SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3899, 4 December 1928, Page 70

SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS.

SYDNEY, November 22.

The fact that Sydney is in the throes of its annual school examinations, and that legion youngsters are burning the midnight electric light in order to get through, has prompted a leading educationist to ask whether the examination fetish is not pimply synonymous with cramming, whether examinations actually produce, as they are supposed to do, the perfect flower of scholarship and of culture, and whether it would not be better simply, and with proper safeguards, to allow school reports on the work of pupils to be made the basis of promotion from the primary to the higher grade schools. The controversy to which this suggested reform has given rise suggests that not a few authorities, and also parents are thinking what this authority h i the courage to say. His attitude is that true scholarship and culture are not won by cramming, and that all that employers want, when boys and girls go out into the battle of life, is some guarantee that the latter have had a sound education up to a specified standard. This, it is claimed, employers can get more reliably from the head master, who can answer for a boy and his work through close association with both, than from the examiner who does not know the boy at all, and must pciforce judge him by what he does, after much cramming, in a few hours at examination. The pt int 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 discredited.

Apropos of the attack on the examination system, one of the st shots fired by the examiners in the Leaving Certificate examination a few days ago was responsible for a terrible “ casualty ” list, and was given an amusing twist by one of the newspapers. The pupils were asked to state the origin of a certain passage from Shakespeare. If, however, the youngsters revealed their lack of knowledge of Shakespeare, they were in good company, for the passage in question. nonplussed also quite a number of prominent citizens to whom the question was put, and who, becadse of their professional status, are supposed to have more than a mere Shakespearean smattering. Only one, the Director of Examination, Mr Smith, definitely answered the question. Everyone else either stammeringly evaded it or frankly admitted that he did not know. Among the latter was the captain of the English cricket team, Chapman, who is a Cambridge man. “ It’s got me stumped,” he said. “ I ought to know it, too. I was pretty good on Shakespeare.” Perhaps the examiners will now let the youngsters down more lightly with extracts from, say Erasmus’s “ CoifoQjiies.”