THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1930. THE USES OF EXAMINATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20716, 8 November 1930, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1930. THE USES OF EXAMINATIONS.

The close of the university year brings with it, as a rule, protests against examinations. Their vehemence is waning. They tend to become tilts at abuses of the system rather than a steady campaign against the system itself. Even staunch defenders of examinations in general can agree that some methods followed in them are capable of amendment, and the opponents of the system have been fain to cite such admissions as supporting their case. In reality, little more has been achieved by the critics than the proof that examinations, like every other human institution, are exposed* to the peril of misuse in incompetent hands and can be made increasingly efficient by wise improvement, There is consequently less urging that they should be utterly abolished and more reasonable inquiry into means to make them serve the best ends. What has given pause to the root-and branch antagonists of the system is the discovery that no practicable substitute has yet been suggested. Pleas for accrediting in lieu of examinations are not now made with any earnestness by those qualified to be heard, for they have been constrained to admit that some form of periodic, graduated test is essential to accrediting properly understood and effectively practised. Indeed, all that is cogent in the advocacy of accrediting grants that upon which believers in examinations insist—that they are an indispensable element in all tests of educational status and progress. It is immaterial whether accrediting be regarded as part of an examination system or examinations as part of an accrediting system: in the end, examinations are admitted to a permanent place. '* So far as England is concerned," a Times pronouncement said some months ago, "examinations are here to stay;" and tho dictum applies to other countries with equal certainty. It will be found that most of the criticism levelled at the examination system applies to particular applications of it, and does not, even in tho aggregate, amount to -a general indictment of the system. Examinations place, it is said, an improper and baneful emphasis on the value of " results" in education. The argument is specious. In so far as decrying of so-called " results" is warranted, the charge is one to be laid against false views of education, not against any particular examination system produced by those harmful views. Tho word " results," used in this argument, is a question-begging epithet. It is assumed, with sufficient or insufficient reason, that the " results" are not such as should be sought, and the examinations are blamed for producing them. But results, in any warrantable sense, are surely to be sought, and to test their production in good teaching is as necessary as an audit in the case of accounts or a test of stresses in a ropewalk or steelworks. How is the process to be judged otherwise? What true opinion of the human product can be got without some such test, in the school or university 1 ? It is of no uso to wait until the experience of after-life is applied, for the. very purpose of education is to try to make the scholar efficient in that experience, and there is need to know beforehand whether the preparatory process gives promise of imparting ability to do well in that experience. The examination is not the final test, but it is an indispensable interim one. As the choice is really between examinations and no test at all, to dispense with them would leave teaching without a guide. It is known that some pupils do themselves less justice than others in examination tests, written or oral. What is 'vaguely called temperament is held to account for this. This fact may operate prejudicially against some and for others, and may entail a measure of injustice—if allowance be not made, as it can be made now that examinations have ceased to be the haphazard and unscientific tests they once were. But, rightly conducted, an examination serves well to disclose differences of temperament. It can at least help toward the discovery of temperamental ability or disability to grapple with the demands to be met in later practical experience, and in a very real sense it is a moral as well 4 as a mental, test. An examination is not unlike life; it. is essentially like life. To the once-pre-valent objection that it puts a promium on good memory and a fluent tongue or pen, it is enough to answer that these things are valuable in life . and a stimulus in acquiring them is salutary, not negligible. Even tho ability to learn quickly under pressure—not necessarily to forget as soon as possible—is an asset, a point that the careless in-

dictmetib of examinations as productive of " cramming" is apt to overlook. Nothing is more firmly established by experience of education than the infiuenc'e of anticipated examinations in promoting honest and hard work. What is often laid at the door of the examination system belongs to a day when written tests were badly conducted and auxiliary tests were not employed. Even if this criticism be riot wholly out of date, what it means now i« that somfe examinations are not yet conducted as modern pedagogy shows they ought to bo and can be. So long as education is wisely directed to fit for life, and examinations arc so managed as to provide adequate and reliable tests of the process, there need be little fear of their failing to fulfil a very useful purpose.