UNIVERSITY REFORM.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 22, 27 January 1911, Page 8

UNIVERSITY REFORM.

«. TO THE EDITOB. Sir, — In your issue of to-day is a telegram giving the Chancellor's reply to my letter in your issue of the 21st. The Chancellor says that some of the professors have suggested "that each professor or each college should examine the students taught by the professor in his college," and the context shows that he means they have suggested that each college should be a separate examining body, a position against which he has directed so heavy an attack. It is open to Sir Robert to give chapter and verse. Ido not know them. He goes on to say that the inference that the professors hold that view is the only inference that can be drawn from their petition to Parliament. I reply that it is an utterly astounding inference, for which the petition gives no shadow of justification. The petition is a petition for enquiry into the constitution and administration of the university. It has in view the setting up of a Royal Commission to enquire into these matters, and, if remedy is needed, to propose a remedy after hearing all possible evidence. To read into that petition a constructive policy and to charge that policy upon the reform party is a most amazing achievement. If we had indeed said or implied in the petition what tho commission, when appointed, ought to propose, we should have done a thing so silly and impertinent ac to justify the remark with which the Chancellor concludes his reply, a remark whose perilous likeness to a, sneer I do the Chancellor the justice to believe he did not recognise when making it. The Chancellor assumes that he must infer that we occupy the position he has attributed to us because Dr. Stan Jordan, the distinguished president of Leland-Stanford Junior University, when in New Zealand in 1908, suggested the position, and we quote Dr. Stan Jordon on another point with approval. Yet the Chancellor able to make such an inference on such grounds is prepared to twit us with being illogical. The- Chancellor suggests that I should point out the record of the adoption of the suggestion that the four professors of a subject should be an examining board for that subject. I gave no hint that this suggestion had been adopted, speaking of it as a suggestion put forward by some of us. Sir Robert hae shown that ho well knows one publication of the suggestion. Yet he ignored that, and attributed to us a quite different policy, ivith regard to which he even now says only "some of the professors have bo suggested," gi.vmg no instance. The Chancellor says "To have assumed that the professoro, having condemned external examiners, were willing to accept this four-membered board would have been to have assumed either that they did not appreciate the meaning of the word 'external' or that they were illogical." It is probable that the suggested board would not be an ideal body ; but it is doubtful whether the circumstances of New Zealand do not preclude the ideal, and no more acceptable compromise than the board of examiners has yet been suggested. There is a very wide and obvious difference between au examination conducted by an examiner at the other end of the •world to whom, the candidate is a. soulless code word and no more, and an examination conducted by four men here, one of the men having a first-band knowledge of the strength and the weakness of the candidate. In the first case cram suffices, in the second it is work and ability that would count. The suggested scheme would give the teaching professor some place at least in the examination, and would tend to increase nis sense of re eponsibility. Ifc would give him .greater opportunity of encouraging his students to do the best that is in them, without fear of ruining their prospects with apurely arbitrary examiner. *It would give him an interest in keeping up the standard of the teaching. It would draw the professors of the four colleges together, leading to discussion and interchange of thought for which at present there are few opportunities. Generally, it would tend to lessen the evils inherent in examination. It is to be borne in mind always that '"id matter of examination is one only of the matters that call for reform. The contention of the Reform party is that there is at least a prima facie case for enquiry, not only into the examination system, but into the whole constitution and administration of the University. The perturbation of the defenders of the present state of things, a perturbation that tends to betray itoeif m farsounding attacks upon untenable positions that we do not occupy, does not lessen the strength of that prima facie case. — I am, etc., H. B. KIRK 26th January, 1911.

The German Consul in Wellington (■Mr. Focke) has been advised that the German man-o'-war Condor, at present in Auckland, will not come on to Wellington, as she has been ordered to the Islands. The Hon. Dr. Findlay returned from the South this morning Mi. D. Stewart, who has been in chaige- of the Napier branch of the Union Bank for some time past, has been appointed acting-jnanag>er> at Wellington, vice Mr. R. A. Holmes, who is to become manager ab Melbourne for come months.