That Rigid “Matric.”!

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 947, 14 April 1930, Page 8

That Rigid “Matric.”!

PLEA FOR ELASTICITY (Written for THE SUN ly the REV. E. MOWBRAY-FINNIS.) WITH some of the best brains on the senatus of our universities, it is not a little disappointing to find that that august body still insists in making certain subjects compulsory to a pass in the matriculation. The result is that they bar out from the higher education some of our most promising young men and women. It is long past time that the subjects for the pass were made more elastic. We do not cut the promising batsman out of the team because he cannot bowl!

CARLYLE truly said: “That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were It to happen more than twenty times in a minute, as by some computations it does.” NOT A SATISFACTORY TEST The word matriculation is derived from the Latin word “matricula,” meaning a public register. The matriculation is not only the way of entrance to the higher education, but the front door into almost every department of public service. This being so makes it very hard for the boy who is ploughed time after time in that one compulsory subject, which is worse than a- foreign language to him, and for which he has no responding capacity. The fact is that the value of the matriculation as a test of a boy or girl’s worth is greatly exaggerated nowadays. Could we know by what strange circumstances a man’s genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid. The fact is that mental science has shown conclusively that a man may be a genius in one faculty, and a perfect fool in another. This was never more so than in this day of specialisation. To make then, for example, mathematics, a compulsory subject for all those who would enter the sacred halls of learning, and to make that paper more difficult each year, simplv defeats the object of the test. And the most convincing proof of this is that many of those who have failed in this or some other impossible subject have subsequently become some of our greatest thinkers and leaders. The man who may be a genius in designing a bridge may never be able to work out on paper the mathematical calculations required for its building. Why debar this man from exercising and developing his gift in the halls of learning, because his brain simply refuses to solve mathematical problems. TEST THE INTELLIGENCE Gladstone said that “the most distinguished professional men bear witness, with an overwhelming authority, in favour of' a course of education in which to train the mind shall be the first object, and to stock It, the second.” The tendency of the matriculation in recent years has been the reverse of this method. The examination does

not give us much information regarding a boy's powers of thought, but simply tests his capacity for memorising facts. Life more than ever demands that we shall test the intelligence and not the storehouse of a boy’s brain. The finest test of any man’s capacity is his knowledge of a good book when he reads one. If he is able to tell you verbally, or on paper, the salient points of a book, the things that matter most —in a word intelligently review a hook, that man Is qualified to sit among the learned. I would make this test the front door to all our universities, and the main entrance to all our professions and business houses. Make the final test degrees in the various faculties as still as you please, but make the entrance examination into our universities so elastic that it will bar out no one who is likely to make any considerable contribution to the world’s adornment. A UNIVERSITY FOR ALL We may be thankful that the greatest universities in the world—our lib-raries—-require no test in mathematics, or a dead language before we are allowed to enter Into their halls. And my advice to the many who have been ploughed in that one impossible subject is; enter this larger university and there develop your gifts. “All that a university or final highest school can do for us is still but what the first school began doing—teach us to read. We learn to read in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, Is the books themselves. It depends on what we read and how we read, after all manner of professors have done the best for us The true university of these days is a collection of books. It will take a very long 1 time to convince and convert that very conservative body of men, the Senatus, that drastic alterations require to be made in the regulations which govern that much-debated examination, but in the meantime, let us remind all those whose responsible duty it is to set the papers for that exam., that examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. St. Heliers.