"LAMENTABLE IGNORANCE."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 17, 13 February 1909, Page 3

"LAMENTABLE IGNORANCE."

The Army Qualifying Board has, according to the ''Broad Arrow," some very sharp criticisms to make of the work of the .120 eatmidatCH in September. 'Extracts from the report are as follows : English essays , . . mediocre-. Dictation . . . uneven ; some of the candidates made the most grotesque mistakes both in orthography and in punctuation. The precise writing was in most cases unequivocally had. The vital defects were recklessness in mistatement and an apparent inability of tire writers tn road a simple, narration with any degree of care and intelligence. il'uch of tile arithmetic was very unsatisfactory. The results of the examination in geometry wore very poor Indeed. There is stil) an unduly large proportion of candidates who know practically nothing of geography. On the whole, th-'noality «f the work in chemistry was ■:'■■! inctly poor. A lamentable, igm.ranco of sound elementary knowledge of French was shown. Of the ten candidates offering German not. one was really good, and some were verv bad. Only a small proportion of the candidates in Latin arc safe from making blunders of the most elementary description. Tho one candidate in Greek sent up half a dozen words of no value.

Of 320 candidates only H 3 passed,