CRITICAL COMMENT

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 153, 16 July 1937, Page 5

CRITICAL COMMENT

-Presa AMOoietioa.)

Faults of the Examinatipn System , NEW ZEALAND SCHOOLS

(By Telegraph-

AUCKLAND, Last Night, Condemnatory comment on some aspeota. of the New Zealand Education system was passed by Professor F, W, Hart, professor o„ Education at the University of California, jn an interview. "The examination system in ^New Zealand I believe to he a menace to the education, health and happiness Jf the child, a menace to adequate and proper teaching and a barrier to the development of a modefrn programme of education," said Professor Hart. "A uniform examination system imposea and assumes a unifprm curriculum, formal in its content and rigid in its placement. It is not subject to tbe variations. necessary if individual differenees in ohildren are to be recboned with.- • * "The assumption in » formsl examination system is that all ohildren ara of equal ability, and, if driven hard enough and long enough, will be able to master the same subject matter to the point of passing an examination. Nature has not endowed us with like interests and like abilities, and a school system that is to serve the chjld must provide a differentiated programme, the differentiation beginning at the point where the iools of education, reading, writing and arithmetic, are mastered. That means that a secondary school child should b© abl© to choose between , a number of courses leading to a different educational and vopational outiook." Professor Hart held that no teacher could do justice to a chiid under his charge if success was to be reckoned iu terms of success in examinations. Speaking of the inspeetorate, Professor Hart made it clear that ho condemned the system, not the individuals. Those men, he said, had to do what no man, however well trained, could possibly do — to rank teachers on the basis of teaching ability from one to 200 or 300. ___________