Lack Of Maturity Causes Examination Failures

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29383, 9 December 1960, Page 23

Lack Of Maturity Causes Examination Failures

Doubts about the wisdom of allowing more than a proportion of the brightest girls to sit the School Certificate examination in their third year, expressed by the headmistress of St. Margaret’s College (Miss J. P. Crosher) last year, were raised again last evening in her report at the school prize-giving.

“Subsequent results have in no way caused me to change my mind on this point,” she said. “Although those to whom this opportunity was offered did verywell in the school certificate examination. 90 per cent, of them proving successful, only 63 per cent, of these girls qualified for university entrance by accrediting and several more reached the required standard by such a narrow margin as to indicate that they had been unable to benefit fully from their year in the lower sixth class, in spite of concentrated and conscientious study. “They tailed, not because of lack of effort, but because of lack of maturity.” she added. "With entry to the sixth form, horizons were suddenly widened and very much greater demands were made on the growing mind. “We are not primarily concerned to impart information at this stage, though we may do so in passing, but to train the student in sensitive and coherent thinking." she said.

“This training will include diverse but closely linked activities; the handling of evidence; the understanding of relevance: and of rational thought according to the logical demands of the sub-ject-matter; the enlargement of the critical faculties; and of sensibility; practice in clear exposition and the lucid presentation of points of view: the opportunity to be at close quarters with great minds at work; and becoming acquainted with moral, political, philosophical and religious ideas. Four-ycar Course

“It will be clear that a programme of this sort cannot be attempted by the average adolescent of 15 or 16. Furthermore, we must not lose sight of the added danger that too narrow and rapid a course may permanently close many doors in the mind. “It is significant that throughout the hearings of the Education Commission, the four-year course has repeatedly been advocated while a similar point of view has also been expressed of recent months by senior officers of the Education Department. “That this is a problem not peculiar to New Zealand was shown by the comments of a selection committee interviewing sixth form candidates for scholarships and other awards at a British university which I came across recently.

“They expressed themselves as being .shocked by the poor response of many of these highlyselected candidates, who found it difficult to speak clearly about their own particular interests, who showed surprising ignorance of and indifference to the affairs of the world and who for the most part showed no intellectual activity outside their specialised field of study. “This report show-s that even abler sixth formers may come to substitute intellectual develop-

ment for a development which involves them as people more completely. In this way they slip away from some of the challenges —moral. aesthetic, religious—which decidedly they ought to have to meet. “Above all. our efforts with a sixth form will tend to be of little value if we do not allow the pupils time for private study nd intellectual pursuits and with the heavy demands made by a concentrated and rapid course on those inadequately equipped for it. this is impossible of achievement.

“Let us always remember that the Greeks, probably the greatest lovers of wisdom and beauty were also the greatest lovers of leisure,” Miss Crosher said.