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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 21. August 28 1978

Taranaki Herald Editorial 3.8.78 — Education or Propaganda?

Taranaki Herald Editorial 3.8.78

Education or Propaganda?

New Zealand University Students' Association reaction to the Government's ban on political activities by foreign students has a somewhat hysterical air about it. The association provides a scholarship for students from southern African areas, allegedly as a gesture to the under-privileged. If this is the real reason, then the association should be keen to ensure that students taking up the scholarship get the best possible value from the educational facilities made available to them.

One might well ask whether active participation in political events and application to study are compatible. It might be asked further whether inviting only students opposed to their own political regimes is taking a balanced approach. Any New Zealander who invites a stranger to his home would be most upset if the visitor immediately tried to stir up dissention among family members, or encouraged younger members of the family to oppose parental discipline, yet on the wider scale, isn't this precisely what the NZUSA is asking its scholarship holders to do when it expects them to address political meetings on anti-apartheid issues?

If the Government's ban applied to New Zealand citizens there would be grounds for protest, despite the feeling in many circles that too many state-supported university students already involve themselves in extra-curricular activity to the detriment of their studies. They have every right to be actively involved in the affairs of their country but the taxpayers who help support them also have a right to expect that they will use the opportunities created for them to further their education.

It is fair also that the students should have the right to hear the points of view of those with first hand knowledge of conditions in other lands. But the Government, representing the citizens of the nation, has an equal right to lay down the standards of behaviour expected and the range of activities that visitors will engage in. Taxpayers could well take strong exception to providing university places as [unclear: at-] platforms from which to launch propaganda campaigns.

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