STUDENT LITERACY

Evening Star, Issue 25344, 28 November 1944, Page 3

STUDENT LITERACY

CANTERBURY FINDS NO DEGENERATION

IMMATURITY THE COMMONEST WEAKNESS

(P.A.) GHIUSTCHUUCK. Nov 27. The reports from Auckland reflecting , unfavourably on the literacy and gene- [ ral fitness tor university work of first- . year students apparently do not apply i in the ea.se of Canterbury University ! College, the council of which to-day received a report on the subject from the. rector. Professor A. H. Tocker, and the chairman of the council. Mr J. HE. Schroder. " The evidence from most departments of the college is that there has been no decline in the general educational standard of first-year students, including their literacy, that is, the ability to write clear, grammatical English and spell correctly," the report stated: "The departments agreeing upon this are: English. Economics, Education, .Engineering, Geography, Philosophy, Geology, Biology, and Chemistry. On the other hand, the professor of history and his assistant rind that the considerable proportion of their first-year students wJio are ' unable to write a page of English without violating the ordinary rules of composition ' has been ' increasing of late years.' With this conspicuous exception it is agreed that there has been no appreciable fall in the literacy of the first-year students. " The opinions. about the general fitness of the entrants to begin university work," the report added, " are more varied, but again it is broadly agreed that they are not less, fit than formerly. The professor of economics, indeed, considers the present-day students better than those of the past in their capacity to understand a wide field of subject matter. He points out, as do some of his colleagues, that the first-year students have always varied widely in both scholastic attainments and their degree of maturity. The lowest are provisional matriculants or candidates who have scraped through tiie. university examination. The best may have had two years or more of postmatriculation schooling. "It is in this regard that the broad conclusions stated above appear not as fully reassuring ones, but as reassuring only in a narrow and relative sense, for it is emphasised by one department after another that many first-year students are poorly qualified for their work. This means that some of them learn by failure in their first year that they had better give up impossible aims. It also means that some who have natural capacity enough are not sufficiently well prepared or are too young. " The low standard of the university entrance examination is blamed in several reports," the report stated. " Others point to certain defects in the results of post-primary teaching. Immaturity, however, it is almost unanimously reported, is the commonest weakness among first-year students, and for these, as the professor of English says, the jump from secondary to university work is too great. " Two factors, the new conditions governing university entrance and the curricula changes in post-primary schools, may sooner or later produce a change for' the better in this respect. Whether they do or not, the suggestions in the report seem to deserve attention. One is that special efforts should be made to assist first-year students to attack their new problems in # the_ best way. Some systematic teaching is required, says the professor of geography, to Abridge the gap between the school, where so much is organised for the pupils, and the university, where the students are expected to organise the .use of their own time. " Secondly, the professor of education proposes that at mid-year the head of each department should submit to the rector a list of the allegedly illiterate, backward, or otherwise maladjusted students. Each case should be carefully investigated and suitable advice offered. In some cases special coaching would be indicated, in others a reduction in the number of units taken, and in. others again some variation in the methods of study. Now and then a student might be advised to withdraw from university work entirely. The ideal person to take charge of this work would be the liaison officer."