TOO MUCH CRAMMING

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 350, 10 May 1928, Page 13

TOO MUCH CRAMMING

EDUCATIONIST TALKS ON EXAMINATIONS NATION FULL OF BOOKLEARNING (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. | The position examinations occupied in the Xite of the schoolboy, and the indirect effect they had on the national life, were referred to by Mr. j A. W. Short, 8.A., of Auckland, at the Secondary Schools Assistants’ Confer- , ence to-day. Mr. Short blamed the public to a j large extent for the cramming that j took place for examinations, because ; it judged a school largely on its examination results. Accrediting was j spoken of for matriculation How j much value would be attached to the | certificate denoting that the pupil was j considered fit to be granted matricu-; lation without examination? The pub- ; lie needed educating up to such a j system. There were, however, a lower j leaving certificate and a higher leaving j certificate already in use. He did not j think those certificates carried their j full weight as such, simply because j they did not denote a pass in an ex- j animation. A bank manager of some j repute refused employment to a boy who had been granted a free place on j recommendation, but accepted one who ; had not ben recommended, but who had managed to scrape through the | examination afterwards. He did not consider that the exam- ; ination system was wholly to be condemned, but he thought the type of question set was usually along the wrong lines. The paper demanded committing to memory what others had written, and reproducing the facts on paper in the examination room. That constituted a never ceasing tax on the memory, often at the expense of the philosophy of the subject. There was too much inducement to acquire second-hand information, and not enough training in applying the principles underlying the things learnt, with the result that when difficulties arose it was too often a question of what a book of reference said, not | what we ourselves thought. It was frequently said that a nation’s prosperity depended upon the I extent of industrial peace that existed inside its borders. We had in the universities highly-trained teachers in economics, men who, if book learning counted for anything, ought to knowall theories to be known about their subject. But what happened when industrial troubles arose? Did we see a professor presiding over the Commission that was set up? It was only lately that his opinion had been sought at all. Mr. Short concluded: “Is there not a danger that we teachers, the tutors of the rising generation, are liable to err in the same direction? Shall we not train a nation chock-full of booklearning, but robbed of its initiative? If this is so, it is doubtful whether under such circumstances we are going to produce the men who will, in the future, keep us in the front rank of the nations in what has become an ever-increasing struggle for world supremacy.”