“Europeanised” Natives

Scientists to Attack Problem of Education

ARRANGEMENTS have been made in connection with the forthcoming meet ings of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science to be held in Melbourne during January, for a special joint session of the Education of Psycho logy section and that of Social Anthro pology.

The purpose of this combined meeting, which is supported by the Australian Council for Educational Research, is to discuss the educational development of those former primitive people who are now in contact with European influences and whose primitive culture patterns have become modified and their old social life considerably changed, as a result. Native educational systems of the Pacific, Africa and elsewhere will be passed in review.

Stress will be laid upon the idea that a series of analyses (along ethnographic or social anthropological lines) of the pre sent-day natives and future requirements of native life in the village are pre requisite to any scientific approach to the problem.

In the past, it is believed, the approach to native education has been somewhat haphazard and not based on any reliably informed body of scientific principles.

The combined meeting will be under the chairmanship of the President of the Anthropology Section of the Congress (Professor A. P. Elkin, of Sydney Uni versity). Papers will be contributed by educational authorities from Fiji, Gilbert and Ellice Islands and the Australian aboriginal background, as well as by practical anthropologists.

The discussion will be initiated by Mr.

W. C. Groves (recent Research Fellow in Anthropology of the Australian Na tional Research Council), who will pre sent, under the title of “A Scientific Approach to Native ‘Education’,” a summary of the principles developed by him in his forthcoming book (under the same title) which is being prepared under the sponsorship of the Australian Council for Educational Research.