EXAMINATIONS DEFENDED

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 10, 13 January 1932, Page 10

EXAMINATIONS DEFENDED

BETTER THAN "GRAFT"

CHANCELLOR'S OPINION

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") DUNEDIN, This Tiny. Defending scholarships and competitive examinations, the Chancellor of. the University of New Zealand, Professor J. Macmillan Brown, remarked during the course of his. address to .the Sonate today:—"Most educationists agree that the best form to give • competition in human societies is a well-organised, well-mauaged system of scholarships, which selects in each stage the talents that will most profit in the next stage. And thY only'wholesome system of scholarships is that based on examination. .■.■:.. '

'' I, can recall tlie... system prevalent in the Scottish" universities when I first entered them; it was one of patronage; of the scholarships were in the gift of noblemen or men high up in society, and they: as a rule left it to their factors or agents, and a youth could get a scholarship only through backstairs influence. By the time I left to come ofct to New' Zealand, the process of transferring .them, from patronage to examination was well under way. The rebellion against patronage in parliamentary elections had begun in 183 a with the Beform Bill, and it had gone far to purify, elections and raise them to a true democratic level. It was this process) that made- the cliango from patronage as tHo method :of the scholarship system to examination inevitable Had it not been for the deep root that democracy had taken in the religion and schools of Scotland, class-conscious-ness, encouraged -by this patronage system of granting scholarships, would have become rampant in its universities A feeble shadow of it almost fell on American education in the accrediting system and threatened our own university a year or two ago; and I hope that that danger has finally vanished. Examination^ has its disadvantages and dangers; *>ut it is the nearest wo can eomo to impersonal decision and avoidance of that backstairs influence which .is the chief sourco of corruption and gratt. _ But examination must be made progressive, getting slightly stricter }'ear> °r at least' higher in stand-