NEW ZEALAND UNIVERSITY AND ITS EXAMINATIONS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4151, 10 July 1874, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND UNIVERSITY AND ITS EXAMINATIONS.

TO THE EDITOI!. Sin, —This University is very unbusinesslike in its management. Last year it made its necessary announcement of subjects and text books for the Scholarship Examination only in the New Zealand Gazette. This is utterly insufficient for general purposes. At least there should bo a short intimation in tho principal newspapers that the list of subjects, &c.,had been prepared and published in the Gazette, or could ho obtained, on application, from the Registrar. This year no list has been published—at least, I have looked in your journal, and ns often as convenient, in the New Zealand Gazette, and have found none. The time is slipping away and very little can be allowed to get from Melbourne a sufficient number of the text books to supply classes. Tho authorities of tho New Zealand University no doubt are occupied very much with tho consideration of how their University Bill will get on ; but should the whole of the higher education of the Colony be interrupted by .their partial in-

capacity ? Neither is it judicious to obstruct by delay tho general movement towards a Colonial system of the higher education which has just been started. Mathematics is such a logical and well-set subject that few could go astray iu setting questions. Look, however, at the questions set; and, though the intelligence of the student is fairly tested, he will require a large amount of wooden-headeduess iu strange combination with intellectual power if he work through the long processes of all the questions set within the prescribed time. Slow scholars, however thorough and profound they may be, have no chailio.

Look at history and English language—l am only taking those subjects on which I can speak from an intimate knowledge. Xu the fii’st place, the announcement was so badly worded that it seemed as if the student —in history—had to take up, in addition to the general history of the period, Hallam’s Literature, Bryce s Holy Eoman Empire, and Creasy’s English Constitution. Ido not know what Hallam’s Literature was prescribed for ; but, in the questions put, there was not one on literature or any literary character. In English Language, Trench’s “English, Past and Present,” was prescribed—a handy book that could be well mastered by a youth—but of the eleven questions set, only one could be at all answered by a study of tho text-book ; and of the thirteen words, the meaning and derivation of which were asked by the question, only one word—tarre —could be answered by a reference to the textbook, so that a study of Trench’s “English, Past and Present,” would only enable a student to answer one-thirteenth of a question. Compare the following announcement in the Melbourne University Calendar, with one iu the New Zealand University Calender : “History op the British Empire.—Hallorn* s Constitutional History, chapters 11, 12, and 16; Macaulay’s History of England, chapters 1 to 11, 14, 15, and 18 to 25; Massey’s History of England, chapters 1 to 13, 15, 16, 18, 22, 24, 26 to 32.” —I am, &c., Saxon.