This Matriculation

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 74, 21 December 1937, Page 13

This Matriculation

Sir, —So again we have papers set by examiners which are too difficult for the average four-year high school student. Miss Isaacs hopefully says that probably the examiners will be kind and when they find too many candidates fail marks will be raised all round by a certain percentage. Shall we attach a great importance to the result? This juggling of figures only belittles the importance of matriculation as a test.

Bernard Shaw would probably eay it was one of those cases in which a 50-year-old professor forgets he is setting a paper for a 17-year-old student. Why not abolish matriculation and save all the money it entails? It is no true test of a child’s ability. The result of four years’ creditable high school work should be quite sufficient to give a child university entrance if the student wants to study a profession. My husband in his profession never takes a girl into his office on matriculation results. He goes by appearance, manner and ordinary common sense. His feeblest office girl was a matriculated student who had no common sense whatever. She had relied on books so much that she had developed little reasoning power of her own at all.

On the other hand, one of our cleverest juniors was a boy who took three years to matriculate, failing each time in a foreign language. Havitig matriculated, he went through his professional course with ease.

In the profession of architecture or, say, engineering, what does it matter if a student gets no marks at all in a foreign language? Are you going to deny him university entrance when he may be fairly bursting with creative power? So we handicap our boys and girls and teachers as well. Pupils should leave school with a thirst for more knowledge of that particular subject which interests them, instead. well I can you blame them if they feel they arc throwing off shackles?—l am, etc., AOTEAROA WAHINE. Hawke’s Bay, December 15.