The Hawera Star SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1925 MATRICULATION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 21 February 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1925 MATRICULATION.

Deliverer! f*ver\ pvening by 5 o’clock in Hawora. Manain, Normanby, ukniawa, IMham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Alton, Uirlryville, Patea, Warprley, Mi.koia, ••Vhnkaniara, Ohangal. Mpremerp, Fraser Koad, and Ararat^.

January and February are blie “open” months for systems and methods of post-primary education, and in all directions critics are out with their mins, potting away at the University Senate, or the matriculation examination, or the “unfair” papers set before accountancy students, according as fancy may prompt them. The number of persons directly interested in any one of the score of questions discussed between publication, of the eagerly-awaited “results” and the beginning of each, new academic year is not large; hut in a country in which education is one of the heaviest charges on the public purse the indirect interest must) be very wide. One stronghold particularly attacked is the examination system, and the matriculation, test is the point upon which the attackers have concentrated for the moment. Mr. F. W. Renner, ‘the master who is secretary of the Secondary Schools Association, concludes a scathing indictment of the present system by declaring that “the matriculation examination as a, test of a candidate’s capabilities in various subjects is quite futile.” That is altogether too. sweeping. Tit is true that there are some pupils—girls more often than hoys, perhaps—who never do themselves justice under the strain of an examination; and in fairness to] those some change from things as 1 they are is desirable. But to, say that a.n examination) is no test of abil-j ity is rank exaggeration. It penalises those of nervous temperament, and it gives an odd hoy here or there the opportunity of making a brilliantly

correct guess, and so squeezing through when he should in justice have failed; but in the great majority of cases an examination paper which is intelligently set. and sympathetic-ally marked is a. very trustworthy device for separating the wheat from the chaff. The matriculation examination is designed to represent “the reasonable result of lour years Gaining in a secondary school." When scores of pupils pass it after three years, it cannot very- well be judged too .severe. One of the main troubles in New Zealand is that probably eighty per cent, of those who enter for the examination have no intention of matriculating—that is, of entering their names on the undergraduate roll of one of the university colleges. Matriculation, originally the door to the University, has become rather the stamp of a reasonably efficient secondary school training, and i.s accepted by employers as a kind of guarantee that a boy has at any rate something in him. The proposal now before a committee of the University Senate that the examination should be divided into two sections—a higher test., leading to the I'niversity and a lower to meet the requirements of girls and hoys who wish merely to have some record of work done—might meet the difficulty At- the same time we cannot see that there is any call for the University fo assume responsibility for the inferior examination. Matriculation is under the control of the T niversitv only because it Hanks as. the University entrance examination; the matter of a special leaving certificate examination--which is what the in* ferior test would amount- to—is one more for. the secondary schools themselves ami for the Education Department. Arwi, so far as the Ttniver-, sity ent nance examination is concerned, any variation of the standard should be in the direction of raising it rather than of ea.sing the pressure. No man is ewer fully educated, and all that a degree in. any nonprofessional study means is that the graduate has taught himself to> reason along right lines and to be searching always for, the truth; it is the beginning rather than the end of an education. At the same time, however, il is reasonable to expect that a student shall not enter the University until he is capable at least of thinking for himself; land it is an, unpleasant fact that many whp get through the present matriculation examination give little indication of even such limited ability as that. It may be that the accrediting system which is being urged upon the University Senate would give the colleges a, higher elan's of freshman, but the indications are all against it. The scheme of internal examination Tor the University’s “pass" course. 1 ? in Arts and Science has not raised the -standard, and it is hard to- believe that a similar system would operate any more successfully in the secondary schools.