THE CRUCIAL TEST.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 273, 18 November 1927, Page 5

THE CRUCIAL TEST.

ANNUAL EXAMINATIONS.

TRIALS OF YOUNG

AUCKLANDERS.

l'OLil THOUSAND CANDIDATES.

Budding teachers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, engineers, and architects, a small band of civil servants,<must be 111 that band of four thousand or so of young Aucklanders who sit this year at the annual examinations of the Education Department and the New Zealand University.

The sight at the Auckland University College in Princes Street, which is the principal examining ccntrc in the city, is illuminating, lit the lecture rooms candidates are deeply engrossed in the task of the moment, mustering all available knowledge to unravel knotty problems in mathematics or answer questions that are just as likely to be too diffuse as exasperatingly "brief. The human material passes through the great entrance doors of the college, some wellequipped by the fruits of applied study, some in doubt about the prospects of the day. and a portion suffering from tlio aches and pains of a last long night of learning. A Merciless Tyrant. To the great majority the tyrant that governs education from within is mereiJess. A bright boy in the classroom deplores his fate at th examination tabic. The mute and solitary cramming to which he was subjected has been regrettably lacking in the necessary inspiration that might send his imagination fluttering gaily off on a side-track where he wants to be left alone for awhile to enjoy it all. like a Scotchman who sees the point of a rather choice joke. Tortures of the cramped and aching hand, scratchy pens, lapses of memory on crucial points, are the tortures of the examination room, when, faced with the grim reality of a hardened and sceptical examiner he has never seen, a candidate addresses himself to his task.

A bov coming out from a history examination said: "I am never quite sure whether the date of Magna Carta was 1215 and Waterloo, 1815. or whether it was the other way about, but 1 think I have got it right this time."

On one occasion a candidate in materia medica in an English University, who was unable, owing to examination fright, to distinguish the taste or 6njell of the sample of cold-liver oil that he had in his hand, on being asked: "Where does cod-liver oil come from?" replied: "The whale." The Viva Voce Examination. The frank. "I don't know" of a candidate not afflicted with nervous treniours. some examiners say has been the safest way out of a tight corner for a bright youth who could distinguish what he did know from what he did not, and went on to show that his knowledge of the parts of the subject he thought he knew was sound.

In New Zealand the viva voce examination is little known, though it is largely used in some European countries. Probably the reason is that boys and girls are not taught to speak and think, at the same time, it,the age when the child speaks confidently and easily. So, many a young teacher up for an examination in sinking, paralysed with nervousness, lias failed dismally, either reduced to painful silence or a lamentable lack of liarmonv.

Tlie viva voce examination is one that cannot he hurried, and a candidate is saved from the desperate gallop over vanishing sheets of foolscap that is the best achievement of the "crammed" mentality. Youthful Ardour Subdued. For lue public examinations that take place in Auckland every spring there is a kind of a dual test; the "pass"' examination, which is generally sufficient to subdue youthful ardour; and, the "competitive" test, which is the pass examination with fresh problems to boot.

When the examination test was slowly coming into use in the early Victorian times someone with whom the older methods had fallen in disfavour, said to Lord Melbourne, "I do not in the least mind confessing that, if I had to deal with two candidates, one of whom was the soti of a relation of mine, and the other a stranger, I should, reteris paribus, give the appointment to the son of mv friend and relation."

"So should I," replied Lord Melbourne drily, "but ceteris paribus be damned."

A youth is apt to emerge triumphant from the written examination, crammed with a tremendous amount of preliminary knowledge, but rather behind-hand in the old-time skill of maintaining a thesis in a public dispitation.