INTELLIGENT CANDIDATES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3753, 26 July 1883, Page 4

INTELLIGENT CANDIDATES.

The Inspector-General puts forth an annual jeremiad oA'er the backAvardness and stupidity of canditates for a teacher's certificate in Class E, the loAvest rung of the State School ladder. In his Education Report he generally favors Parliament and the public, with examples of the information wrung from some of these unfortunates under the torture of examination— e.g., that an hypothesis is a machine for draAving up water; that Newton shot the apple off his sou's head; that Achilles avus killed by Hannibal, for Avhich the eyes of the latter Avere put out by Queen Ophthalmia, kc, _c. The effect of these revelations year after year has been to represent the Noav Zealaud pupil teacher as a prodigy of imbecility. You gathered from the tone of the Inspector-General's complainings that nothing quite so bad bad ever been discovered elscAvbere. Nor is it consolatory to knoAV that such is not tho case. Ncav Zealand holds no bad pre-eminence in ignorance. An official in the State schools of South Africa describes results quite as distressing as anything recorded hero. Precisely similar complaints, moreover, come from America. Iv Adams County, Illinois, an examination is reported of "teachers holding first-grade certificates." A local paper gives the folloAving result: — One teacher named as three living American poets —Shakespeare, Byron, and LongfcllOAV. Ono teacher thought Shakespeare Avas dead; thought he died in Indiana about tAventy years ago. Another.said " Pilgrim's Progress " Avas Avritten by Longfellow. Another said "Uncle Tom's Cabin " AA-as written by Byron. Another thought a bicycle Avas a musical instrument. Another did not knoAV Avhat a telephone AVUS. Another thought thai Frelinghuysen was a machine. Several had not heard of the Vienna or United States floods, or of the Star route trial. Most of them are men teachers, and these are only part of the ansAvers. After all it is nothing surprising* to find that all over the Avorld the junior members of any gh-en profession are imperfectly educated. Unfledged hiAvyers, doctors, and clergymen would probably cut quite as poor a figure as pupil-touchers if an InspectorGeneral examined them annually and published the results.—Ch'is.