AIM OF EDUCATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 246, 15 September 1936, Page 5

AIM OF EDUCATION

EXAMINATION FETISH. OUTSPOKEN MINISTER. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Sept. 14. “One reform which should have the support of all sensible educators is the abolition of the proficiency examination,” said the Minister of Education (lion. P. Eraser), speaking at the Parnell school to-day. “We should insist that education in its widest sense shall have full scope and that children should not merely be hurried on through the year to pass an examination. “Internal examinations are useful a.s a guide to teachers upon how best to help the child, but we do not want them to exercise tyranny. Children should not be stuffed with information as their mothers stuff chickens for the table. The Government’s ideal is to give the child a chance from the kindergarten, for which we are planning extensions, onward to become fully educated. We do not want to place a hurdle which will deny or postpone the post-primary education of any child. It should be allowed to go on naturally to secondary, technical, or any other form of education as the case may be. This is a matter for serious consideration by college councils and the University Senate. Those pupils who feel that it is their function in life to go on to the University must have an opportunity to do so. The matriculation examination is on trial to-day. It is an undoubted fact that very few matriculated students actually enter the University. The examination has become not a test for University education, but a standard of commercial efficiency.” Addressing himself to Mr T. U. Wells, president of the Auckland University College and chairman of the Auckland Education Board, who was present, Mr Eraser continued: “Apparently matriculation is a way of getting some revenue sub rosa for the colleges, so that we have to deal with a vested interest. The colleges will need to find some means of getitng the revenue without it.”

The Minister added that there was too much tendency at present on the part of educationists to declare that their particular branch was the ■ Cinderella of the education system, anu this applied particularly to the University. It was not a help-fill approach and was contrary to the idea of education as a continuous whole. The question was not what share each branch of education should be given but what were its actual requirements. “There is nothing of which I will take less notice than arguments in the Cinderella strain,” added the Minister, “or references to how much is spent in Britain. The sooner documents containing that sort of thing are burned the better. The question m how much is required to p.ace University education and the Auckland University College on a proper footing, and how much is available.”