ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND PROVINCIAL SCHOLARSHIPS.

Evening Star, Issue 3545, 3 July 1874, Page 3

ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND PROVINCIAL SCHOLARSHIPS.

No. 1. To the Editor

Sir, —I stated in my former letter on English Giammar that many of 'he questions in the Crammar paper set to the comnetitora for Provincial Ncholarships were quite unsuitable, not to say absurd. 1 think \ shall be able to prove to the satisfaction of most of your readers who take any interest in the subject that this was the case. The time allowed for answering the questions was two hours. The candidates were on an average, I suppose, between fourteen and fi Eteen years of age, sixteen being the maximum age allowed. The paper consisted of nine questions, which, taking the subdivisions of each question into account, required altogether about fifty answers. Now, two hours would ao doubt be long enough to write down fifty answers in, provided they were short and required but little thinking But it would be unreasonable to expect boys and girls, especially the latter, of fourteen or fifteen years of age, to be able to sit down in an examination room, in the presence of strange examiners, and dash off answers to fifty questions with the self-possession and rapidity of adepts. Indeed, I have heard that a good many of the girls were unable, from sheer nervousness, to put pen to paper for some time after the questions were placed before them. But the questions in the paper referred to, or rather the proper answers to them, are not by any means short, and require moreover, a great deal of thinking It is a pity that it should not be published in full, so teat people interested in the matter might s< e and judge for themselves Strangely enough, the ■ aper, while calculated to display the learning and ingenuity of the examiners to great advantage, seems to be admirably adapted to discover, not bow much the competitors knew, but how much they did not know. I believe the late Prime Minister of England, or the learned and accomplished Chancellor of our own University, would narrowly escape plucking if they had to make seventy per cent, of that paper in two hours. It is a noticeable fact that the examiners, seeming to forget that it was raw boys and girls, and not cultivated men and wom n they had to deal With, use such terms as *• par.-e fully,*' “explain clearly,” “explain exactly.” Surely it is not necessary to inform the examiners that fulness and exactness are the products of extensive reading, careful thought, and much writing, and consequently quite beyond the reach of boys and girls. As i ; would ti'ke up too much of your space to point out all the difficulty of the paper, 1 shall select a few only, and confine my attention chiefly to them. It appears to me that the only questions the great bulk of the candidates could be fairly expected to answer with anything like the fulness and precision evidently required by the examiners are the third and sixth, and portions of the first and second. And especially does it seem a monstrous thing to expect girls even of six teen years of age and the majority, i understand, were much younger—who are not supposed to know anything about Latin or Greek, to “make a list of all the words of classical origin ” in sixteen lines of poetr>, from “ Martin’s Translation of Faust,” containing no less than 110 words. If this sort, of knowledge is expected from girls at awed sixteen, in addition to all the other accuni plishments looked for at that age by learned mammas and t eleha in search of a wife, heaven help us in the matter of button- and dinners, for girls will have no time to learn anything of that kind. To say nothing of the portions of questions one and two. above referred to, 1 believe I am not doing any injustice or saying anything disparaging to a very intelligent cla.-s of men, when 1 assert that it would task the utmost energies of at least one-hal/ of the teaciiers of (>tago to give full and precise or “exact” answers to questions four, live, seven, eieht, and nine.

But lest 1 trespass too much on your space, and weary your readers, I will continue the subject in future letters. T am, Ac , Paterfamilias. Dunedin, July 1, 1874.