IMPRESSIONS OF AN EXAMINER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14298, 16 February 1907, Page 4

IMPRESSIONS OF AN EXAMINER.

(By O. T. J. ALPERS.)

Close upon 1200 candidates entered for the matriculation examination of the Now Zealand University in December, and, of these, 1150 presented themselves and Bent answers to the paper in English. The task of reading and marking them, however fatiguing, has at least improved one's acquaintance with the mental characteristics of a section of what is called, in Yankee flavoured metaphor, the “ rising ” generation. Incidentally, also, it throws seme light upon the results of our educational methods. It is in the hope that they may be of some interest to those engaged in teaching, that these impressions are given, to the public. The most important question in an English paper is, or should be, tbo essay. The subjects set this year were “ Richard John Seddon,” “ The AIT Blacks Football Tour” and ‘‘The International Exhibition.” Of these, candidates were required to select ouo. They arc, of course, trite enough; but they wore deliberately chosen in order to'encourage students to keep in touch with passing events and not to neglect, in their devotion to text-books, the intelligent perusal of the daily paper. Each subject, moreover, in its different way, admitted of imaginative treatment and ’gave full opportunity, in Mr Chamberlain’s phrase, to “think imperially.” Over 400 candidates chose “Richard John Seddon ” as their subject and thoir essays are in many respects extremely interesting. A “Seddon myth ’ ’ is already in process of formation. Young Now Zealanders have evidently conceived an enthusiastic admiration for the late Premier, and his remarkable personality has strongly impressed itself upon their imagination. It is time historical accuracy and even plain commonsenes are often sacrificed in the’process of hero- worship; but it is good to find the young people of the colony have a warm-hearted appreciation for a life of strenuous endeavour and a career devoted to the cause of Empire. Love of country, sympathy with the poor, tireless devotion to duty —these are qualities which'his contemporaries will attribute to Mr Seddon. in varying degrees according as they were followers or opponents; but the young people of the ’ colony credit him with all these virtues and so set before themselves a high ideal of public life. But while their enthusiasm is admirable the’v ignorance is occasionally amaaing. Some thirty insist upon conferring on the dead statesman the posthumous honour of knigthood—they make him “Sir Richard?? In the anxiety to attribute to him all that is excellent in our legislation and institutions ho is credited in turn with all the best known measures on our Statute Book. The provinces were abolished in 1875, free and compulsory education began in 1876, but both are set down to Mr Seddon, who first entered Parliament in , 1879. The services of the Hon W. P. Reeves in connection with Industrial Arbitration, of Sir Joseph Ward in regard to penny postage are alike ignored and Mr Seddon is warmly praised for both. That li© should also receive credit for the Workers* Compensation Act is a less surprising blunder, for a great many adult electors of the colony firmly believe this excellent measure to be the product or New Zealand legislative genius, and are evidently unaware that the New Zealand Act of 1900 is merely a faithful copy of the English Act of 1897, _ and that our. legislators in transferring it to our Statute Book did not ©von trouble thomsejves to make the few alterations demanded by the different circumstances of life in the colony. But the climax of ignorance and of eulogy is reached by a candidate who roundly declares, “Before Mr Seddon’s time, New Zealand had fine ecenery indeed, grand mountains and noble forests; but- no industries, no railways and no progress!” It' ia significant that cTy about a dozen candidates in the whole colony adopted a critical or even a dispassionate view of Mr Seddon’ei career, and a majority of these came from one town—Auckland.

Pride of country is no doubt an admirable feeling, and New Zealanders are not likely to lack it. But it must be confessed that some of our young people write of our “ unparalleled prosperity ” and our “ marvellous progress” with, a complacent satisfaction which suggests that they have listened to electioneering addresses with too credulous an ear. The glorification of the art of advertising, which very many of the essayists l indulge in, is rather alarming. To some the late Premier’s greatest service to the colony was that he “advertised” it; the International Exhibition is “a splendid advertisement,” and the tour of the All-Blacks football team, was the “ best advertisement the colony ever had.” This is very true, no doubt, but one cannot escape an uneasy feeling that the next generation may be blatantly Americanised.

The outstanding feature of the papers taken as a whole is the absence of individuality. Receptivity of information is cultivated and rewarded in schools and universities to the detriment of originality and. initiative, and one is tempted to ask if educationalists really believe the glorification of commonplace to be their proper aim. One of the wisest and host of New Zealand headmasters told mo recently that ho had come to the deliberate conclusion that the most important inquiry to make in appointing a new member of his staff is “ Has he a sense of humour P” But, unhappily, there are not many headmasters in the profession who take that view. The “ tyranny of examinations ” is, of course, responsible to a very great extent for this cultivation of the merely receptive faculties; the “swot” gets high marks. The necessity for grouping pupils into largo classes—much increased since the new “free place” system in secondary schools came into vogue—is another obstacle to really vital teaching. But, whatever the reason, it is certainly only in a very small proportion of papers that one discovered anything vivid, picturesque, . or individualistic in the style or thought of the candidate. It ia tolerably obvious that in a-' good’ few schools in the colony the teaching given is of the most mechanical gerund grinding variety. The pupils are crammed with names instead of being taught about things. The teachers arc as completely satisfied when they have ticketed some things as “ objective complement,” “ proleptio infinitive,” or “ illative conjunction,” as were the philosophers of Laputa when they had decided that Lemuel Gulliver was a. “ lueus naturae.” In one question, for example, the candidates were asked to “discuss the figures of speech in the following passages.” The question was in some sort a test of literary appreciation. I had no interest in discovering whether the candidates knew the names of these figures of speech (I do not profess to know them myself); all I desired to know was whether they appreciated the significance of them. But a large number of candidates came provided 1 with a bundle of learned labels—Kypallage, Chiasmus, Paranomosia were some of them—and appeared at first sight to he very handy with them. But when I turned to the dictionary and discovered the meaning of these portentous expressions, I found they had mixed their labels up and got them tacked on to the wrong figure of speech, and bo douo great shame to their ingenious crammers. But this ia not the only form of cramming of which there were traces.

A considerable number of schoolmasters had evidently “spotted”—to use* tho crammers’ own favourite expression—some of tho -essay subjects. That, of course, was to be expected. You cannot possibly dodge tho crammer; the “Heathen Pn/jsee,” as Sir George Trevelyan wittily described him, is much too groat an adopt in “ ways that are dark.” But you can generally detect him; he give» himself away by too groat particularity or minuteness of detail; the essays are too obviously the work of a “master-hand.” And when, you find the essay has been prepared, you merely apply to it a more rigorous standard of comparison; every fault- is noted and penalised; and on the average. tho marks given for the prepared essays are found to bo lower than those for essays that were first thought out and composed in the examination room. The chief mistake the* crammer makes is to think all examiners are fools. They are not. There is one particularly braaon crammer in tho colony who has evidently formed the lowest possible estimate of tho intelligence of examiners. This man (I refuse to believe it was a- woman) had deliberately dictated an essay on “ Richard John Seddon ” to his class—some twenty in number—and they reproduced it word for word, including a sentence describing the late Premier as a man of strong stature and massive frame, “ with penetrating bluogrey eves.” “If this should meet the eve” he will readily recognise himself, and may be interested to know my opinion of him. In brief: I thought very little of his English—and much less of his honesty.

Such cases ai-o happily rare, and I would by no means be understood to suggest that “cramming” is rife in the schools of the colony. Tho evil has been increased of late by tho institution of District High Schools with a mandate to tho masters to qualify their sixth standard pupils for matriculation in two years. But for the cramming that does go on, examiners must share the blame equally with schoolmasters. It is pleasant to reflect, however, that there was at lea’st one question on tho paper which no single crammer, from Auckland to Invercargill, can boast of having “spotted” ‘ ‘ Write a paragraph of ton lines on. the familiar subject of ‘the weather.* Be humorous if you can; be commonplace if you must; but be accurate in composition.” The- alternative invocation to be “commonplace” met with a response that was truly appalling, and almost persuaded me to repent of the question. But a respectable minority were humorous in varying degrees; at least ten par cent of the answers were really amusing, and the question proved not only a useful exercise on the construction of a paragraph, but also a good means of drawing out originality in candidates who possessed it. Much of the “humour” was cheap cynicism at the expense of women—“fickle as tho weather”—or feeble jokelets about Captain Edwin. _ From the humid districts of Taranaki and Westland came several moss-grown, lichen-covered jokes of • great antiquity, a favourite on© being an allusion to “web-footed inhabitants”; but tho candidate who declared that “ in Taranaki it rains six days out of the seven, and takes advantage of Leap year to rain an extra day,” was rewarded with a smile and some marks. The best answer was that of a student who vigorously attacked the examiner’s want of imagination in being driven toset the question. Flashes of unconscious humour occasionally—but only occasionally-—re-lieved the monotony of an examiner’s work. Among the figures of speech, candidates were asked to “ discuss ” was the bold example of anticipation—- " So the two brothers with their murdered man Eod© past fair Florence.” where “ murdered man,” of course, means the man they intended to murder. One candidate labelled it “ Hyperbole.” I tried to believe he was consciously imitating Mark Twain’s famous disclaimer: —-‘‘The report, of. my death i» very much exaggerated.” Tho inevitable “sentences lor correction ” of course formed part of the paper. “ My wife and'myself propose going to Rom© next year ” was on© of these. A student—evidently a lady—with correct views on the reformed relationship between the ee-xea—altered this to “ My wife proposes to go to Rome next year and I am thinking of Eing also.” .The solecism, “ He had st been inflicting her with a very ig et-ory ” was “improved” into “He had just been inflating her with a very long story.” Come to think of it, thin is really a picturesque way of conveying the suffering that may bo caused by a leather-lunged bore. One hopes that the pronoun is quit© unintentionally ambiguous in “ Many a schoolmaster has cause to bless the name of tho late Premier as that of the man who made his salary increase and his position secure.” But “howlers” were surprisingly rare. It is quite evident that the pupils in our schools do learn to write clear and accurate prose. No one of the 1150 candidates would perpetrate anything quite so bad as Mr Punch’s famous example of tho Oxford undergraduate’s English. If the great- majority of tho papers give little evidence of imagination or humour, of force or elegance of style, the fault is with the system rather than with tho men and women who administer it. It is painfully obvious that the children in most of our schools hare very little opportunity for reading either by themselves _ in their leisure or under cultured guidance in school. The district high schools, of which so many have sprung into exist- . once in the last few _ years, have, it seems to me, set- out witn wrong ideals. ■ The pupils remain at most two years in the secondary department. That brief period would, it seems to me, be best occupied in learning, on the one hand, some science and practical mathematics ; on tho other, history and the literature of their own language. So confined, tileii- energies might produce something of definite educational value. Instead of that, they plunge into a variety of subjects and skim them all, merely with a view to passing the entrance examination of a university which the great majority of them have not the remotest intention of entering. Their time is spent in doing monkey tricks in algebra, in establishing futile theorems in ,Euclid, or in learning the rudiments of the grammar of one or two foreign languages, when they have ■mo hope of acquiring tho languagesthemselves in the short time they remain at school. At best they “got into CiEsar ” ; they worry through Book 1 of the Gallic Wars with a steady attention to tho ablative absolute and a watchful eye on the pitfalls of _ o-ratio obliqua. They can never hope in two years to understand, still lees to appreciate either the beauty of the style or tho greatness of the man- But no ' grammatical difficulties need stand between them and tho full and' keen enjoyment of “Twelfth Night” or the “Idylls of the King,” of “Westward Fo” or tho “Essays of Elia.” Given

a teacher with a love for literature and some degree of cultivation, ho can do educational work far higher in character and far more fruitful in result hy reading and. discussing with his class some masterpiece of literature in their mother tongue than by pounding through the rudiments of French or Latin, grammar with pupils who will never have the opportunity of bringing either language up to the “paying point.”