The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. MONDAY, MAY 3, 1886.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 101, 3 May 1886, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

MONDAY, MAY 3, 1886.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that wo can do.

Several facts elie#«d at the meeting of the Board of Educatian on Friday cell for remark, from their bearing on the efficiency of our educational system. For the proper tuition of youth, qualified teachers are necessary, but it does not appear that existing conditions are calculated to supply the de-'

sideratum. Such, at least, is the first reflection on learning that of 56 pupil teachers who have undergone the allotted thrie years' preparation, only four had passed the first or entrance; examination, which qualifies them for the position of assisiwit teachers. Of the remaining: 52, 29 failed utterly, and 14 partially—while 17 were not examined. It is impossible that 52 people can so seriously have mistaken their calling as to be ambitious of teaching when they are mentally unfitted for the work, and therefore some other explanation of the heavy percentage of failures must be sought. The examinations may be too stringent, or the system of appointing examiners from Wellington may be rather hard on competitors ; but it is difficult to see how the latter fact sho«ld be prejudicial to thoroughly-preparedstudents, while it is evident, from the majority of the failures being in suth easy subjects as history and geography, that it is not altogether the heavy nature of the examination that is to blame. The chief cause, we imagine, must be sought in the defective training of a portion of the 52. That number embraces a legacy left from the old regulations of pupil teachers who commenced work after passing the Fifth Standard. Three years is too brief a period to allow young people, in intervals of rsgular work, to make the advance from Standard V. to the status of assistant teachers ; and the Board of Education, two years ago, very wisely made the passing of the Sixth Standard examination the test of fitness for the duties of pupil teacher. The list of failures doubtless also includes many youths of much too tender years for the mental strain required to pass, or for the responsibilities attaching to the position of assistant teacher, supposing them to have the necessary precocity or capacity for "cram" to pass the examiners. The results may be accepted as a telling commentary on the examination system, which takes no account of special aptitude for particular work, but judges all alike by a hard mechanical standard, in many cases so severe as to leave the successful candidates mental wrecks for several years afterwards. One redeeming feature — and perhaps the only one—in the system, and in the particular examinations we have been noticing, is the fact that they prevent an arduous occupation from being " swarmed " by crowds of competitors for position. If the spectacle of " those who have failed" should have the effect of deterring any appreciable number of young men and women from rushing into what is supposed to be a "genteel" calling, the failures will not be altogether fruitless. In the other aspect, no more vivid picture of wasted energy and futile effort can well be imagined than these fifty-two aspirants for the position of teacher left stranded on the rocks of Examination waiting another visit of the steam-tug Cram to help them off.