Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, September 1926

The Spike or Victoria University College Review

page 1

The Spike or Victoria University College Review

(Published Twice in the Session)

The Editorial Committee invites contributions, either in prose or verse, on any subject of general interest, from students or officials connected with the College. All literary communications should be addressed to The Editor, Victoria University College, Wellington. Subscriptions are now due, and are payable to Mr. J. H. Dunn, Financial Secretary.

Editorial

Devil hammering nail through mortarboard

In the speech with which he opened the recent Congress of the National Union of Students at Cambridge, Lord Cecil, the Union's Honorary President, said several things that should be pasted up in every lecture-room and printed on the back of every library-card. His subject was "The Ideal of a University," and the burden of it was that "youth owns the future" and the first obligation of the students of a University was to "get into their minds the conception that it was their duty to learn and to make the best of the opportunities that were given to them." But he laid stress upon the fact that the students were the most important part of the University, and he defined his meaning when he urged his hearers to make the most of opportunities. He said that he did not look back with great gratitude to the formal teaching he received at his University. He spent a large part of his time reading Roman Law, and said; "I regard it as the most completely wasted time I have ever spent in my life." What he placed "an immense value" upon was intercourse between the students themselves. He continued: "That is what I look back to in my University career as having been of the greatest value to me—discussing opinions which perhaps we did not understand, opinions on which life depended, which held life together, discussing them with energy, conviction, searching for the truth—that is the great training for the mind which you can get from a properly-used University."

We wish we could impress this message upon every man and woman who comes inside the doors of Victoria College, Lord Cecil's exhortation should remind every one of us that the page 2 measure of education we gain here, and the increased enlightenment, ability to think, or whatever name it is we choose to give to the result of our few years' sojourn, depends entirely upon ourselves. The devoted work of the Professors and Lecturers is magnificent, but they, no less than the students, are subject to a system imposed from without, the failings of which none realises better than they. The very faults of the system aggravate the necessity of each student's looking to his own resources for the completion of what the formal training begins. Some of the ways along which this higher education (for this is the real meaning of that much-abused word) can be achieved are open to every student; some are not yet available to any of us. In England there is a body whose purpose is to bring students of all the English and Welsh Universities into contact with each other, and which to this end maintains an elaborate organisation, with a permanent office in London. It possesses the dignified and imposing title of "The National Union of Students of the Universities and University Colleges of England and Wales."The recent tour of the Empire Debating Team was one of the Union's manifestations. Congresses, discussion groups, travel tours, inter-visitation with students on the Continent, are all part of its work. The second annual Congress was held at Cambridge last March; nearly six hundred and fifty students attended, and the six days were crammed with meetings on careers for students, addresses on such subjects as the International Labour Office and China, a Universities' Parliament, a Universities' League of Nations Assembly, as well as sports and excursions. No New Zealand student has the opportunity of attending such a conference, very obviously. The material scarcely exists here for any gathering on as ambitious a scale; for instance, the League of Nations Assembly was opened by Lord Grey, Professor A. E. Zimmern was elected President, and among the speakers was Herr Von Bulow, of Germany. But a New Zealand organisation comprising the four Colleges is not beyond the limits of the possible. Mr. R. N. May, one of the members of the Empire Debating Team, was enthusiastic in his suggestion that a National Union of Students should be formed in New Zealand, and in a letter written since his return he repeats the suggestion, and urges that such an organisation be formed and made a federated member of the International Confederation of Students. This is one of the tasks that faces us in the immediate future: a motion approving of the formation of such a Union was carried at the last annual general meeting of the V.U.C. Students' Association, and we hope to see the matter taken up in the pages of next year's "Spike." But for those whose ambition it is to achieve an education of the lasting sort that comes from sharing for four or five years in the corporate life of a University, opportunities abound on every side. We have an active Debating Society; debating is the most important form of activity in almost all the old Universities. The responsibilities of office in the Students' Association seem often to repel instead of attract. Several of our clubs are merely clinging to a precarious existence because students cannot be found to devote the necessary time and energy to their support. And then there is the dear old "Spike"— page 3 interest in its welfare is keen; but fewer than half the students in the College take sufficient care or pride in the magazine to possess themselves of a copy of each number as it is published. Opportunities of the kind of which Lord Cecil spoke certainly are not lacking.

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlines."

Is it worth while to employ ourselves with these things? If any student doubts whether bearing his share in the corporate life of the College is worth the sacrifice that it certainly involves, let him turn back to the words of Lord Cecil, with which we preface these remarks. And Lord Cecil is only the latest to single out intercourse with fellow-students as the really invaluable part of a University education; he is very far from being the first. "The Spike" has more than once quoted John Newman's famous and eloquent passage on the best type of University, a passage that has received the seal of approval and the benediction of the recent Royal Commission on University Education; and "The Spike," during its twenty-five years of existence, has unfailingly pleaded for an increase of the team spirit in College life. We believe that its efforts have been attended with a measure of success. But the vista of the near future is brighter with hope than ever before; "the fuller day" which the earlier occupants of "the Old Clay Patch" sang of and dreamed of seems to be breaking on the horizon, A residential college will be opened in two or three years' time. Student representation upon the College Council—thanks mainly to a little deputation of one that has energetically and earnestly pleaded the cause in season and out of season—has made definite headway, although it does not appear in the new University Act. But it cannot be repeated too often, or with too much emphasis, that we, as the fortunate posterity of those who have brought these things to pass, will be better and wiser men only as far as our own personal exertions are combined with our marvellous opportunities. The burden of education never lifts from the shoulders of the student. It can never to be transferred, not even to the teacher; it is supremely a personal matter.

Dr. H. W. Van Loon, in his book, "The Liberation of Mankind," tells us that there are three schools of statesmanship. The first two we refrain from describing, lest we be accused of indulging in personalities. But the third group may safely be mentioned. "They contemplate man with the sober eye of science and accept him as he is. They appreciate his good qualities, they understand his limitations. They are convinced, from a long observation of past events, that the average citizen, when not under the influence of passion or self-interest, tries really very hard to do what is right. But they make themselves no false illusions. They know that the natural process of growth is exceedingly slow, that it would be as futile to try and hasten the tides or the seasons as the growth of human intelligence. They are rarely invited to assume the government of a State, but whenever they have a chance to put their ideas into action, they build roads, improve the gaols, and spend the rest of the available funds upon schools and Universities. For they are such incorrigible optimists that they believe that education of the page 4 right sort will gradually rid this world of most of its ancient evils, and is therefore a thing that ought to be encouraged at all costs."H The Spike" will, we trust, never rest its lance until the control of education in this country is vested in men more resembling this type of statesman, in men who have a rational and vital faith in the potentialities of education, and not merely an interest in it as a legitimate field for effecting economies. But such statesmen must themselves be educated—in the fullest sense of the term, and we are entitled to say to the University student of this generation: "There is a task ahead that calls out for educated men. Its fulfillment is the urgent need of this hour. Whither goest thou?"