The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1937. EXAMINATIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 22687, 29 June 1937, Page 8

The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1937. EXAMINATIONS.

The Bishop of (Bradford has given a definition of examinations which deserves to become classic. At a Speech Day function he described them as a competition in low cunning between examiners and examinees. Enlarging on this viewpoint, His Lordship said: “ If an examiner can bowl out a boy it is one up to him, but if a boy makes an examiner believe that ho knows more than he actually does, he scores.” The bishop was speaking more in jest than earnest. The last part of his explanatory sentence was completely true, but the examiner who is worth his fee seeks rather to find out what a boy knows than how far his ignorance extends, which, for the examiner himself, might bo a largo measurement. The contrary view as to object, however, will always be natural to the boy, a ,cl it may have misled some examiners. It was said long ago that “ examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.” An opinion of examinations as caustic as the bishop’s was expressed by William do Morgan, who described them as “ a contest in which an untimely attack or summer complaint might render useless the scholarship of Erasmus and the mathematics of Newton and Leibnitz combined.” But the good things of de Morgan arc hardly read to-day. The bishop need not fear that rival when he seeks fame as a humourist. There was a good deal of seriousness, we must believe, in Dr Blunt’s remarks. A twinkle of the eye, no doubt, relieved the I'uthlcssncss of his faint praise when lie congratulated the prize-

winners on their “ ingenuity,” but ho was right in saying that “ tho important thing is not how much information scholars acquire, but whether the school produces the mental zest whicli is the foundation of true culture.” And yet oven that truth must not bo over-pressed. If tho boy did not acquire sonic knowledge ho would never develop that curiosity to know more which we take to bo tho moaning of mental zest. The plea has been made for the sailor who was very much of a vagrant 'lover: It don’t matter what you do, If your heart is only true, And his heart was true to Poll. In like manner a theory has been urged in education recently whicli might easily be extended to mean that it is not necessary for a teacher to teach anything in particular or anything very thoroughly so long as ho treats his pupils’ minds as a hatter, at a later age, might treat their hats, giving them a slight 'gloss with his brush, or a masseur their muscles, making them tingle a little. A primary school teacher of least equipment might satisfy these requirements for the most advanced classes in secondary schools. The object might be stated: It don’t matter what you know, If your mind is all aglow, and as a mind sufficiently youthful may glow from all sorts of causes, the teacher’s work would not be tested by results. The bishop’s principles do require results, since his “ mental zest ” is made synonymous witli “ the foundation of true culture ”—something more than appearances or a vague general energy. We shall hear more of examinations and their evils when the big conference of. the New Education Fellowship is held in New Zealand in due course. In some measure they arc a necessary evil. Without doubt they have been exaggerated into a tyranny. The principal of the King Edward Technical College has been pointing out how, when, secondary schools were opened to a much larger section of the public in 1910, “the teachers knew only one thing to do, and set examinations to regiment the boys. Matriculation was raised to a fetish, and parents and business men said, ‘ You must sit for your matriculation.’ Fortunately, the proficiency examination was now abolished. Of the 4,600 students who sat for the University entrance, only 2,100 passed, and of these only COO passed on to university, training college, or teaching profession.” Tho fetish of matriculation will not be easily reduced to its proper proportions. A secondary school teacher has said justly: “The fact that we continue to train unfitted pupils for the University entrance examination is not our fault, but the fault of parents and employers—parents who wish their children to take tho University entrance examination whatever their intellectual disqualifications: employers who naturally feel that those who can pass the University Entrance must have something at least above tho average intelligence. Can you blame them? Can you blame the child who has the ambition to pass the examination? Can you stifle ambition?” An attempt has been made to provide a substitute for matriculation, in the case of those pupils not desiring to go on to the university, by the school certificate, which can be awarded on a wider, less academic tost. In practice, it appears unlikely that this alternative will achieve its full purpose till the university examination has been so stiffened—to the advantage of the university—as to be made impracticable for most pupils who do not desire to go on to higher learning. Due to the prestige which still attaches to the passing of the university tost, and to other causes, its alternative is for the present a good deal of a futility. But a start has been made on the right road.