Welsh Journals

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set realised its true character and the supreme efforts that are needed to win it, three of Welsh statesmen the most notable are Welsh by birth of the present or descent-Mr. Lloyd George, day the Minister of Munitions; Sir Samuel Hughes, the Organiser of the new Canadian Armies and last, but not least Mr. W. M. Hughes the Labour Premier of the Australian Commonwealth, who five years ago passed the Australian National Defence Act based on universal service, and who has recently in a series of vivid and powerful speeches given better expression than any other public man to the national aspiration WELSH UNIVERSITY REFORM I. EDUCATION IN FETTERS THE troubles of a would-be teacher in the University of Wales-let us say, of a teacher imbued with the inquiring spirit of some older Uni /ersity and burning with the zeal of youth- begin long before his appointment. His actual election is to be accomplished by a numerous band of men and women, who, with the best will in the world cannot acquire in two meetings a working knowledge of the subject in which he is skilled, and may, therefore, grope in the half-light for his pedigree rather than for his record. They have the assistance of two members of the College Senate, not necessarily competent in his particular field. However, granted the will to choose without fear or favour, they may light with good fortune upon the candidate endowed with most personality-which will in theory be the best ultimate test. Our young and zealous teacher. fresh from the world of ideas and of culture, is duly elected and congratulated upon an appointment, which possibly involves some sacrifice of salary, but is presumed to imply a compensating freedom of control and freedom to develop his special study on his own lines -freedom in fact to display those gifts of personality to which his appointment was due. He takes up his duties, applies himself to the University and College calendars, and discovers that all the work assigned for the current year to the various courses, even the Honours course, was settled for him probably two years, certainly one year, ago. It was not even settled according to the for a larger imperial policy and bolder and more effective leading. It is the imaginative power of the Welshman that has enabled these distinguished countrymen of ours to do what they have done, that glowing quality of mind which in new and difficult circumstances pierces beneath the surface of things and penetrates to the very heart of the situation. As education spreads, may we not expect that young Welshmen will more and more be able to find, as young Scotchmen have been doing for generations back, a wider field for their energies from the exer- cise of which not only Wales but the United Kingdom and the Overseas Dominions will ultimately benefit? predilections of his predecessor, in whose footsteps he is bound for a while to tread, but by compromise with the other two federated Professors, whose predilections are not likely to coincide. Yet the sine qua non of all good teaching is that the teacher should be thoroughly interested, and therefore able to inspire interest, in his subject matter. The choice of text-book should reflect the personal bent of the teacher its subject-matter should be the vehicle for his personality and special knowledge. It will be said that under the constitution the federal colleges of Wales need not agree upon a joint curriculum. But grave difficulties would at once arise if they did not, in the main, so agree. The external examiner would have to set a different group of papers in the examination, and the other two Professors could not intervene to fix a standard for a text-book paper for which their own candidates did not prepare. Those grave difficulties (not excluding a further payment by the University for the further work thrown upon the external examiner), are sufficient in a federal University to compel a compromise at the outset, and this compromise neutralises, probably in the case of two out of the three professors, the gifts of personality for which they were appointed. But in the University for which every teacher in Wales must long the examina- tion would be held upon his year's work along self-chosen lines, by himself and one external examiner in whose appointment he had at least some say, an examiner untrammelled by considerations