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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 14, No. 6. June 7, 1951

[Introduction]

page 5

We can now consider the more practical suggestions for a responsible university. It would be quite out of line with the suggestions already made to consider that studies can either aim at the exclusive ideal of liberal education or merely at occupational training.

In general the student should be able to choose for himself what he will study, and there should be no attempt to mould him to a pattern. The more subtle ways of moulding a student by the importance attached to examinations and to research need modification. Research should be considered in the light of previous remarks on academic neutrality and fragmentation. For example, where ability in research is the standard for academic appointments, as, say, in the case of careful editing of texts, we are liable to be landed with a man who can appreciate little of the implied values in literature. Examinations are connected with two evils: "intellectual insincerity and an idolatrous cult of success." The kind of cynicism that springs from discovery that exams nearly always test what the student has committed to memory rather than what he has thought is disastrous to Moberly's conception of education. It is only by recognising a set of values as predominant over all his activity that a student can subordinate exams to their proper place as a minor element in his education. Closely allied to the examination system is the overloading of curricula. The student all the time finds the demands of his study overwhelming him and is encouraged to skimp his work; there is no time to stand back, no time to think, no time to follow up an independent line of thought. Consequently the standard of original work is seriously lowered. There is certainly no time for the enquiry into values and beliefs which we hold to be fundamental to the purpose of the university. Moberly here quotes Berdyaev speaking of the tempo of modern life: "it exacts from man a continual activity, which once in operation imposes conditions of spiritual inner passivity."