INTEGRAL PART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 99, 29 April 1939, Page 10

INTEGRAL PART.

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM PLACE OF EXAMINATIONS. i BUT CAN BE IMPROVED. "Kxaininations methods could bo imfact arc being improved, but o\aminat ions still roniain an internal part of any educational system," said Mr - K - I{ - Maliin. former [.resident of the Headmasters' Conference of England, who j s <jt present visiting Auckland. He has had a distinguished career as a headmaster, bavin? boon principal at Sedborgh, Ha ilex bury and Wellington College. ''Do not he led awav l.v any plan to do away with examinations.' 'he added llie.v are necessary, ami thev are at the same time helpful to student and educational system alike. To abolish tnem leads to slipshod methods and slipshod thought. It loads to laziness and to a decline in standards."* He expressly refrained from commenting on education in New Zealand, since he had not spent time enough in the Dominion to have formed an adequate basis for judgment. When, therefore, h« said he was sorry to hear of a move to abolish the matriculation examination, he was not criticising Xew Zealand alone, but making a comment in line with views which he held /irmlv on education in general. Ought to be Improved. At the same time, lie admitted the examination methods ought to be improved. Badly set examinations were harmful to student and system alike. In fact, he said, when he resigned from the hcadmastership of Wellington College, he spent six months investigating for the English Board of Education, tho central authority, the higher certificate examination. That was an examination on which was based the award of all State scholarships, so that it was of a fairly high standard. He was one of a panel of some 30, doing different aspects of the same work. Recommendations had been made which, if adopted, would in his view improve the examination system. The wrong examination system, he said, tended to allow a student to pass by entirely relying oil memory. That was wrong, liecause education essentially should teach the student to think.

The Aim of Education. The aim of education, he said, was to produce men and women who could think clearly, *.n ability which was more important now than ever. An education which trained the memory alone was not a success. Speaking of the Dominions generally—he has been in South Africa and Australia—he said that there were many jieople who halfknew rather than who knew. That was perhajis a tendency in modern times. Good education should consist of a little knowledge about many things, and a great deal of knowlfdge about a few things. It was t no use dabbling about with a lot of subjects and never doing one seriously. That was not education at all. He realised that changes were taking place in education, but in education, as in much else, it was better to make haste slowly. That might sound conservative, but his conservatism was based on experience, not on prejudice. "I am not in any sense inspecting schools." he explained. "I am exploring the possibility of establishing a permanent machine by which masters teaching in England may gain experience in New Zealand, and the other way about.' He did not mean an exchange of teachers, he said, but something with a wider scope. Under a system of exchange numbers were limited to those for whom a post exactly equivalent to the one they had left could be found. Furthermore, there were more teachers in the Dominions wanting a post in England than teachers in England wanting a post in the Dominions. The solution, in his view, consisted in the employment in England of Dominion masters as supernumeraries to a permanent staff. That meant that a headmaster would agree to take a teacher more than the ordinary number of the staff. Such a man would be a full member of the staff, but he would be required to do only half the teaching demanded of the ordinary staff member. 11l that way he would have a good opportunity of studying the organisation and curriculum of English schools, and any experiments being made there. Some English headmasters had agreed to take such men. and he hoped. 011 his return, to have the method considerably extended.