SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20116, 29 November 1928, Page 15

SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS.

CRITICISMS OF SYSTEM. QUESTION OF "CRAMMING." [from ouu own correspondent.] SYDNEY, \ov. 52. Tho fact that Sydney is in the throes of its annual school examinations, and that a legion of youngsters are burning tho midnight electric light in order to get through, has prompted a leading educationist to ask whether' the examination fetish is not. simply synonymous with cramming, whether examinations actually produce, as they are supposed to do, lha perfect flower of scholarship and of culture, and whether it would not be better simply, and with proper safeguards, to allow school reports on tho work of pupils to bo made tho basis of promotion from the primary to the higher-grade schools. Tho controversy to which this suggested reform has given rise suggests that not a few authorities and also parents are thinking what this authority has the courago to say. His attitude is that true scholarship and culture aro not Avon by cramming, and that all that employers want, when boys and girls go out into the battlo of life, is sorno guarantee that the latter have had a sound education up to l\ specified standard.

This, it is claimed, employers can got more reliably from tho headmaster, who can answer for a boy and his work through close association with both, than from tho examiner, who does not know the boy at all, and must perJorco judge him by what ho does, after much cramming. in a few hours at examination. Tho poini is emphasised, in favour of reform, that any school which, in lieu of the examination system, granted certificates of educational fitness without proper discrimination would quickly be discredit cd.

Apropos of ihe attack on tho examination system, ono of tlio first shots fired by examiners in tho leaving-certificato examination a few days ago was responsible for a tcrriblo "casualty" list, and was given an amusing twist by one of tho newspapers. Tho pupils wero asked to state tlio origin of a certain passage from Shakespere. If, however, the youngsters revealed their lack of knowledge of Shakespere, they were in good company, for the passage in question nonplussed also quite a number of prominent citizens to whom tho question was P u *> and who, because of their pr«fessionn status, are supposed to have more t an a inerc Shakesperean smattering. Only one, the Director of Education, Air. Smith, definitely answered th V"vS Everyone else either stammenngly tnaded it or' frankly admitted that they did not know Among tho latter was the captain of °thc EngiiS cricket team, Chapman who is a Cambridge man. Its got mo stumned " he «id. "I ought to know it, T 1 was m ; Ptlv good on Shakespere. Pei'ltaps tiie examiners will now let the tracts from, say, Erasmus C olloquies.