THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1920. AN EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT.

Wairarapa Age, 20 March 1920, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1920. AN EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT.

Any movement that is designed to improve the education of the people and to extend their general knowledge is worthy of respect. The Workers' Educational Association is one such movement that has recently established itself in New Zealand. The name of the institution may imply that tho working classes alone, i.e., those who earn their living by the sweat of their brow, are entitled to membership of the Association. This is far from being tho case. The Wellington' district organiser of the movement (Mr. D. J. B. Seymour, M.A.) recently stated that the Association was closely linked with the University, a joint committeo of tho two bodies controlling the appointment of tutors, and the University itself being responsible for the expenditure of the Government grant, as well as its own. Mr. Seymour pointed out that the University has alw&ys beon the homo of tho search for knowledge, and so soon as the W.E.A. falls from this idea it will have lost the only bond which preserves it from disintegration. Since, further, its class work reaches the University standard, and it depends on University gradluates for its tutors, its University connection is essential and permanent. This was the best possible guarantee against the capture of tho W.E.A. by any particular faction or school of thought. The W.E.A. excluded from its programme work of a vocational nature, because it believed that provision had already been made for this in present institutions. It aimed at what might bo called "pure education." Its objects were cultural, and there were no more practical or important cultured ideals than those of citizenship. Mr. Seymour went on to refer to the peculiar significance of ■the work of tlie W.E.A. for the solution of the social problem. It provided not merely a means by which industrial and political questions could be studied scientifically, but also the meeting ground for tho testing of rival opinions. In the debate which follows tho tutor's lecture, employee and employer, Liberal and Conservative, Socialist and Industrialist contend for their respective creeds, and in doing so, while endeavouring to refute tho arguments of their intellectual opponents, learn to appreciate their sincerity. Every year the machinery of government becomes more complex, and demands more expert direction. The responsibility for controlling national policy, transferred with the growth of democracy from a privileged few to tho people as a whole, has forced the introduction of a vast amount of new machinery and the drastic remodelling of that already in existence. Education has been made free, compulsory, and secular, religious institutions have been profoundly modified, the modern press' has been developed, what is known as the "capitalist system" has established itself far and wide; the workers have replied by organising, and Arbitration Courts of many varieties have been instituted for settling disputes. Tne rank and file of the nation probably never understood much of the system under which they worked, but the intricacies of modern organisation are now far beyond their comprehension. There is no reason why this should be so. Of the machine which the expert can drive, it should not bo impossible for tho layman to grasp tho general principles, and to understand .when it is being influenced in the interests of others than the people as a whole. The science of the working of the machinery—that is to say, the science of sociology—can only be grasped by systematic and carefully directed study, and this the W.E. A. will place within the reach of every citizen. "To ijo one is this knowledge more necessary than to those who aro charged with public responsibility," added Mr. Seymour, 'but these are frequently men who Have been success* ful in business, and whose success has been won by concentration 011 their work, to the detriment of wider interests. Their capacity for carrying out. progressive measures is likely to be limited by a detailed knowledge of p, small field, balanced by comparative ignorance of the larger one, and by predilections in favour of the system under which they themselves had been successful. These aro some of the causes of the general indifference towards progressive measures

| which have led reformers to complain ' of lack of public spirit and of any deep public interest in community welfare. The causes of public apathy are very complex, and will not be I removed by action in one direction only. It is very clear, however, that ignorance of social and economic fact, | together with ignorance of what is possible, are determining causes, and that these can be eliminated by an effective educational programme. So long as the individual citizen concerns ; himself only with Iris immediate personal advantage, so long as he is content to base his political and industrial opinions upon ignorance alike of the facts of industrialism and the evidence of economics; so long as contending factions are content with a; long-range bombardment in the columns of the press, so long will the problems of social well-being remain unsolved. With the evolution of an improved social system, with social experiments being everywhere undertaken, and with a clearer realisation among responsible men both of what is necessary socially and possible economically, the future is promising, and no work promises more fruitful results than that of the W.E.A."