EXAMINATION PAPERS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 148, 19 December 1935, Page 8

EXAMINATION PAPERS

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—l should like to add a little to your article on the matriculation examination. The suggestion of alternative questions is an absolutely fair one, and moreover it should be made very clear to examiners ttmt as this examination is non-competitive—a fact too often forgotten—no questions of a tricky character, or of the catch variety, should be allowed. There is often an endeavour in these examination papers to strain-after'originality; any candidate who has done good preparation for the examination and whose knowledge is up to the standard should have no difficulty in pass'ng, and should not run the risk of bei.g put out on a technicality, so to speak. An example of what I mean is the statement of well-established theorems in geometry in a disguised form, and there are many other instances. •

May 1 encroach on your space further to remark on the criticism "of secondary, education in general? During thirty-two years of secondary school teaching I can remember1 one occasion only on which a man outside the teaching profession visited *a school for the express purpose of hearing what was being taught. He was the late Mr. Arnold, a member of Parliament for Dunedin. No one in twenty-five years has visited the college to which I belong *to listen t6 one lesson on any subject. This applies to members of Education Departments, boards of governors, and all such. In these circumstances little value can be attached to destructive criticism, in my opinion. Members of the staff of a secondary school have qualifications wide enough to teach anything'under the sun or beyond it, so let us have some constructive criticism of a more encouraging nature to incorporate in the year's work.—l-am, etc.,

OMEGA.