EDUCATION IDEALS.

Evening Star, Issue 22445, 16 September 1936, Page 8

EDUCATION IDEALS.

The Hon. P. Fjiasee’s latest statement on education will not lead anybody very far. The Minister would fain abolish the proficiency examination. There is no doubt that examinations are overdone, and that much room exists tor a reduction of their number. But the idea that education can be made the easiest road for every one, irrespective of capacities,

that no tests or “ hurdles ” should bo associated with it, which seems to possess the Minister’s mind, can only be reckoned a delusion. A pupil may saunter in the ways of knowledge and get much advantage from it, but it will not be the advantage of professional or industrial efficiency and a salary which most people seek for in this present age, and such sauntering must have limits if it is to be at the State’s expense. 1 The objection to the proficiency examination has been that it makes a bugbear for children, who may be incapacitated for doing as well as they should do in it by their fears. The answer to that is that without a training in the overcoming of fears there can be no proper training for life, and the remedy for it, when a remedy is needed, lies in supplementing the examination by other means, which will make it less crucial, as is already done. The proficiency examination tends now to give place more and more to accrediting, and the signs are that it will soon be used only in doubtful cases, where, perversely but unavoidably, it must press the hardest. Mr Fraser rems also to contemplate vaguely the abolition of an examination test for the University, since he states that it has been used as a mode of finding revenue for the colleges, and “ the colleges will need to find some means of getting the revenue without it.” The University has co-operated in a plan to deprive itself of revenue by approving the system, now in operation, of school leaving certificates to take the place of matriculation for pupils not intending to go on to higher abodes of The scheme does not fit in with the Minister’s principle, because an examination, at present of the same standard as matriculation, is required for the leaving certificate. It may be easier for some pupils than .he other because a wider range of subjects, including those which are technical or commercial, is included in it. At present it makes rather for an increase than a decrease of examinations, because a great many pupils, not certain that the new hall-mark will possess the full value of the old, are accustomed to sit for both. That may be expected, however, to prove only a first consequence of the innovation. For university entrance, it would appear, a test, such as is afforded most naturally by examination, must always be required if professors are to have a chance with their material. All the evidence is that the test to-day is too easy to make proper advantages for university teaching. Very few matriculated students, nys the Minister, actually enter the University. That is true, and there is no reason why they should go there if the right schools have been provided for them earlier and their talents best fit them to complete their education in the school of life.