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A 21-year-old writer, Rhys Pasley, has resigned from his position in the Public Relations Office of the Wellington City Corporation because of his association with the national satirical publication "Cock".
In its most recent issue (November, 1968), Cock" contained a reference to the Mayor of Wellington, Sir
On November 21, Rhys was asked by the Public Officer, Mr. J. G. Thomson, if he was asso with "Cock".
Rhys agreed that he was, whereupon Mr. Thomsonferred to the paragraph concerning the mayor.
Rhys said he was aware of this, but that he had personally to do with the reference.
Mr Thomson did not
Mr Turk had seen Rhys'
The folowing day, Mr
"This is very bad," he said.
At that point, Rhys told Salient, he agreed with Mr Thomson he was "Cock" as a poetry contributor and as a unofficial
"Mr Thomson asserted that my association with the magazine had caused 'untold harm' to the mayor, his wife, Lady Iris, the council, himself and the corporation as a whole," Rhys said.
"I asked him if this was guilt by association, and then he said I could redeem myself by resigning immediately from this office".
"I replied that I would be glad to.
"I wrote out my resignation and delivered it to Mr 'Cock".
"I told him again I had no influence over editorial policy or decisions of "Cock".
"I am quite sure that had I merely contributed to "Cock" by mail I would have still lost my job.
Mr Thomson told me he would have been prepared to stand up for me if I 'had done something defensible'," Rhys said.
The following Monday Rhys learned the Labour Councillor, Mrs
Mrs Smuts-Kennedy told Salient that she had suggested Rhys re-open the case. "I thought his resignation was premature," she said. Rhys said he went to see the Town Clerk the following Friday. "I re-stated my case, and was told to apply for re-instatement. He said the application would be treated 'very sympathetically,," he said. Two weeks later Rhys received a letter declining his application.
Rhys said he sought legal advice and although originally told he had a good case for wrongful dismissal he found this was not easily proved.
Continued ON P. 3
After 25 years' agitation, Victoria is to get a bookshop near the University campus.
An application by Sweet and Maxwell to turn
Speaking on behalf of the management, Mr Kaye said
He said it would include
It has been 25 years since a Salient editorial in
"After full investigation by the committee it became apparent that the whole of the area set aside for University purposes would be required by the University itself, and that no land or space could be made available on which the faculties required by the University could be established." said Professor
"Owing to the topography of the surrounding areas, the only satisfactory places would be in Kelburn Parade, Salamanca Road, or at the top of Mount Street."
"It has already been decided that Kelburn Parade would be unsatisfactory, Salamanca Road is too narrow and could create traffic problems and Mount Street seems the only reasonably suitable area", Professor Roberts said.
The reference to Kelburn Parade was concerned with an application which was made last year by Sweet and Maxwell, but was declined by the City Council because of a potential traffic hazard.
The Vice-Chancellor of Victoria, Dr. Culliford, said: "The site will become even more suitable as future development takes place."
Reaction from the Students Association was unanimously favourable.
The president of the Student Association,
"Such a site will be beneficial for convenience, for the ease of expressing the University's needs to the management of the bookshop and their appreciation of their needs, and the students opportunity to use, more frequently, such a service."
A Lecturer in political science at Victoria University, Mr.
His remarks followed an address on the role of universities in society, to students at Curious Cove.
A questioner asked Mr. Wainwright what solution he saw to problems facing the universities.
"One method would be to close down the universities for a year to have a look at them," Mr. Wainwright replied.
He envisaged during the shut-down period an exchange of ideas between students and staff as to the best method of changing the university system into an institution motivating the human spirit and not existing only as a service industry to the economy.
A representative survey of New Zealand's sixth forms show that only 24 per cent of sixth formers are prepared to support a national army for New Zealand.
The survey also indicated that the conformist image of New Zealand youth is true, but that youth tends also to be anti-authoritarian.
A final result from the survey has yet to be correlated, but senior lecturer in education at Victoria University — Mr
The survey is an international one called "Mankind 2000" and is designed to establish the likely attitudes of people in the future.
It was implemented in New Zealand by Mr Shallcrass, who decided sixth form opinion would be among the more useful in presenting what attitudes might prevail in the future.
The results of the survey, which is being carried out throughout Europe and Britain among the 15-40 age-group, are due to be published at the end of this year.
"The general reaction to the question of a national army was: "Well, who does it frighten?'" Mr Shallcrass said.
On social questions sixth-formers generally held fast to established values they seemed to think were slipping. They believed values they seemed to think were slipping. They believed that more permissiveness would prevail in the future, the church would break down further, and that more women would achieve positions of responsibility. They were against much change.
"Our youngsters were shown to be a nice, cautious, fairly middle-aged group of people," Mr Shallcrass said.
He did not consider that the future would see the breakdown of the family and the church, and increases in sexual permissiveness which the survey subjects were wary of.
Compared to Europeans who had undergone the same survey, the image of New Zealand youth as conformists as "largely true".
The survey showed also that over 70 per cent, of sixth form students came from professional, skilled and white-collar homes.
"This shows that the education system reinforces the basic class structure of the economy," Mr Shallcrass said.
"It reveals a cultural shutting out of a very high order. Is it because the other students are unintelligent or because there are other cultural reasons? I think the reason is cultural, and the education system allows this to happen."
Producing qualified secondary school teachers is now more urgent than producing specialists like economists, Mr. Jack Shallcrass said at Congress.
Secondary schools were at present taking as staff "any semi-literate person of the street."
Fewer than half the staff at secondary schools were now graduates or had post-graduate qualifications.
"An increasing number have no academic qualifications," he said.
"You can't just say we want more economists, under-pinning all this is the need for a continuing flow of people with a broad education from the universities who can put back into the universities from which you are the cream."
Mr Shallcrass also said the role of the sixth form in secondary schools could be made terminal at the fifth form and the school certificate examination could be eliminated. This would leave the secondary schools the job of giving a broad general education — a process of exploration of the individual, not domination and destruction by an examination system which failed students at a ratio of two to one.
At the junior universities. intellectual requirements should be made tough and demanding in the academic tradition as the students progress. Teachers within these colleges should help people decide whether their talents were best suited to a technical institute or to a university.
The Congress reports on this page were compiled by Geoff Chappell for the New Zealand Student Press Association.
New Zealand universities must choose a public course and, if necessary, refuse to serve the prevailing ideology of their society, Mr
He called the "preferential neutralism" by which universities refrained from criticism a "hypocritical device" supporting the present social powers.
"It is not a violation of a university that some part of its actions serve society, but the university must determine through its own critical agency that the society it serves is a place in which the spirit of man can be nutured and advanced," he said.
"Today, the university is required to condemn the Government for its collusion with the Unisted States in its war against the people of South Vietnam."
Mr Wainwright said that universities had come increasingly to serve technology, and this led to the rise of insular specialists.
"The university comes increasingly to be populated by scholar-researchers who more closely resemble idiot-savants than men of wisdom."
The effect of this division to stifle social consciousness and the need for radical change.
Continued From P. 1
"I am sure this prejudiced my job chances," he said.
The editor of "Cock",
"At no time has it been suggested that he did," Chris said.
"At no time has it been suggested the information was libellious, untrue, or in any way incorrect."
Chris said in his opinion the whole incident had originated from a very trivial matter.
The Public Relations Officer, Mr.
He said a legal action was underway and felt it "would be quite improper" for him to make any comment.
Mr. Thomson did object to the Salient reporter saying he would published that remark.
The Assistant Town Clerk, Mr. Pringle, also refused to comment because of the legal action Rhys is taking.
Forum will be next Wednesday, March 12.
It will be held on the lawn outside Hunter Building, facing Kelburn Parade at 1 p.m.
Exec Member Resigns
The public relations officer of the Victoria University Association, Graeme
"I feel that holding this portfolio is not possible because of the nature of my employment. I do not think that it is to the benefit of students that they should have a non-student as a public relations officer."
Graeme assumed the portfolio in July last year following the resignation of Rhys Harrison. He was elected unopposed in the elections for this year.
For the first time in New Zealand a woman student has been appointed to a Professorial Board.
She is Caroline McGrath, the Women's Vice-President.
Other appointments made at the last Exec meeting were:
Student Management Committee :
Boyd Wilson Field Allocation Committee : D. Howman.
University Appointments Board : P. Cullen. The President, or his nominee, is automatically a member of this board.
Joint Committee on Honorary Degrees : H. Rennie.
Standing Committee for the Purchase of Works of Art : Helen McGrath.
Student Union Finance Committee : J. Wild, J. Eade, Caroline McGrath. The President and the Treasurer are automatically members of this committee.
Our Mark . . .
This Edition Of Salient was edited by
Contributors were
Advertising:
Applications are now being called for a number of newly created positions for student representatives. These have arisen from the recommendations of the Joint Committee. Any student may apply and should read the Exec notice board for further details.
• • •
An Arts Congress is to be held at a week end in April organised by Cultural Affairs Officer,
Applications are now being accepted for two student representatives on the Professorial Board. It is not necessary, in fact some openly prefer it, for students with no connection with Exec to apply.
• • •
A decision is soon to be made on the possibility of a licensed restaurant on campus for students.
• • •
Caroline McGrath was appointed to arrange student concessions in city stores. As soon as confirmation of the various discounts is made a list will be available to all students.
• • •
Nevil Gibson was appointed Technical Editor of
• • •
He's Back!
That Muggeridge of Mormon Monthly, Toad of the sceptic sores, mother of the free, the Verbal Pundit of our McLuhenesque, Galbraith, Mason ion times.
Yes, its
My God I'm sore.
I mean I'm sore about the way I'm invested with a title that even exceeds by capabilities to use you as a scurvy outlet.
And fifty thousand Polanski's Im on your side Mr Sir, Mistress Lady, Colombo Students, Freshers, and Appassionata Von Pox Humana.
"But Mr Wops," this lass stopped me on the zebra," your sensitivity exceeds even your capacity for rapaciousness."
Why can't a decent bloker, on an average day in his normal life invest in a bit of hokus pokery.
I was in the Tete the other night conversing and scribbing the life out of me (
"Leaning Rowles!" I mnemnonically muttered. It was a tiny trembling creature I had briefly swept by one hot Kings Cross evening.
"I've bin thrown out of my job," she sobbingly expostulated over the table. She was on the verge of tears. Five layers.
My arm was a bolster of Lvdiardian quiverment ("Plus c'est intelligent, plus c'est stpuide," Witold Gombrowisz).
"But listen love, here we have it. You know how I feel about the after birth of creation," I paused to see her rip off a false lash, remove a contact lens with a rather nasty look WC plunger.
"Us girls have a rep to keep up. We don't say
It was the final end I insured her. They had Meter Maids even in the North now, Bowser Attendants were being consulted for Te Whepaepae, and over fifty percent of young misfit ministers were getting their troubled poems performed with Alpert accompanists in Hastings Blossom Festival.
I felt this young girl with a prayer, a tingling scapuPop, and a dozen Roxy lar, a bottle of Lourdes Soda Balcony Free Passes.
You see, you can be saved when you are "a scallywog" as Winston Mac. once told me, and to quote the Quixotic nimbleness of
You don't pass ten poor if you break them with turdlets in a year and even your fingers the Authorities wil clamber with a squeegee and their hearts a triboldis Solofruitandieri be it lion or monkey wrench the wench will scream o' just the same. Hey Noddy etc. . .
I assure you, sleeves rolled past the tendom of the Sum/Ski cream, that I know when the poor are poor, when a democracy is only a median in a holus bolus of tangents, when the life blood of martyrs who leave assorted bodily wastes to progress are sick sick people.
Then, and only then am I able to comprehend this dour society's crawl with an uptake and avenge it, with all the powers of a politician, a pundit (Did Walt Disney live in a Plutocracy?) and above all an honest peasant with a song in his heart and a lash more severe than a horse's nightmare.
Ladies and Dogends, J resign from my office. Pax Vobis.
• Nest Week O'Leary Leaden on Te Deum is the Massage—a post-rhythmical treatise on movies and morons.
Herbert Marcuse has been put forward by the Western press as the "prophet" of student and worker revolution in the West. Peter Sedgwick, writing for "The Black Dwarf", has other ideas.
Herbert Marcuse is social philosopher with a long Left-wing history; he was one of the founding members of Liebnecht's and Luxemburg's Spartakusbund in 1918, was active in the pre-war Marxist Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, and since moving to live in the United States after the rise of Nazism has produced fascinating and important work on the development of Marxist thought and on the problems of contemporary culture.
He is now being cited, in virtually every review of the theoretical foundations of present-day student radicalism, as a major critical influence of our time. Indeed, "the three M's" —Marx, Marcuse and Mao−are reported to form the intellectual trinity which inspires the activism of Italy's insurgent students. It is said also that his influence is powerful in his old homeland of Germany, among the SDS. Having read Marcuses work attentively over a number of years, I find it hard to trace any very precise connections between his most characteristic ideas and anything that is being written, said or done on the international Left nowadays. However, I will make the attempt, in the hope that those who have a clearer idea of the present radical movement and its theoretical origins will correct and supplement these remarks.
Marcuse's output in the English language can be divided into three phases, which overlap somewhat. The first consists of his Reason and Revolution (1942) and Soviet Marxism (1958) which analyse respectively the rise (from Hegel to Marx) and the decline (from Lenin to Khrushchev) of those critical, subversive social ideas which are traditionally grouped under the heading of Marxism (later "Marxism-Leninism"). These are important books both for the historian of social ideas and for any revolutionary who wants to trace the shifts in the meaning of concepts, over entire epochs, which can make or break a radical theory of society. They imply no specific practical or tactical payoff in terms of action; I mention this not as a criticism of the work, but to indicate the difficulty in establishing a lineage from the present movement to Marcuse.
The second set of writings is concerned with the forms of intellectual domination and repression which are said by Marcuse to be prevalent in advanced capitalist society. During his first twenty years of sojourning in the United States, Marcuse became impressed by the virtual absence of any substantial movement of social criticism and concluded that capitalism had entered a new totalitarian stage of development, in which all sources of opposition to the system became exhausted and superseded. He first presented this view in a long postscript to the second edition of Reason and Revolution, in 1955. According to him, the introduction of automation into industry marked a fundamental change in the relations of production. With growing productivity and consumption, the needs of the masses had become sated, and were indeed now simply manipulated and administered by the system. "The economic and cultural co-ordination of the labouring classes" was now complete; individuals had become transformed into "total objects of society". All opposition to the status quo was "pacified, co-ordinated and liquidated", and any critical consciousness that remained was only "the dangerous prerogative of outsiders".
Marcuse says much the same thing, at greater length, in his book One-Dimensional Man, published in 1964. Here he goes much further, alleging that a drastic change in the terms of human thought has now taken place in the West. Critical and radical ideas have now become impossible to formulate within the realm of disclosure that is accepted as rational by our society. Every conceivable activity of the human spirit—artistic, philosophical, scientific, or simply playful−contributes to the maintenance of "the whole", the repressive structure of capitalism. Science is counter-revolutionary because it seeks to control nature, and hence human nature. Art, however radical in form or content, can only function as an entertainment for the conformist and well-off. Ordinary and academic language are alike permeated by a sort of Orwellian "Newspeak" which denies not only any possibility, but also any meaning, to concepts which transcend the existing order of things. Marcuse reserves some of his severest strictures for sexual permissiveness and laxity, which are apparently diverting the masses from the knowledge of their oppression, and depleting them of the energy that should be sublimated into revolutionary forms of creativity. (This last theme, of what Marcuse calls "repressive desublimation", is argued more fully in his Eros and Civilisation, published in 1954.)
The last few sentences may sound like a grotesque caricature of Marcuse's case. They are, however, a summary of what he actually states, not as risks, as chances, as tendencies that might be overcome by struggle, but as over-riding determining laws of human consciousness in our era of advanced technology.
The laws of the system being unbreakable, and unrelievedly hideous, revolt is possible only for minorities in a marginal or exterior relationship to the main social process. The critical "outsiders" of the Reason and Revolution appendix would seem to be lonely stoics like Marcuse himself, writing in the depressive shadow of the Joe MacCarthy era; in One-Dimensional Man they include the lowliest, most oppressed groups in American society, the inmates of slums, ghettoes, prisons, menial institutions, etc. Their rebellion is at this time seen by Marcuse as an elemental, almost hopeless outburst of "outcasts", the new paupers who have replaced the labour movement that has grown too fat to fight. As marginal minorities, they cannot be expected to win against the main tendencies of the engulfing "whole" and Marcuse does not expect them to. His interpretation of the Black freedom movement of course does little justice to its organisation, articulacy and confidence.
Marcuse's views in this period were presented at a conference of European Marxist scholars in Korcula, Yugoslavia, in the summer of 1964. They were challenged there by a number of the participants, including Serge Mallet, an industrial sociologist who is a leading member of the French PSU. Mallet's reply pointed out the very shaky character of Marcuse's theory that automation produces an acquiescent working class. Automatic industries are often peculiarly risk-prone in view of their high capital costs and their unusual dependence on a secure market over a long term. Mallet has for some years been arguing that "the new working class" of the more automated industries would acquire wider, more political horizons extending beyond wage-demands, and "were being further and further towards a head-on confrontation with the lechno-bureaucratics structure of control of the economy". These words from Mallet's parer (International Socialist Journal, April 1965) seem remarkably prophetic in view of the French events this year.
It is quite possible that a fully automated sector of industry, equipped with transfer machines and numerical control apparatus, would generate a "middle-class" type of consciousness among its operators, who would work with a great deal of individual responsibility and largely apart from a group of mates. This, however, could only apply to a tiny proportion of the work-force even in an advanced capitalist society. Semi-automated industry, with its relentless industrial rhythms, occupies many thousands of workers in a typical Western economy. In France it was these sectors (cars and aircraft) that proved to be in the vanguard of militancy, responding rapidly to the "student spark". Highly mechanised industries in Britain (from cars to computerised banks) have also been associated with a level of consciousness whose militancy may be dispersed and fragmented, but is still very far from Marcuse's vision of the machine-dominated worker.
The climatic struggle in France and its less spectacular daily counterpart in Britain also puts paid to the idea, common to many radical thinkers apart from Marcuse, that the industrial struggle over wages can only radicalise workers when they are fighting at a subsistence level of income. Questions of power and control in industry and in society, especially as the State attempts to become an arbiter of wage levels, are inseparably linked to workers' demands for money. The struggle in France was fought by the workers both in terms of wages and in terms of power. The Left has gained among the working class both by exposing the incompetence and timidity of the CP-CGT apparatus as wage-bargainers and by campaigning around a broader perspective of control. The CFDT now outnumbers the CGT in membership as a result of playing this double tactic; how far either the CFDT or the PSU themselves can offer more than a rhetoric and a style is still of course an open question.
Marcuse's third phase is marked only in a few pieces of writing, and is doubtless still evolving. He has now acknowledged that organised radical movements are actually, functioning outside the margin of the outcasts; paradoxically, their development in the crucial late Fifties and early Sixties eluded him while he was developing his most pessimistic position. In a recent interview published in New Left Review he has, with many hedgings and hesitations, affirmed the necessity and the possibility of revolution in the West, laying particular emphasis on the explosive contradictions set up in the United States by the Vietnam war. The progress of revolution now seems to him to depend on the forging of a link between guerilla struggle in the Third World and the rebellious youth movements of the "affluent society"; and in Europe "the political revitalisation of the working-class movement on an international scale" is a perspective worth thinking and fighting towards. Others of course have said as much, with more consistency; and even so guarded a statement is an unconfessed recantation of the thousands of words that Marcuse has written to the contrary.
Marcuse's article "Repressive Tolerance", published in 1965 as one of the outstanding set of essays by three American scholars, entitled A Critique of Pure Tolerance, displays fully the ambiguities of his most recent stance. It is in part a superb attack on the conventional liberal wisdom of political pluralism, which sees society as an open forum for equally matched contending views. It is also a first-rate defence of revolutionary violence and of rationality in history. The rationality, however, stops when Marcuse starts to argue once again that present-day society consists of "manipulated and indoctrinated individuals who parrot. as their own, the opinions of their masters," except for "such enclaves as the inlelligentsia." Now that "society has entered the phase of total administration and indoctrination", Marcuse advocates "the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament. chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc." Since human needs are completely programmed and perverted by the mass media, the efforts to counteract man's dehumanisation "must begin with stopping the words and images which feed this consciousness. To be sure this is censorship, even precensorship, but openly directed against the more or less hidden censorship that permeates the free media."
Who is to conduct this expropriation of the media and the ban on civil rights? Not the capitalist State—Marcuse rightly sees the uselessness of appealing to official society to commit suicide. Not the masses either—these helpless parrots who have undergone "moronization". Marcuse's appeal is explicitly to the small oppositional enclaves. It is a programme of sporadic putschism to be conducted by them indiscriminately against all official institutions, parties and media.
This campaign, implemented by that fortunate minority that Marcuse is prepared to admit as "rational beings", will lead to "the democratic educational dictatorship of free men", which in the present society is "a small number indeed."
Marcuse looks back, for justification of this open appeal to meritocracy, to the arguments of that classic snob of liberal leader elitism.
Marcuse explicitly attacks the criterion of "clear and present danger" which both in liberal and in Marxist theory has offered the sole grounds for withdrawing basic civil rights from groups and individuals. (Even Stalinism, it may be noted, paid hypocrisy's tribute to this criterion in its manufacture of conspiracies and plots; for unless they could be displayed to the public as offering "clear and present danger" dissidents could not be suppressed and exterminated.) In Marcuse's view "the whole post-facist period is one of clear and present danger". This statement is adequate for him to clear the distinction between the violence of revolutionary masses in a period of civil war and the putschism of educated elite groups who decide for themselves what the moronised masses may read or organise for.
Having developed a mechanistic and elitist few of society in a period where he wrote I hopeI am right in my conclusion that Marcuse's politics, whatever the commentators to the contrary, have actually no influence upon the theory and the tactics of the movements that we have today. If we have Mar amongst us, it would be interesting to hear their views. Reactionary as these might be, they would deserve at least our tolerance.
Robin Maconie has specially prepared this article for "Salient" based on his discussion of New Zealand music at Curious Cove in January.
The Claim Recently advanced over the YC network by a free-lance PR music and sundry gossip commentator, that New Zealand had ten composers worthy of the name—eight of them actually resident in the country—attracted about as much sympathy as its incorrigible naievety deserved. Fond notions of a seedling are flourishing in the excremented dust of provincial review have been dismissed often enough in the past; if the current load of old compost has excited fewer flies than usual perhaps its nutritive value should be questioned. Perhaps the tender shoots, after all, mature dwarfs.
Actually the evidence is very close to hand. What New Zealand composer has made it overseas?—I mean simply made a contribution to European musical literature as significant as that other individual New Zealanders have made to other arts or sciences? The question is rhetorical. It's unfair, too, if you have a parochial mind and have lost all selfrespect as well. But I was talking about evidence: as close to hand as the New Zealand Encyclopaedia, section headed Music. This country must be one of the few which has not yet developed to the primitive level of distinguishing between musical activity and musical art. A lot of criticism has been directed at those parts of the Encyclopaedia devoted to the arts, but in the case of music, adverse reaction is unwarranted. For once without hocus-pocus the musical priorities of this country are set in proper order, with brass bands and choral societies at the head, composers rating hardly a mention, and their music not a word. Altogether an accurate exposition of New Zealand's traditional attitude; lacking only the conclusion that professional musicians, including semi-professional composers, are superfluous to this country's cultural requirements.
The history of the local composer is one of individuals struggling to find a role. It is a history of compromise and defeat. We might have produced ten composers worthy of the title by now if the ground had been more fertile, but even in an unchanged environment one or two might have survived with dignity had they not been fatally seduced by the small-town Iagos of the daily press.
The history of New Zealand's musical attitude is also perfectly clear, though it has never been clearly expounded. Music came to this country with the military, and has remained a paramilitary activity. Law and order was soon followed by culture and religion, giving colonial society brass band, light opera and concert oratorio, each cultivated for a sense of community, not out of musical virtue. New Zealand is still dominated by these three forms, and remains in the grip of a rabid amateurism and a passion for vulgar display. Private music did occur, and still flourishes, but it has never, as chamber music or solo performer, successfully gone public. Competitions, Festivals which, like Bands Contests, contrive to manifest our military obsession, offer the concert soloist some kind of a forum, but hardly a healthy one. By and large he is treated as an exportable commodity. This is the treatment we reserve for individualists, and composers are no exception. To become an integrated member of New Zealand society the composer has had to compromise his art to its grave disadvantage.
One can discern three stages in New Zealand composition. The first, with such figures as Vernon Griffiths and Victor Galway, accommodated most easily with the prevailing attitude of colonial dependency, and has perhaps wrought the greatest damage. The second movement, headed by Lilburn, attempted to institute a National style like that promulgated for poetry by Return still reflects the past in an electronic rear-view mirror).
Suggestions for Teaching Music in the Primary School (1964, Government Printer), "designed primarily for the class teacher who has a limited knowledge of music" in the words of W. H. Walden-Mills, one-time band conductor and present National Adviser on School Music. I have dealt with the contents of this absurd little booklet elsewhere. (Third Stream I, March 1968). As an end-product of Griffiths' ideal, it exposes an intimate art reduced to a tasteless and punishing discipline. Two years ago the National Film Unit produced a news feature about a secondary school combination band and marching team. Its virtues, according to the school principal, lay in discipline, teamwork, development of character, and school pride. The music was horrible, but he wasn't concerned. Griffiths' policy, on its own terms, has been an unqualified success. But 'music' is a misnomer.
Around the 1940 centennial the idea of a National style caught the fancy of a number of younger composers whose dutiful study in England awakened the desire for an independent identity. Griffiths had always been keen to push the English tradition of choral singing: no matter that the English tradition had been moribund since 1695, there were certain principles laid down which could be effectively translated into this environment. The quest of the new wave, with Lilburn and Heenan riding the boards and Pruden and Ritchie paddling behind, was far harder to determine: the quest for a National Image. Maori musical tradition was discarded at once. For some years fiordorama (Sibelius) view unsuccessfully with cornpone (Copland) and pseudo-folk (Hoedown with Heenan's Cindy, for example. But it does show a crippling lack of decision. Spokesmen and leaders they wanted to be, and public servants they remained. Their output of occasional pieces, particularly festive suites and overtures, shows that where it matters these composers were no closer to a responsible community role than their 19th-century predecessors.
Lilburn recently complained to a friend of mine that young composers today have no sense of history. If this means a disinclination to pursue nationalistic ideals, he is certainly right. Socialist realism is no longer attractive, cultural isolationism is no longer necessary. We are no longer cut off from European musical life, but through recording and broadcast may actively attend to current developments. Participation and dialogue will begin as our composers learn the language: the new spirit animating New Zealanders in anticipation of such idea-exchange, forgoes role-searching and is content to try simply to write good music. There are no guarantees of a livelihood, of course, but no composer's life has ever been comfortably secure in this country without being compromised. Likewise no prospects of performance, for even if our cultural fathers were to disregard public taste long enough to sponsor concerts of worthy music, the available musicians, with no practice in the music of this century, would prove inadequate to cope. For there is a difference, whatever the apologists may protest (and there are composers among them), between a reading-over of Lutoslawski such as occurred a year or so ago, and a genuine performance. Our orchestras, no less than our composers, fail to identify with their musical activity.
The younger composer simply writes what he wants to, as well as manuscript will allow. He will not write the sort of music that philistinism requires, even if the only performance outlets may come from such compromises. His attitude is rather that when people's tastes finally change there will be a store of music to cater for the new demand; in other words, when society needs composers, they will emerge.
But for the time being it is conceited or misleading to claim that the composer exists as a community figure. The kind of society we are does not allow for them; the extent to which some have accommodated in infertile soil is the extent to which they have accepted a stunted development. Evidence of dwarfism is not so much a limited horizon as a warped sense of scale, as when a certain Mr
March 4, 1969
Opinions expressed in Salient are not necessarily those of VUWSA.
The Criteria employed by the news media in its selection of news items has been open to incessant criticism since the concept of the Fourth Estate was first aired. Which is just as well. It is quite fair to argue that there are inherent characteristics within the system of newspaper ownership in New Zealand which prohibit impartiality, the putative aim of all daily newspapers.
It is also quite fair to argue that the way in which some interested parties handle the media is conducive towards rough handling by it.
There are other influences affecting the reasons why one story is promoted at the expense of another, several of which are reflected in an example which emerged from Curious Cove.
Mr.
This is election year, and Mr. Amos is, in some books, a favourite for the stakes of the education portfolio, and his major competitor will not be Mr. Kinsella.
Mr. Amos is widely regarded for his relatively progressive approach to social and educational questions (witness his contempt for the 1966 Labour education policy).
Thirdly, and most important, in an exaggerated view of the situation—Mr. Amos was the answer to Mr. Muldoon. The humanitarian and the accountant. The man who refuses to put a price on education, against the man who "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing".
In a 25-minute address, Mr. Amos made two suggestions totally virginal in a political context. They were the establishment of Junior or Community colleges to replace sixth forms, and the suggestion of a V.S.A. type organisation through which idealistic youths can somehow vent their frustrations on building such colleges instead of becoming more disillusioned with society.
He almost said it was Labour Party policy to replace the School Certificate examination. And then he threw in a titbit— a recommendation for an educational tax and a system of government loans for education.
Good copy you might say. A lash at "airy, fairy thinking within the Labour Party", accusations of brides for seats, and If he really played his cards right, the "Evening Post" first leader might tell us why they wouldn't work.
And what did the report say ?
"New Zealand university students are the most decile in the world," it began. And it said little else.
It is small wonder the Dominion's Keith Hancox can reel out his indefensible claim that the Labour Party is totally bereft of ideas. Perhaps the degree of stimulation that Hancox receives over hit Ministerial cuppa is insufficient to give him a reply to Labour policy.
Ross Sutton, Victoria University honours student in Political Science, joined 11 other students on a work camp in South Australia —organised by the National Union of Australian University Students.
Koonibba Is One of the several reserves controlled by the South Australian government, and is nearly 500 miles west of Adelaide. Ceduna (pop. 3,000) is the nearest town from where supplies are bought. The reserve itself has about 150 inhabitants most of whom are not full-blood Aborigines. For the Australian census anybody with Aboriginal blood is counted as Aborigine, but it is estimated that there are 45,000 full bloods and 120,000 of mixed race.
There was no evidence of racial hostility at Koonibba. Our group of eleven students were welcomed most enthusiastically. Attitudes differ however depending on how the Aborigine has been treated in the past in different parts of the continent. In early times, pastoralists had their sheep stolen and they would set out to teach the Aborigines a lesson. The Aborigines however could sec no difference between them taking sheep and the while killing kangaroos. Australians have always thought the Aborigine to be an inferior race, A friend of mine said that her grandfather at the turn of the century. used to go out and shoot Aborigines for Sunday afternoon sport. The Aborigines lived in small family or tribal groups and it was easy to beat them into submission. This past experience is making it very difficult for a more enlightened policy to get off the ground.
The SA government has initiated a policy whereby the Aborigines elect a council with certain powers. At Koonibba this entailed sole jurisdiction on who came onto the reserve. The superintendent can only overrule the council with the Minister's approval. The purpose of such councils is to encourage leadership and responsibility amongst the Aborigines. At Koonibba the task is much more difficult since the inhabitants have come from various parts of the state and thus there is no indigenous authority. An extrovert personality could lead but he must be taught the principles of government. The government and universities are giving a lead in this direction with seminars and leadership courses.
Koonibba reserve consists of 2,200 acres and a further 18.000 acres is leased from the Lutheran Church. The smaller bloc is used for running a few hundred sheep and for collecting the reserves supply of firewood. The latter is sub-let to farmers who can afford the huge cost of machinery but the ultimate aim is lease to Aborigine farmers as they become capable of managing a farm. The area is part of the wheat belt.
The SA Dept. of Aborigine Affairs maintains seven officials at Koonibba, superintendent. nurse, welfare officer, farm supervisor, building supervisor, mechanic and grocer-accountant. The Luiheran Church maintains a lay preacher and there is a primary school on the reserve run by the Education Dept. Hygiene is a great problem. It is heightened by the fact that there is only about fifteen inches of rain a year. There is not enough water for everyone to shower every day. Willi exception, there is a lack of willingness to wash or keep clean. In summer months temperatures run into one hundred degrees and above, and on top of this there is a fly menace.
Housing standards are low. There are two groups of houses, one made of bricks with separate areas for kitchen and wash-house, the other, corrugated iron sheds with a partition in the middle. There is little furniture in either but the people in the better style home have a somewhat better living standard. Where people have come from a tribal life, there is often no desire for a westernised type of house and if placed in one, will often destroy it through not knowing belter. They seem quite content to live in these small dwellings together with all. their dogs.
Parental discipline and affection did not appear to be strong on the reserve. A lot of the adults on Koonibba had been brought up in a children's home on the reserve and thus never experienced a proper family life. Combine this with poor housing and hygiene levels and one sees that education becomes of great significance. It is the one great hope but it is a long uphill struggle. The home environment is not inducive to study and by time children reach high school they are behind their age. Because of the policy of full employment on the reserve boys are assured of a job when they leave school. There is nothing however for teenage girls to do when they leave school. They can only migrate to the cities where they lose all contact with home and are likely to gel into trouble. Nevertheless, education is slowly raising their level of expectation and while their hopes may not be fully realised, they know what is expected of them. and are striving to improve their position.
Crime is another factor to be covered on any study of the reserve. Theft is quite a common occurrence. Often at the end of the week, young children will go hungry until pay day arrives again. Combine an empty stomach and school holidays with nothing to do and theft becomes a natural adjunct. The lack of facilities created by lack of finance is a contributary cause. All there is, is a dry football field and trampoline. There is neither money nor interest in hobbies. What is wanted urgently is a swimming pool. Twice while we were there, we took the children to the beach on the reserve bus. On the second trip we only had a dozen children as the other thirty or more could not afford the ten cent bus fare.
Alcohol is a problem amongst the adults. Often at the end of the week the men will go to Ceduna to buy flagons of wine and then bring it back on to the reserve for the weekend. Drunkenness is therefore quite a common sight during the weekends. Again the cause is nothing to do. Few have cars to go for trips to the beach or elsewhere. They don't know how to spend their money more wisely. Besides, it keeps them happy when they have so little in life to look forward to or enjoy.
So much for life on the reserve and its problems. During our stay on Koonibba we participated in the general life of the communit:. Some of us went out and helped chop wood, slaughter the sleep, and make bricks, while the girls concentrated on giving art and craft lessons to the children in the afternoons. We converted an old building into a library and several of the others took books and magazines. By working alongside the Aborigines it was felt that we would get to know them better than working on a single project.
One day we went to Yalata Mission one hundred miles west. While we saw another reserve, we were unable to visit the Aborigines who are still living tribally, holding corroborees, living in murlies, hunting with spears etc. In comparison, the people at Koonibba have indeed some a long way. Given patience, education and understanding the Aborigine will be able to lake his rightful place alongside his white Australian brother. Koonibba is a society in transition. Unfortunately prejudice against them is still strong in parts. Departmental officials told us that some cattlemen up north still thought of them as 'dingoes', and while up the Queensland coast, I often heard them referred to as 'coon', 'boong', 'abo' or 'nigger'. In my opinion it is not only the black Australians who need educating but the whites as well.
It is the policy of the South Australian government for integration between the two ethnic groups. At the moment everyone is buying Aboriginal art but it is my opinion that we could learn much more in adopting some of their values and mores such as community spirit. The policy of the federal government and other states is assimilation. This policy has to be changed if Australian society is going to gain anything from their racial diversity.
For me, the opportunity of living amongst and working with a section of the Aboriginal population has been a tremendous personal experience and of great educational benefit. The sight of such beautiful, young and happy faces of the children is something I shall always remember.
Now That the kids are back at school the traditional Christinas bilge of family entertainment—a term so loved by the film industry—has subsided. It is sobering to reflect that most of the big Christmas attractions flopped and that more money taken by films with an R.18 tag. Soon some theatre executives will realise that things aren't what they were and that tastes have changed, Wellington still has many films to catch up on that have been floating all around the country for the past year or so. One such example which showed up recently For a paltry week, Reflections in a Golden Eye, looked as if it had been dragged across the floor of every projection room from Kaitaia to Gore.
Films yet to make their appearance here still include Accident, The Jokers, The Quiller Memorandum, Marat/Sade,
Of the pie-Christmas releases the most notable were several generally successful attempts to stretch the Iramework of the normal commercial films. The Swimmer (Columbia) and The President's Analyst (Paramount) were both highly original pieces of cinema from directors who had made only one previous film and are now making films for major studios, rank Perry (David and Lisa) and Hurt Lancaster presented John Cheever's story in a cool, almost lyrical style. The mystery and ambiguity of the man's background was hinted throughout at with mounting foreboding. The tense atmosphere and suspense was kept in hand for most of the film and few coneessions Were made lor an intelligent statement.
This lack of concession also marked Theodore J. Flicker's political fantasy with The President's Analyst click where In Like Flint, for example, failed. A leathery, expressive face enabled Coburn to out across a line of dialogue which would normally have been wasted. Coburn was aided by some excellent actors in supporting roles—the best were
Skater Dater, a simple if appealing subject which showed a remarkable visual style, Mis feature Pretty Poison (MGM) was open to the objection that its violence was gratuitous and the plot unreal. Another From the paranoid stable it marked a return to American films by Anthony perkins who perfectly fits the bill as the alienated neurotic par excellence. Bogged down by some juvenile romanticism it nevertheless bolstered its flimsy content with good acting by Perkins, Tuesday Weld and Beverly Garland
The Lido for once shunned Disney product and has reverted to a solid continental programme. None impressed very much most showed how dreadfully pretentious most of the Lido-syndrome stuff is. The worst in this brigade was the Greek Young Aphrodites (Lion), a failure from start to finish. The most honourable failure was the Yugoslav I Met Happy Gypsies Too (20th Century-Fox), an ironical but far from satisfying study of squalor and poverty. Boring to sit through it did however contain some good scenes of muted brutality and the free life. A Jean-Paul Belmondo-looking hero surprised with his rebellious spirit but was spoiled through heavy self-indulgence by director Alexandra Petrovic.
The Western releaed did little maintain the genre's high standing as a stage of modern man in a historic setting. Britain's first wetern (every one's making them now) Shalako (Rank) directed by veteran American Edward Dmytryk was a huge shambling mess. The idea of Scan Connery and Brigittee Bardot together no doubt rewarded the originator, but certainly not the spectator, Enlivened briefly by some mod torture, the film sank unmemorably into swampen cliche and doggerel that Hollywood stopped making year ago.
Blue (Paramount) on the other hand marred by originality without the traditional virtues. It had panache and style plus Terence Stamp. but its trivial plot ruined its chances for posterity, It appears that the censor also had a hand in mutilating an interesting foray Westward by (Georgy Girl). Saved by the casting of Negro Ozzie Davis (The Hill) The Scalphunters (Columbia) failed to generate excitement or impress with its gestures to rugged sophistication. Burt Lancaster moved effortlessly through his undemanding part while Shelly Winters as usual brightened proceedings with her acceptance of what late had in store. Card Stud with predictable ease using a plot which left little to the imagination and even less to the actors. Inger Stevens now seems to be quite at home as yet another Western moll joining Janice Rule and
The Dirty Dozen he probably made The Legend of Lylah Clare (MGM) to cut down list taxes,
Finch as the film director was perfect as a man caught between necessity and desire, reality and fantasy. A film about films is always difficult and most have been far from successful. The recent Inside Daisy Clover remained fascinating yet unconvincing while The Goddess remained obscure despite an excellent performance by
Hut Lylah succeeded where the others failed. Its suspenseful and gripping plot did not allow for flights of fancy or riots of over statement. The lesbian and masochistic themes never obtruded or left a feeling of sensationalism. Yet it was about sensationalism. the groestque, degradation, failure and destruction. Apart from Novak and Finch there were two excellent performances from Ernest Bornine as the mogul and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane. The new "Lylah's" first encounter with the Hollywood Press and her come back at the powerful but physically crippled gossip writer was an essay in direction which many directors of "let it happen how it happens" school could well take heed,
The end of the spate of films set off by Blow Up doesn't appear to be in sight. Of the recent examples Here We Go Bound The Mulberry Bush (United Artists) combines the teeny-bopper's answer to What's New Pussy Cat and the British version of Seventeen. Sexy and imaginative, but it didn't rise beyond a superficial conception which made its directorial gloss seem even more phoney. But compared with The Touchables "(20th Century-Fox) it's a masterpiece. This particular haemorrahage is one of the worst films I have ever had the misfortune to see. It deserves us sympathy.
Subtle direction creating an overall quietly disturbing effect contributed to the excellence of Reflections In A Golden Eye (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts), a film which could easily have fallen to pieces under a lesser talent that
I.J. Reid and Fountain
Colin McCahon is a New 'Zealand painter of some promise—at least that is the impression we gained from those of his works owned by the University, His painting
Compare these earlier paintings with those in the exhibition, What do the more recent works communicate? Are they positive attempts to express a view of life? If so it must be a naive view! They lack any intellectual, emotional, aesthetic or technical challenge. Their only appeal is to the curiosity, and surely this is an inadequate criterion by which to judge whether or not an object is a work of art.
Look at the leaflet given out about the paintings. The titles look suggestive-provided you don't consider them in relation to the words they represent. For example, there are the Still Life With Altar paintings. Each contains two rather nondescript blotches, one of which could be a heart. Is the "heart" the altar? Perhaps the whole Works is the "still life" and the altar comes as a free extra like the cartoon cards in Kornies packets, Why are there three Still Life's—is there a different subjective experience to be gained from each—or is it just that the painter ran out of "originality"?
But the most saddening feature of the exhibition was the commercialism it demonstrates. We realise that an artist requires money the same as anvone else—but does Mr McCahon honestly believe he is offering value for money? What right does a person have 'o present us with a piece of hard-board covered with PVA, coloured with three or four patches of housepaint. and framed with unformed pine or rimu, and say "This is a work of art worth $325"? Is the only perfection being striven for; perfection in the art of making money?
We are not against modern art. however we feel that the time has come when praise should no longer be automatically bestowed on everyone who puts paint on some form of material, frames it, the gives it a price in excess of $100. We are reaching the place where a painter's works are judged more on the price he is asking than on what he has painted. Painters their works onto a gullible public who think because they look "modern" or unconventional and because they can't "understand" them,that they must be art works of real merit
The start of a new year. My problem, that of any literary editor, is to find suitable copy. I may either set my standards high and wait in some literary Never-Never Land for the brilliant student pool or I can humble myself and take the best of what comes along. However, I will not feel bound to publish material that I consider rubbish. If students don't warn to write then Salient will gel material from other sources,
I think of the literary role of Salient as being a missionary endeavour. Tongue-in-cheek it's a bit like John the Baptist trying to rouse a flock of sleepy peasants. In Fact it is to demand that people truly come to love art rather than perpetuate the conventional, base posturing affected by the so-called "arty" set who. it is believed, are so acceptable to common taste.
Art is not to be played with. By this I do not reject the posture of casualness or the so-called dilettante approach. Those who affect this posture are quite often among the finest artists but they have, as it were, the right to appear casual because their lives and their art testify more than adequately to their integrity within their art. Such appearance of ease is occasioned only by the rigorous intimacy.
On the other hand I definitely object to those people who assume a false 'reverence' or artificial intensity toward art. They compare most unfavourably with someone like Wilde who treated his work with a quite Puritanical integrity and devotion while still retaining a sense of some of the social graces
From this I hope some, at least, of my predilections will be made clear. Salient is going to follow Paul's advice to Timothy quite closely and I will hope be "instant in season and out of season. Refute falsehood, corect error, call to obedience —but do all with the intention of teaching". Finally, this "art" of which I have so gaily talked is never something to be used lightly, it is always a pale image of something else, viewed "through a glass darkly" a premonition of the Beautific vision, infinite in complexity but entirely beautiful in its truth.
My love of honey coloured hair whose cloudy skeins, disrupting thought by tenuous filaments so fair against my burning cheek. I sought: Smiling, cease to be unkind. This sourness is not aimed at you Pale indecision stands behind sifting thought to try whats true. My eyes, my heart, will not resolve for fearfully desire is chilled as tenuous dreams, by you, dissolve fraught, uncertain and thus are killed. Desire, from hope, too soon is born and wished-for love becomes forlorn.
I Suppose apart from the regretable fact of returning to the scene when everyone thought that it might have breathed its last,
I was quite diligent about reading the review copy, marking the margins, underlining good lines, etc but the total affect was to feel that while this was a better than average collection of predominantly student verse it showed the same weaknesses that cause me to indulge in angry and unlikeable sneering.
Most of the poems seemed just too "gimmicky", as if the writers were unwilling to admit that they were not prepared to sit down and grapple with the problems of language and sweat until they found a viable way of expression.
For 'example "Hyde Park" by one "Tom Smucker"might just as well be told in prose rather than fool around with the fancy line arrangement I admit a certain erotic and personal vividness of expression that shows sensitivity and talent but it could be channelled more effectively.
I enjoyed "Stone Tablets" but thought that the poem could have been more directly cvocative and I was most dissatisfied when it became too general, A particular image that I delighted in was almost accidental in the last three lines
Now there is not even a child bouquet of wayside remembrnce to reign above their lichened stones.
This very simple image could relate to the poem better but it is an example of evocativencss that student ports could do well to emulate.
'The End of Wolves" was unconvincing but most praticularly at the end where there was an inability to give any final whole-ness to the poem.
Both of Dennis List's poems were superbly evocative and despondently unmeaningful. He would do well to see if he could be both evocative and yet retain some semblance of reality.
On the other hand "A Song About Her" was so simple and. in some ways, the most uninspiring thing, in the collection but it spoke of the concrete and familiar, it tried to distil a particular experience into the familiar and yet evasive form of a rhyming pattern. It begins to make sense but needs a lot of polish.
Of the longer articles, the short story by Gordon Chains and the article by
"Dream Sequence" is a sensitive piece of writing with a deficiency in its sketehy quality and a sense of unsureness in its style which in some points becomes a little gauche. Despite this there are some beautiful and perceptive ideas that
Max Kerr's timely review of David Karp's novels delighted me and held my interest from start to finish. The subject matter deals essentially with the relationship between the ! individual and society According to Kerr, all of Karp's novels come out distinctly with the view that man's first allegiance is to himself. This is a statement that is rather insidious from my point of view because it's a half-truth unless man is seen as been something more than one tittle thing in the comes. However the whole article is informative and stimulating.
To summarise the total impact of Argot I would Say that is was "good Stuff", Sure. the poetry may be open to objections but that doesn't matter, no one can expect a student magazine to contain gems on every page and the overall standard is high, In fact it is very encouraging to sec here as in a few other instances a positive sign of a resolute attempt to get some life into the literary on the campus. It is essential that students write and think creatively for this is one of the best ways to open to effective communication on a good many levels.
Violence. Action, Spectacle Toshiro Mifune
The Seven Samurai
(A Cert.) This Thursday, 7.30 p.m.
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Sophisticated Spy Thriller by the author of "The Spy Who Came in From The Cold".
The Deadly Affair
James mason Harriet Andersson Maximilian Schell - Simane Signoret Harry Andrews (A Cert.) Colour Next Monday, 7.30 p.m. Also . . . Rod Steiger Across The Bridge (A Cert.)
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Coming . . .
Two For The Road (A)
Ashes And Diamonds (A)
The Professionals (A)
Some Like It Hot (A)
Inconveniences to students—caused by the alterations to the Student Union—should be ended within a month.
At the moment most of the second floor of the building is affected by the work.
The common common room and the nearby corridor are closed completely, and access to the Memorial Theatre is severely limited.
The new Salient office will not be in use for at least a week.
Mr. Boyd, the managing secretary of the SUB, estimates that It will be four weeks before this area is open,
He said the contractors had been very cooperative and were concentrating on these areas while the dry weather continued.
They are negotiating with the university authorities for the use of the New Lecture Block foyer as a temporary common room.
This would also solve the Important problem of furniture storage,
The president of the Students' Association,
"When finished it will provide good facilities for relaxation away from student life."
Deterioration of students' public image due to both internal and overseas unrest is considered to be the main reason for the lack of student accommodation in Wellington.
Mrs Brown, the Accommodation Officer, said that there had been more comment by landlords this year than was usual about the public image of students.
She felt that the public were misusing the word "student".
A dozen students answered a Salient advertisement about student accommodation in a newspaper last week.
Six of the inquirers said that resistance to students by land agents and private owners was apparent.
They also criticised the locality of the accomodation the Accommodation Service had offered them although their treatment by the Accomodation Service was satisfactory.
Mrs. Brown said: "Students highlight the overall lack of accommodation in Wellington".
She also says that the motorway development and the improvement in the country's economic condition are other reasons for the accommodation shortage.
This year the accommodation service had received 550 inquiries by students.
Of these 240 had been suitably accommodated.
Forty-four of the 91 flats needed had been acquired satisfactority.
If the 118 people requiring full board 100 had been suited.
In
Books will be accepted until Friday for inclusion in the S.C.M. second-hand book sale in the foyer of the new Lecture Block this week.
Arts fac students can buy today, our productive Commerce students tomorrow and Thursday, the latter day to be shared with the Law Faculty, who will also be served on Friday.
All students will be joined in blessed fellowship during the next week, books for sale also including science books received since last week.
All unsold books and cheques must be collected from the prep room, off the foyer, on March 19 and 20, between 10 and 5.
An idealised perspective sketch of the present and future of Vic turned out some years ago proposed a pool by
So far if is all that has been proposed.
In the past two years there have been three references in Salient pointing out the need for bathing facilities on the campus.
A sub-committee of the Vic swimming club has long been studying this need. This, broadly, is what it has to say:
It would not be the standard school or park type pool. The main population climax occurs mid-year during the winter months: the pool needs to be covered, an indoor pool, and heated like the Freyberg.
The size of the pool would be determined by the numbers using it at peak times. This can be worked out from standard formulae such as 10 square feet per bather or thirty square feet per swimmer and it can be easily estimated how many will be users at peak limes. Usually there arc about 3,000 people on the campus at any one lime,
It would seem that the common 110 ft. x 56 ft. pool (the size of most comunity pools as Thorndon) might be ideal and cheaper than say the Olympic-sized pool such as Naenae
The shape and depth of a pool would be determined by the different types of activities: recreational swimming, learn to swim, competitive swimming life-saxing training, water polo underwater swimming training, synchronised swimming (water ballet), diving and, often neglected but an important consideration, swimming for physiotherapy.
All these branches of aquatic activity can be accommodated in a flat bottom pool of modest dimensions with the exception of diving and polo.
For all but these last two a shallow pool would be wise in safety and prudent in construction cost.
The standard design pool could be deepened for water polo but there is the fear that diving might place an interable expense in depth requirements which might double the construction and maintenance cost.
The swimming club possesses figures and dimensions and has knowledge of pool technicalities.
Let it suffice then, that we know of the requirements for lane widths, lifesaving depths, diving board draught require ments and the advantages of various lengths and widths and we know the problems of gallonage and filtration plants and water healing.
We have listed the main bathing/swimming usages but there are other aspects.
We are not too parochial with proper respect to out own timetabling and requirements, for others to share in side pool facilities.
Pools need supervision and we have a physical welfare team on the campus for the job. A professional coach is a possibility, based upon university requirements and terms, and could be a source of revenue from the professional's franchise if desired.
A shallow pool, enclosed with a simple ridge roof and with filtration and heating, covered sealing, lighting and a club room like the famous efficient little Wharenui indoor pool in Christchurch (above) would cost $50-55,000.
Such costs are staggering but as with the other facilities, the gym and the union building, there are subsidies that would be available.
The intramural sports programme is designed for students and staff who want regular exercise in a team game but do not seek the seriousness of "big-game" competition.
All that is needed is the desire to lake part—the degree of skill of the participants is not considered important since players of all levels of ability, particularly the lowest, are welcome.
All equipment for the intramural games is provided free. There is, however, a small hire charge on towels, shorts, shoes, etc., if these are borrowed from the gym store.
All competitions take place in the gym.
Matches are normally played, at times convenient to the players, between 12 noon and 2 p.m., as follows:
Monday, badminton; Tuesday, table tennis; Wednesday, soccer; Thursday, indoor basketball; Friday, volleyball.
Matches may be played outside these time by arrangement between opposing captains and the Physical Welfare Officer organising the competition.
Any group of students or staff may form a team-
It is often convenient, if the members of a team are taking a unit in common, are free at the same times, share accommodation, share transport or for other reasons meet regularly.
Further information and the first term's programme is available from the gym.
Studass has donated $100 to the Wellington City Mission Night Shelter Appeal.
In its second to last meeting last year, Exec decided, on the motion of Dan Bradshaw and Caroline McGrath to drop the already planned cocktail party in favour of a donation to the night shelter.
There was one dissent recorded, the President, Doug White.
Studass president
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See In any Labour Club members on the printers' picket lines during the Dominion lockout? Perhaps you didn't though there were other students there. Purely by coincidence, be if put on record that Labour Club President owns 300 Wellington Publishing Company shares.
(Alan Preston) Empire Building - 15-19 Willis Street Wellington
(Opposite Grand Hotel)
*
Literature . . Art . . Music . . Philosophy New Zealand Books
P.O. Box 3676 Telephone 70-014
"America Hurrah"
Directed and Designed by lan Mune
•
All Reservations 559-639
10 a.m. — 6 p.m.
Best In New Zealand
• Nearest to University.
• Modern, comfortable surroundings.
• Cool, bright, fresh beer on tap always.
• Food available from our 'Food Bar", 11.45 a.m. to 2.30 p.m.
• Mixed drinking—all facilities.
Entrees, Cold Buffet, Vegetables, Hot Pies
118 Willis St. - Tel. 45-841
New Hairdressing Salon •
47 Parish Street And 23 Manners Street
For All Students Styles
(M. G. & K. G. Parkinson)
•
Choice, Tender 1St Grade Meat And Smallgoods
Ham-Bacon & Poultry Supplies
Private Tuition Daily
Beginners only every Monday, 7—10.30 p.m.
58 Lower Cuba Street
Admission 50c Telephone 45-818
Corner Manners and farish Streets
(Witcombe & Caldwell)
Long-standing connection with University sport. Every one of Vic's 24 sports catered for.
•
Open 9 a.m. — 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday
Reginald Collins Ltd.
Wholesale wine and spirit people. Vintners to the Students' Association. Carry stocks of all brands of ale, spirits, table wine (from 55c), sherry in flagons ($1.60) or quart bottles.
Free Delivery—Cellars located at
No. 3 Ballance Street
(Customhouse Quay end)
Members Wellington Stock Exchange
National Mutual Centre Featherston Street Tel. 70-169
The introduction of Junior or Community Colleges, the abolition of School Certificate, and a V.S.A. type organisation through which university students and others could render service to the community were recommended by Mr. P. Amos, Labour M.P. for Manurewa, at Curious Cove.
Mr Amos also advocated an educational tax and a system of special Government loans for educational purposes.
"I see a real need for colleges offering two or three-year courses, taking over the task of providing for upper sixth forms, which are quite inadequately served in an increasing number of secondary schools, plus a higher level of general education." said Mr Amos.
During their time at the Community college the students would have opportunities to decide whether they should embark on an honours degree at university, train at an institute of advanced technology or simply specialise further at the Junior College level.
Mr Amos said the Junior Colleges could take over the training of technicians such as accountants, pharmacists and the like.
"They will be required not only in the metropolitan areas but also in the provincial cities. Mr Amos outlined a number of implications of his proposals.
He said there would be a considerable increase in the numbers of young people going on to higher full time education.
"For this reason," he said. "the scheme would not recommend itself to someone with the accountant's view of education."
"The second implication is the need for approximately thirty new educational building complexes throughout New Zealand."
"There will also be a need for more trained teachers, and finally a very substantial escalation in the educational vote."
Mr Amos suggested this could be offset by savings in other areas of public expenditure.
"There could scarcely by anything revolutionary about earmarking a larger proportion of the annual budget for education."
"Certain people are asking whether the right people are entering university and are querying the annual "wastage" of 10 million dollars" give or take 5 million or so" one said, throught ailure of units at university," said Mr Amos.
"The accountants view is that man exists to serve an economy."
"In my view an economy should provide for man."
"We need vastly increased counselling services, better facilities for research, and a system of providing university grants on a better basis."
"The recent expressions of alarm at the disparity between salaries paid to university lecturers here and those in Australia seems to me to be quite reasonable.
Mr Amos said there was a world market for academics and while it may be impossible and unnecessary to match American salaries, we must approach parity with them.
"Restricting the university's role in the name of the economy is a particularly shortsighted approach to the problem."
"Statements like "accrediting permits too many inadequate students to get U.E." and "When Auckland reaches 10,000 students we will have to reassess the free entry principle." said Mr Amos." to be preparatory to moves to introduce some means of restricting entry by coercive methods."
Suggestions that the failure rate may be too high were termed "insidious".
"This is a shabby alternative to providing adequate facilities for university study, and alternative opportunities for able young people to do full-time study at other full-time tertiary institutions better suited to their needs and aspirations."
Mr Amos said the School Certificate system "that great inhibiter of the secondary school system" had outlived its usefulness.
"If it can be replaced with a series of graded performance or achievement certificates at the end of one's secondary career, then it should be possible for schools to carry out their real task."
"This is." said Mr Amos," the provision of a broad general education for all pupils, while at the same time providing opportunities for the more able to be extended intellectually."
Referring to the community service scheme. Mr Amos said that New Zealand was sadly in need of a sense of nationhood and of offering challenging services for its youth.
"For too long we have been immersed in a kind of national lethargy with little real sense of purpose and certainly without
"If all or almost all of our youth were called upon
The Story going round journalist in Wellington now is that if you want to be Political Reporter on the Dominion you give a onion official a right to the jaw in any industrial dispute you get mixed up in. Its probably worth at least four bottles of champagne at the next National Parly conference, too.
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This Column shouldn't pat itself on the back too much—it had to apologise for inaccuracy once last year —but if you remember some of its rumblings about the Committee On Vietnam last year, you may realise what it is all about when we memtion darkly that it's been having secret meetings about last years Peace, Power and Polities conference at which several lawyers and accountants have been present.
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• Continued Page 11.
A seminar on Conscientious Objection, organised by the S.C.M. will be held near Otaki at the end of March.
The seminar intends to cover most of the questions concerning Conscientious Objectors.
A Wide range of speakers has been assembled, including Rev P. Oestreicher who is now Associate Secretary of the International Department of the British Council of Churches
Since coming to N.Z. with his Quaker parent in the thirties, he has gained an honours degree in Political Science and was Research Fellow at Bonn University before being ordained in the Church of England.
Rev. Oestreicher also coedited a paperback on the Christian-Communist dialogue entitled "What kind of Revolution?", published late last year.
Another speaker is the Minister of Defence (Mr. Thomson) who has previously publicly claimed to have been a pacifist in his youth.
He later achieved a high-ranking commission in the
Application forms, which are obtainable at the S.U.M. cabin will he accepted until 25th March.
Criticism of university education by the Minister of Finance, Mr.
The Minister of Finance
Mr Shallcrass said major political figures, particularly the Minister of Finance, were now going to the public and bidding for support.
"If we don't take up the the argument, he will win by default," Mr Shallcrass said.
He said he welcomed the higher level of public debate being put forward, particularly by the Minister in the National Party. The change involved a break-down of the closed-circuit decision-making and administrative process between a powerful bureaucracy bound not to publicly opose government policy, and a locked-door cabinet
Media, particularly television, public committees, and expert groups like the National Development Conference were drawing the community into the decision-making process and eroding the centralised decision making. Ministers were putting their case to the public.
"Policies are being opened up. The decision process is being thrown open to the community," Mr Shallcrass said.
"We must share in this. We must have opinions and air them."
Mr Muldoon's criticism of the universities must be carefully assessed, Mr Shallcrass said. He dismissed the image of the Minister as "a hostile hatchet-man".
"This man, in a short public life, has changed his political personality. He has turned into a potential Prime Minister."
Discussing Mr Muldoon's argument on education, Mr Shallcrass said: "The Minister is asking bow we are going to spend, most efficiently, our money, He measures this by profit and loss national product this is his job." But Mr Shallcrass called the economic measurement of the worth of an individual "the basic weakness of Mr Muldoon's argument
"G.N.P. and profit and loss take no account of personal whims and changes in expectations," he said. "The processes of feeling, of intuition and imagination are as important as the intellect," he said.
Mr Muldoon was saying that entry to university must be made more selective even than the present "savage" system by which only 14 students out of every hundred entering secondary school pass the university entrance examination.
"I think this is going to happen by force of circumstance," Mr Shallcrass said. He considered an examination between secondary school and university likely for some university departments.
Mr Shallcrass questioned whether the measurement of intellect which the Minister said would be achieved was in fact a reliable method of measurement for human beings. He quoted one American study which showed that the ability to use knowledge in a comprehensive way developed with age.
If measurements of "worth" were too early, talented people could be chopped out.
"I am inclined to agree with the Minister that some things can be made more efficient," he said. "Universities could save a number of students by discovering what was going wrong and doing something about it."
• Congress Coverage P.2.
A campaign to increase the proportion of the Gross National Product spent In Overseas Aid is under way in the university.
Originating at the S.C.M. and Catholic Sociaty conference at Paeata In the holidays, the object it to pressure the Government Into deputing one per cent, of the G.N.P. for overseas aid.
The original motion, promoted by Chris Liversey, the Education Officer at Canterbury University, was to get a one cent donation from ell students.
Activity to promote the scheme will continue throughout Orientation Week before a public meeting will be held.
Secretary Ken Crawford said a steering committee would be established, "as totally representative of the student body and staff as possible".
He said the organisation wants to attract support on a personalised basis, because this gives the most solid base for the campaign.