BREADTH OF OUTLOOK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 424, 15 November 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

BREADTH OF OUTLOOK

A plea to students to acquire the habit of intellectual independence was made by Mr H. A. L. Fisher, Warden of New College. Oxford, in an address at University College. Nottingham. He warned them against the mechanical industry commonly bred by examinations, which was really a subtle and injurious form of indolence, a form of industry which consisted in memorising lectures and note books in the belief that the examiners set no value on independent thought and personal conviction, but were only concerned with the comparative degree of fidelity with which their own information was produced in the examination room. li ßelieve me that there is no fruit more refreshing to the parched soul of an examiner than a fresh thought springing straight from the mind of an examinee.” said Mr Fisher. “Students do not commonly credit this; but they are wrong. If they would start from the conviction that it is their business to think for themselves ami to form powers of independent judgment they would not only gain higher academic rewards, but what is more important, greatly in-

crease their usefulness to the community.” Those men or women alone could truly be described as being well-educat-ed who had been trained into a certain generous hospitality of mind which enabled them tn appreciate the outlook of men and women very differently situated from themselves ami to conceive the whole community as meriting their service. There was no such thing as a narrow well-educated man. If a man was narrow he was not educated. “The educated man looks over every hedge and strides across exery field,” said Mr Fisher. “He i;» ready, if occasion requires. to be interested in everything and everyone. He will make friends out of his own class, because he does not think of class. What he studies to Require is not class-consciousness, but class-blindness.”