her secondary schools which will determine her future destiny, for they it is which are responsible nowadays not for merely developing the character, but for building the moral and intellectual structure of most of those who will occupy hereafter positions of responsibility in the State, on local bodies, in the professions, and in various branches of trade and industry. The country will always need warm sympathetic hearts, which draw their inspiration for service from their religious faith and ideals, but its educated classes will also require clear heads, sound judgment, and accurate up-to-date knowledge if they mean to play their part in the ordered progress, the good government, and the industrial development of this land of opportunity and immense natural resources and advantages. ‘Carpe diem’ —grasp your opportunities .and never waste time. A country’s stability and a country’s future prospects can be large gauged by the cheerful industry of its working population, and by the manner in which its more educated classes spend their leisure.

“Life should be a joyous experience. If it is not so, it is often the fault of the individual and not of his or her surroundings, it can only be so if we make the most of the talents with which God has endowed us with humility and perseverance, look at the bright side of things and put our duty to God and our duty to our neighbour before all other considerations.” His Excellency paid a tribute to the work of the pioneer settlers of this country, and congratulated the school on its practical sympathy in devoting the proceeds of the fete to the relief of those who had suffered injury or loss from the terrible earthquake in Hawke’s Bay. The splendid spirit of the local inhabitants in the hour of sudden disaster had, he said, shewn the world the fine stuff of which New Zealanders were made; and the activities of British seamen on that occasion had amply demonstrated the immense value in an emergency of discipline, knowledge, self-reliance, and resourcefulness, qualities for which the British Navy had always been renowned, qualities which every school in the British Empire should seek to develop if the British race was to hold its own among nations of the world in days to come,