MATRICULATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 245, 17 October 1933, Page 6

MATRICULATION.

In reply to your correspondent "Notaba," I would wish to point out that his statements lack the accuracy required for the discussion of academic questions. As no trade from carpentry fo plumbing ever demanded matriculation as a condition of apprenticeship, his main objection to our entrance examination fails. If "Notaba" knew anything about Japan, which I doubt, he would have discovered that the matriculation of the University of Tokyo, which regulates the entrance to all the professions, is very much more difficult than ours. Did it ever strike "Notaba" that 60 per cent of our children never go to a secondary school, and would be unfit to receive higher education if they did, and of the 40 per cent that do go to secondary schools not 20 per cent ever matriculate, and only a small percentage of these ever take a degree? It is rather diflicult in the face of facts well known to every teacher to place the faintest reliance on such nonsensical assertions as that "matriculation is the biggest sin that has ever been perpetrated on our children." If that is so, Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin and Edinburgh must have been sinning for centuries, and New Zealand carried on in the orthodox manner for sixty-five years, -until a clique of headmasters and some officials of the Education Department proposed to abolish the entrance examination. Might I take the liberty oj pointing out to "Notaba" that it is unusual to allude to the professors who conduct our matriculation examination as "petty tradesmen," and that a perusal of a University calendar might tend to modify his ideas on a subject which it is apparent that he knows nothing whatever about? B.A.