EXAMINATIONS AND PRIZES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18586, 19 December 1923, Page 10

EXAMINATIONS AND PRIZES.

Examinations as a test of efficiency and prizes as the reward of diligence, progress, or ability are both targets for attack Vby the modernist in s education. Therefore when the Governor-General appears, as he did yesterday, an avowed champion of both, he runs clear athwart the course of many pedagogic experts; but his frank de-, claration will be welcomed by very many other people who wonder whether the modern educationist, emulating the " economic man "■ of the .economist, does not shape his theories to fit a " scholastic schoolboy " who has no real human form. This being the season of . • prizegivings, when the schoolmaster reaches the public in a manner not possible at any other time of the year, it is certain that the annual assaults upon methods once regarded 1 as unalterable will be duly made. Examinations and prizes, but especially the first-named, will surely suffer, the indictment read against them so frequently of late years. It may be that when the present period of educational transition is ended, and 'a state of stability is Reached, both will have been totally eliminated from the scho , "' , It will still be possible, defying the scientists in pedagogy and following the Governor-General, to believe the result will not bring unmixed 'blessings. Allowing the professional teacher the fight to pronounce authoritatively on education, it is permissible at the same time to submit his arguments to analysis in the light of common sense and common experience. From ,that aspect it is frequently apparent that what are delivered as attacks on the examination system and on the awarding of prises are really directed against the abuses possible in both institutions. . Because examination teats have often been made a fetish, and because the j prize-system has sometimes been overdone, it does not necessarily follow that neither has any legitimate function. What that function should be was " stated by Lord Jellicoe—to stimulate competition, or in other words to provide a tangible objective. £ The modern theorist often maintains that learning for its own sake should provide a sufficient incentive, without extraneous aids. Perhaps it should, but the schools are filled with very human boys and -girls who do not always see so far, nor reason so de-tachedly,-as earnest seniors forgetful of their own youth. A compromise should be possible in which the abuse of these two institutions is made impossible, arid ■'; the good features discovered in them by the Governor-General preserved. . j