Musings and Meditations

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 10, 7 March 1908, Page 5

Musings and Meditations

By

Dog Toby

A NEW ZEALAND B.A.

FROM time to time the New Zealanders are prompted to take a spasmodic interest in their university by meetings of the Senate and reports of the deliberations of that august body. But for the most part they regard this important institution as merely an educational post-box, which collects examination-papers and forwards them to England—that is, unless the papers happen to get lost or burnt. They look on the university as a means of getting a degree, and a degree is supposed to have some commercial value; but few people ever seem to reflect that the. highest function of a university is to train and educate, rather than to examine its pupils and raise crops of Bachelors of Pedagogy, Commerce, and Agriculture. “Where we help you. In the pay envelope,” is not a very worthy motto for a seat of learning. One of the greatest elements of success in life is to learn to know men. and you can never get this knowledge out of text-books. You can only get. it by mixing with many men from many parts and getting to know the capacities of different types of mind. And it is in this respect that our own university is so far behind the great universities of the Old Country. For a young feuow here nas not many opportunities for entering into the social life of his college, and he consequently finds his mind narrowed rather than broadened by his college career. We sadly want a residential university, wn-re men from all parts may congregate and get to know and understand each other, so that our national life may become larger and wider, and less taken up with petty and provincial jealousies. A young English lad, on leaving school for college, finds himself, as it were, thrown upon the world, but with a wise, guiding hand to help and direct him. He is allowed much more freedom than at school, his time is much more at his own disposal, and he can to a great extent choose his own hours for study. Then he is given an allowance, which he has to learn to portion out for mmself. He learns the right use of time and the right use of money, two most important things to learn. He also learns to take a pride in his college, and his university, he is one of a large body, and he must do his best both in work and play for the credit of that body. He is thus taught the virtues of unseats..ness and of loyalty. At the same time, his college tutor keeps a watchful eye on him, and steadies him gently, but firmly, if he is inclined to go the pace, and stimulates him to fresh effort if he is inclined to get slack or lazy. When he first goes up he has to take lodgings, and he acquires the art of defending himself against the wiles of rapacious landladies. He hesitates at first to inquire after sundry pots of jam and tins of biscuits which he saw in bis cupboard when lie went out to morning lectures, and which have disappeared by lunch time, and he marvels in secret at r..e enormous amount of tea and sugar which his grocer’s bill shows him to have consumed in a week. But after a while he overcomes his natural reticence, and expresses a sceptical disbelief when on ..*s

complaining that whole ham has miraculously disappeared his landlady assures him that he must have eaten it himself and forgotten all about it. As a freshman he may only call on other freshmen. If a second or third-year man calls on him, in returning the visit he must call till he finds the other man in. On no account must he leave a card on a senior. If he is inclined to put on side the other fellows set to work to take him down. One chap, whose father was a prosperous wholesale grocer, was very fond of bragging about his money, and very contemptuous of men who had less. He was, accordingly, beguiled out for the day, and when he returned to his rooms at night lie found them turned into a regular grocer’s shop, with large advertisements of his father’s unrivalled teas and coffees adorning the walls. The men explained that if he thought.so much of money he ought to open a shop in college, so they had been helping him to start one. He turned into quite a decent fellow before he went down, and used to say that lesson taught him by the undergraduates was worth a great deal more to him than all the professors’ lectures. Whether you are a rowing man or not, it is absolutely incumbent on you to barrack for your college boat, and to back up your own college against allcomers. You may cut lectures and evade chapels, and set at nought vexatious university rules as to the wearing of cap and gown, and no great evil will befall you; but woe betide the man o sins against the unwritten code of honour that prevails amongst university men. To back the other side in the boat race or to resort to any form of trickery to gain an advantage, either on the playing grounds or in the schools, would be an unpardonable sin. It is, again, an understood thing that if you stand tor any post you must always vote for your opponent, and never for yourself. Only once has this rule been violated. The man who broke it got the post by getting his opponent’s vote, and then voting for himself. When this fact became known, not a soul at the university would speak to him or associate with him in any way. , People often ask whether a degree of the New Zealand University is worth as much as a degree at Home. I do not think that a degree as such is worth much anywhere. It would be a great pity if it were. If a person merely wishes to stick B.A. or M.A. after' his name, he can buy the right to do so as cheaply in America as anywhere. But the training given by a good English university is worth a great deal. A New Zealander says: "I have got a B.A.;’ an Englishman says: “I was at Trinity or New.” And therein liesh the essential difference between the two systems. By all means, let us give degrees for book-keeping or bun-making, or cal-age-growing, or any other industry that fancy or utility may dictate. Let. us have a gold hood, lined with silver, for commerce ‘.and a green hood for agriculture, and a violet hood for type writing. These things are of no account in themselves, nor is it. the main function of a university to either grant degrees or design fancy costumes. The important thing is to make our university a school for training mind and soul and l»ody alike, so that in the years that arc coming we may have men of character and men of thought and culture to whom we can turn for guidance amid the many social and intellectual problems that perplex the present age.