FURTHER CONDEMNED

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 29, 3 August 1925, Page 5

FURTHER CONDEMNED

MATRICULATION'S SHORT-

COMINGS

CANNOT PRIVATE SCHOOLS CO-ORDINATE MORE?

Further condemnation of the matriculation examination, and a suggestion for 00-ordination in an accrediting system, whereby "credit" should be given equally freely to the heads of private schools, was made to the University Commission this morning.

As the head of a registered private school, the Rev. T. A. Gilbert, S.M., M.A., of St Patrick's College, stated that the matriculation examination granted a passport to students of immature mind and unripened judgment, and the policy of his school was to deter students from attending the university, .until at least a year had been spent in post-matriculation work. Without traditions, and with the present bankruptcy of home life, the übiquity of the cinema, and the deification of sport, it was practically impossible to cultivate and foster an interest in literature and art, while the student's mind is obsessed with the passing of matriculation. Cram left the tastes uncultivated. Matriculation was a convenient and serviceable finishing examination to a few years at a secondary school, nothing more, and it found an alley in the Public Service and intermediate examinations. What was needed was a co-ordination between school, Department, and university. These schools cost the State nothing; they help to perpetuate hallowed traditions in a young land, yet they have no direct voice nor representation where subjects bearing on the general educational policy of the country are concerned.. Co-operation would make possible the abolition of the examination system, and its replacement by a more equitable system of accrediting. The system of "credits" in regard to free places in State schools should be equally acceptable in Tegard to a university, and the word of the headmaster of a private school should be taken, where the expenditure of no public money was iw vblved.