EVILS OF CRAMMING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20638, 9 February 1929, Page 4

EVILS OF CRAMMING.

. SCHOOLBOYS AND EXAMINATIONS. HARROW HEADMASTER’S VIEWS. Outspoken comments on the evils of cramming for school examinations were made by Dr Cyril Norwood, headmaatr of Harrow, addressing a conference of headmasters at Tonbridge recently (says the London Daily Telegraph). Mr F. Fletcher (Charterhouse) moved resolutions that: 1. “ The examination ought never to he competitive.” 2. “It was not to be .treated as a final and decisive test cutting off withopportunity of reconsideration any boys who failed to. get a certain proportion' of marks; and 3. “ The sole object of the entrance test was to ensure thia.l hoys admitted were reasonably likely to be able to do the work, benefit by the education of the schools, and he placed in a suitable form.” Dr Norwood said that he gave only cold support to the resolutions, as they in no way offered any way out of their difficulties. “ The standard of • the examination,” he said, “is generally agreed to be as low as it can be. ■ I am confident that I could take a class at an elementary school of hoys up to 12} years and teach them to pass the A or qualifying parts of the papers in 12 months. “ I have yet to hear any evidence that tbe_ examination is really competitive. It is a very easy- examination, and not regarded as final. If you reject a certain number of boys nothing will prevent it being said that a school as a matter of fact makes an examination competitive. I feel strongly about it, because it has been commonly said I have made the examination competitive.

_“I have never made it competitive. When at Marlborough I was faced with the alternative of making the examination competitive or breaking faith with parents to whom places had been promised for their sons.

“I do not hesitate to repeat the statement I have made that the examinaion has led to cramming boys. I have seen every year a certain number of boys coming to my school who have been made unfit to. profit by ordinary methods of class instruction. “ The foundations have been badly laid, and boys have been hurried on to advanced work, with the result that they are in a mental muddle.

•" \ hav . e read in a preparatory school circular that the-subjects for the greater part of the examination curriculum are such that cramming is .not even possible. We may have different beliefs as to what cramming is. To my mind, it means pushing further food into a person before the previous food is properly digested. r

“Cramming establishments do exist and are .growing. They take boys from the preparatory schools to get them through the common entrance examinations.

DESTROYING INTEREST. “ I do not want to destroy the preparatory schools, but I do not want them to watch the process of education. I believe that no child ought to be examined by Lis tutors till he reaches the age of The Present process of making a emlds future depend on an examination of this character is one - which does tend to destroy interest and kill in a child the desire to know. “I believe a better way would be to abolish the examinations and trust the preparatory schools, and offer them a partnership in the education of the boys. There must be a constructive policy between the public schools and the preparatory schools, Wc must throw, off the examination obsession which is getting more and more of a hold on our education. (Cheers.) I have strong hopes that the examination will be abolished in the not distant future.”

Mr W. W. Vaughan (Rugby) said that the real difficulty was not' the common entrance examination, but that teachers in the preparatory schools -were weak. The examination did do something to improve teaching ■in the schools. It was better that a boy should learn something, even if he was to be examined on it, than to learn nothing at all. There was a real danger of a boy learning nothing at all with a bad teacher. Mr Fletcher said that whatever entrance test they, might apply their object was not to make their schools select and exclusive, but- to open them as widely as they could to all boys who had the necessary educational qualifications. The resolutions'were carried without opposition, a number of delegates abstaining from voting.