EXAMINATIONS DEFENDED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 12, 15 January 1932, Page 5

EXAMINATIONS DEFENDED

BETTER THAN “GRAFT.” CHANCELLOR’S OPINION. DUNEDIN, January 13. Defending scholarships and competitive examinations, the Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, Professor J. Macmillan Brown, remarked during the course of his address to the Senate to-day: “Most educationists agree that the Vest form to give competition in human societies is a well-organised, well managed system of scholarships, which selects in each stage the talents that will most profit in the next stage. And the only wholesome system of scholarships is that based on examination “I can recall the system prevalent in the {Scottish universities when I first entered them; it was one of patronage; most of the scholarships were in the gift of noblemen or niyi high up in society, and they as a rule left it tu their factors or agents, and a youth could get a scholarship only through backstairs influence. By the time left to come out to New Zealand, the process of transferring was well under way. The rebellion against patronage in parliamentary elections had begun in 1832 with the Reform Bill, and it had gone far to purify elections and raise them to a true democratic level. It was this process that made the change from patronage as the method of the scholarship system to examination inevitable. Had it not been for the deep root that democracy had taken in the religion and schools of Scotland, class-conscious-ness, encouraged by this patronage system of granting scholarships, would have become rampant in its universities. A feeble shadow of it almost fell on .American education m the accrediting system and threatened our own university a year or two ago; and I hope that that danger has finally vanished. Examination has its disadvantages and dangers; but it is the nearest we can come to impersonal decision and avoidance of that backstairs influence which is the chief source of corruption and ‘ graft. ’ But examination must be made progressive, getting slightly stricter every year, or at least higher in stand-