ACCREDITING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 162, 11 July 1930, Page 8

ACCREDITING.

EXAMINATION RESULTS. MORE DEPARTMENTAL « SCIENCE." THE SPIRITUAL FACTOR. (By PROFESSOR W. ANDERSON.) Further light on what the officials of the Education Department understand by a scientific treatment of the question of examinations is thrown by the statements made to the recent gathering of the Council of Education by the Assistant-Director, in support of the replacement of the University matriculation examination by' a system of accrediting by the Department and the schools. In 1925, said Mr. Bell, thirtytwo per cent of the candidates passed the examination, and two years later, with approximately the same number of candidates, the same schools, and the same teachers, fifty-five per cent passed. Most significant of the official state of mind is his comment: "Could a greater attack be made on the efficiency of an examination than that?" A Political Analogy. To this question the appropriate answer is: Could a more perfect example of question-begging be found than that provided by Mr. Bell's argument? Why, we might ask in return, should these results be believed to reflect upon the value or the validity of an ■examination at all? Just suppose we were to apply a similar mode "of reasoning to the results of Parliamentary elections. Would the fact that one election gave a majority to Reform, and the next a majority to United, have to be taken as a proof that elections are art unsound method of ascertaining the will of the people? Should our electoral system bo remodelled on a basis of the literal "scientific" truth of W. S. Gilbert's satirical lines about the party system, that

Every boy .and every gal That's born into the world alive Is cither" a little Liberal Or • else a little Conservative. Or, to complete the analogy, ought the Parliamentary strength of parties to be decided on each occasion by the calculations of a scientific department (say mental hospitals) as to the inborn political disposition of each individual citizen in conjunction with its estimate of the precise influence upon these dispositions of the national conditions prevailing since the last "election?" I am not aware that even the severest critics of the existing electoral machinery have suggested anything like this as a. remedy for its deficiencies.

Personal Responsibility.

Yet in essentials the cases are precisely parallel. The performances of individual human beings under examination are, like voting, an assertion of personal responsibility, of will and of the individual direction of knowledge-—in short,

a spiritual thing. The Department is bent on ignoring all this and treating the results as if they were a purely physical fact, the outcome of the play of purely mechanical conditions iipon a. fixed material. What its spokesmen describe as their "scientific" attitude is, in fact, not science at all, but rather that which is so constantly mistaken for science by shallow thinkers, namely, a superficial, ignorant and illogical materialism. Mr. Bell talks about "the same schools," "the same teachers," and so forth. Physically, of course, it may be allowed that they are the same. But a teacher and a school are not a mere external "environment" in the materialistic sense. They are spiritual forces, subject to the most delicate influences and modifications'. How does Mr. Bell know that, in the case he mentioned, they were in this respect "the same"? How could anyone legitimately conclude that they were the same save by the results shown upon examination? Even this source of information is imperfect, but it is certainly neft going to be bettered by methods that deliberately ignore the distinctively educational values and disciplines, and eliminate the educational atmosphere. "Try Anything Once." The public should realise, then, that the- spirit in which the accrediting system is going to be administered by the Department is one informed' by the crudest deterministic theories of American "mental testing." It should further realise that every check upon the sources of variation in the teaching power of the schools, whether considered individually or collectively, will be removed. So long as the schools remain "the same" in, those respects which can be assessed most easily from the administrative standpoint of the Department, so long must their output be accorded the same valuation. Those who still say we ought to "try something once" must be reminded of the great inherent obstacle to experiment in the domain of spiritual things, of which education is a type. In matters of engineering, the failure of an undertaking is swift and unmistakable. But the difficulty with which experiments in spiritual matters have to contend is just tliis, that the experiment of itself tends to alter the very standards by which its success is to be judged. Such deleterious effects- as it may happen to have become invisible in the general lowering of standards. This must be the first consideration in estimating the advisability of embarking on any scheme whose initial and undoubted effect is to dispense with existing standards of educational judgment that can be termed impartial. The handling of the subject• of accrediting in public discussion by the official representatives of the Education Department will do nothing to allay the anxieties of those who appreciate this aspect of the case.

In its natural state the poodle has a very long coat, often hanging in cords and dragging on the ground. The practice of shaving the dog probably originated in cutting the coat short for cleanliness sake and to save the trouble of frequent cutting, in the same way as boys are often given a close crop to prevent too frequent visits to the hairdresser.