THEN AND NOW

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 847, 16 December 1929, Page 8

THEN AND NOW

Sir.— Like your correspondent C. S. Allen I wonder what all this noise about stiff matriculation papers is about. In recent years it has become fashionable for parents and candidates to raise the dust when a difficult paper has been set in the matric. tests. Apparently the shoutings are intended to influence the examiners when the papers are being marked. The tendency seems to be toward the creation of a new scholar who, like a peevish child, whines when faced with questions put

in disguised form or so constructed as to appear beyond the understanding of the product of the modern secondary school. The trouble is that matriculation is regarded too cheaply by the scholar and held in too pious a veneration by the parent. It is many a year since I got my matric., and although I left scholarship at that stage I cannot but help feeling that this year’s papers as a whole had not advanced in difficulty in comparison ■with those of a decade ago. I agree with C. S. Allen that many of New Zealand’s cleverest brains have not known anything higher than the sixth standard, but I will not go the -whole way with him, and Mr. Harold Schmidt, in their contention that non-matriculated boys are the brightest. No man is the poorer for a secondary education, though such learning is not essential to business and professional distinction. NO MORE SQUEAL.