Examinations Condemned

Hokitika Guardian, 29 March 1922, Page 4

Examinations Condemned

MEDICAL OPINION IN AUSTRALIA. SYDNEY, March 1(5. An attack on wliat it describes as the “examination craze” has been launched by the “Australian Medical Journal,” the official organ ol the profession. It points out that the examination was introduced into the education system as a ready means of determining the degree of knowledge possessed by a,candidate. Originally these tests were limited to those who sought admission to official positions. The expedient of requiring students to write answers to a series of printed questions in a specified time, extended as the scope of science and philology became enlarged. Prizes were given to boys and girls who exhibited an unusual ability to reply to questions either in a written or in a spoken examination. The system gradually insinuated itself into the education system so firmly that the main object of education became tempered by the need to prepare for these uecurring stock-takings. “At school and in the university,” says the “Journal,” “the system has grown into a craze. The young are required to prepare themsehes for a long series of examinations, not for the acquisition of knowledge nor for the sharpening of the spirit of enquiry and criticism. The school hoy or girl is being trained to-day to pass examinations by a. feverish but superficial study of a particular subject. Skill is required in the display of intelligence: the crammed knowledge does not and cannot find a permanent hold in the minds of the examinee. Moreover, the most useful factor in school education —the learning how to learn—is lost. Children learn only how to face an examination paper and the examiner. The same applies to a gUeat extent to our universities. An artificial value is placed on the so-called brilliant student, who in reality has missed his oilier intellectual gifts in the process o'' cramming. The result of an examination cannot be taken as the measure of intellectual ability and of acquired knowledge. The element of chance enters largely, because, unless the teachers indicate openly or covertly the questions to be asked, the result may depend on the recent reading of the candidate. The old apprenticeship was a better system, for it guaranteed to the student individual teaching, and repeated correction 1111 til skill and knowledge were acquired. Our medical schools are at the threshold of a revolution. Many of the old methods havte outlived their usefulness. The increasing numbers of subjects to he mastered, the ever-changing dogma, the entire alteration of the outlook of tWe function of the medical practitioner in his relations to the public, have indicated within recent times that the reform is due. The reactionary spirit of many of the leaders of medical (education will not avail to postpone the change for long.