EDUCATIONAL NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15272, 23 June 1923, Page 11 (Supplement)

EDUCATIONAL NOTES.

TRAINING OF TEACHERS. (By “Dominie.”) In the annual report of the work of the Wellington Training College, Prefessor J. S. Tennant, the ex-prin-cipal states: —“For several years the proportion of students appointed to assistantships in large schools 1 has steadily decreased, while the number of pupil-teachers and probationers entering the college has increased. The result is that our ideal of a postcollege probationership appears to be further off than ever. I quite admit that the preparatory year or two years of teaching experience has certain advantages, but notwithstanding these, we are convinced that (1) the average pupil-teacher at a very critical period of his life acquires loose and irregular habits of study: (2) his practice in teaching howeyer carefully supervised (of noocss'fy it is often not supervised at all). ,c entirely emperic, and, having no foundation in principle, becomes merely learning “the tricks of the trade." I further question either the fairness or the expediency of asking a busy teacher to undertake such double training. The post-college probationership obviates both those disadvantages, and would give what might practically be a third effective year of training, all students on leaving the college to become probationary teachers in selected schools for one or two years. The present two years of preliminary apprenticeship could well be spent under expert direction at a secondary school, as is done in several of the Australian “I have discussed this matter on many occasions with the staff (both of the college and the normal schools), and while opinions are divided on matters of detail, It is generally acknowledged that: (1) By the second year there is practically no difference in the teaching capacity shown by A and B students; (2) the B students are generally the more enthusiastic about their professional work; (3) the average B student has a more substantial scholarship; (4) no serious falling off in the quality of entrants would follow the complete of the pupil-teacher.” EDUCATION AND EXAMINATIONS. In his address to the meeting of the Secondary Schools’ Association the President, Mr Cresswell, made a vigorous attack upon the “examination fetish," and the Association carried a resolution asking for the replacement of the matriculation test by a system of accrediting. There is nothing now in this fresh assault upon the existing methods of measuring the products of school teaching; the hostility of teachers to a system which is in many ways injurious to the progress of education is of long standing, says the Christchurch Press. The purpose of the matriculation examination is to ensure that only those may commence a course of University studies who are fit to do so. On the whole this purpose is achieved at the cost of turning away some who would profit more from University teaching, as individuals and as members of society, than many who go in flying. Want of cramming of the most effective kind, lack of a certain peculiar aptitude for flooring or appearing to floor the examination papers, sheer bad luck, eccentricity or caprice in the examiner—these are advanced as explanations of the failure of many candidates to pass the examination. It man be doubted whether such cases are really so numerous as one might infer from the very vigorous attacks made upon the existing system. There is no evidence that they are numerous enough to make it appear desirable that the examination should be dispensed with. Much more serious is the claim that the work of the schools is given a wrong bias by the necessity for training scholars to pass the matriculation test. Mr Cresswell complained that it wastes time — 5 per cent, of the school year—and throws the schools out of gear for the latter part of the last term; that it imposes too rigid a curriculum on schools; that it emphasises certain subjects unduly and pushes others into the background; and that it tests and stimulates only one part of the teacher’s craft, “and that the less dignified and less worthy part.” Now, although a teacher attacking the, examination system is sometimes only a teacher rebelling against the restrictions upon his freedom to carry out his own personal theories, Mr Cresswell’s indictment of the tyranny of examinations is quite obviously a much more serious tiling than that. A solution of the difficulty—the difficulty of applying external tests without robbing the work of teaching of light and freedom —might be found in the reform of the principles of examination. Most teachers, we should say, would agree that an examiner could set a paper which would be a searching test, and which would give no advantage to the products .of cramming. Is it the system of examination that is wrong or the methods of examiners? This question, surely an important one, has not been discussed as being probably I lie main question to be answered. For our part, wc see so clearly botti the value of independent external tests and the ill-effects of the existing method of applying such tests that we should not care to choose between the abolition of examinations and the status quo. The matter is of very great importance, since it affects very nearly the whole system of education, and the Government might well consider the appointment of a Commission lo collect evidence and opinions, so that everything that can be said,on the subject by competent persons might be considered as a whole. Casual and scattered controversies will lead nowhere.