MATRICULATION EXAMINATION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 772, 17 December 1886, Page 17

MATRICULATION EXAMINATION.

TO THIS EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL.

Sib, —The Rev J. C. Andrew, Examiner in Latin to the New Zealand University, is distinguished both as a divine, a "scholar, and a humorist. The paper set by him in Latin for candidates at the recent matriculation examination is such a curiosity in its way that I think it must either have been drawn up by him in one of his funny moods, or possibly he ha 3 been so much exercised with thoughts of scab or rabbits or bumble bees, that he has temporarily forgotten what kind and what extent of knowledge of the Latin language it is fair to demand from boys and girls of 16. Let any fairminded person compare the paper set by him with the papers set in previous years, or with the matriculation paper of other. Universities, and he will at once see the unreasonableness —not to speak of the worthlessness—of such a test as this paper furnishes. I have seen the woeful looks of some of the candidates in whom I am interested, and I have heard their pitiful tales. The only comfort that I could minister to them was to assure them that there was trouble in store for the examiner himself ; as I feel sure that this gentleman is condemned to wade through as much rubbish during the next month, in the shape of bad answers to his curious questions, as any single individual in New Zealand.—l am, &c.,

10 th December.

W. H. West.

TO THE THE EDITOR OP NEW ZEALAND MAIL.

Sib, —I must beg a few lines of your valuable paper to add my protest against the language papers set by the Rev T. C. Andrew, M.A., in the present matriculation examination. Mr West has ably written on the subject of the Latin paper, but I think Mr Andrew fairly surpassed himself in his Greek farce of Friday last, for one would hardly ever come across a more senseless, testless, and badly planned paper. It was impossible to get good marks in such a paper as that was, for it was both short and hard. Mr Andrew may be a very clever man—let us hope he is !—but how much better it would be if he reserved his cleverness for a fitter occasion 1 I will now record a remark I heard a few days ago about this very matter. A lady said to me that she thought it was high time that men should be found who tried by the papers they set to find out what the students knew, instead of parading their own scholarship. Was ever a case more to the point? I can only wish Mr Andrew joy of the correcting of the papers, and subscribe myself one of the victims. —I am, &c.,

L. Duroe, Wellington, December 11th.