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Hokitika Guardian, 22 December 1933, Page 4

In a recent London address Dr W. W. Vaughan said that time after time it was said that the greatest fog to true education wag the examination system, That was nonsense • We might admit that it was not perfect, and still consider that- examinations were dangerous masters an’d necessary servants of education, Apart from the very real help they gave in providing signposts for the learner on his way, they had a knack of finding out the idler, the trifler. the skimmer over the surface. Some teachers did not like them, for with almost uncanny power they exposed the lazy teacher who tended to talk himself and not to teach. Some learners did not like them, for they discouraged deliberate idleness and withheld their best rewards from that most subtle form of sluggard who liked to learn by heart- and shirked the labour of understanding. Examinations told the teacher where he had been misunderstood; they told the wise employer something but not everything about the candidate available; they had saved the State from the old evils of patronage and favouritism; they pricked a-good many bubble reputations, even if they could not claim to - assess the inscrutable elements of human success and human greatness. That they had hitherto failed to do this we should be for ever gratefull The qualities of imagination, of judgment, of self- expression, of rapid decision, of taste, of tenacity,' defied all human scales. Sneaking on the same subject, Dr Cyril Norwood said: “Examinations are necessary and good in their place, if examinations are good. I suggest that examinations are not quite so good as they seem, and perhaps exaggerated value is attached to those examinations.”