EXAMINATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 March 1917, Page 2

EXAMINATIONS.

THE REAL AND THE IDEAL. HEAD MASTER SUGGESTS NEW METHODS ''The great public schools of the Empire have stood the tests or U»e war. said tiie head master or Christ's College (Mr G. E. Blanch) recently, "and the value of their moral and physical training has been triumphantly vindicated during the last three years. Those qualities of mind and heart which are quickened and developed in college chap ela and on school playing fields have been displayed to the full, but while the school chapel and the playground have done their work, can we say the same of the classroom? If we are to maintain our position in the world when the war is over, our i schools must possess a high intellectual efficiency; the right subjects must be taught; the best method of teaching must be used, and the earnestness and of the playing fields must ■bo displayed in the classroom. The controlling influence by which this can be effected is examinations, purged of pedantry, freed from the personal idiosyncrasies of the examiners, examinations which cease to lay too much stress on memory and too little on I sound judgement, practical skill and power of research, examinations which aim not so much at tempting individwith prizes and scholarships as to bringing large groups of boys and men to a higher standard. But if examinations are to exercise a controlling influence over the wholo of the education of the ■country, they must be under the direct management of boards appointed for the purpose . The board to supervise school examinations should consist of three classes of persons. (a) Schoolmasters who will prevent the standard from rising through competitions above that suited to the age and capacity of the candidates. (b) University professors. (c) Men of affairs who take an interest in education, but are not professional teachers. Their duty will be to watch againsh the merely academic

and unpractical, and to see that the brains of the young are not clogged by the dry dust of useless, facts. . "Such a board would revise all the questions in examination papers, and ask, in the case of each of them, whether the knowledge required would make a man a bettor citizen; would give him greater power over nature, a better grasp of bis mother tongue more facility in conversing with foreigners. Such a board would strike out questions on rare irregularities in Latin grammet, and mathematical puzzles which nowhere. It would insist on the bredth of view in examination papers. The

■board would adequately remunerate its examiners and would provide laboratories where the practical skill of the candidates could be tested and they would arrange for dictation of conversational tests in modern languages. The board would also utilise existing examinations or provide others to serve as competit ions between schools of the same character. The annual tournament between Wanganui, Wellington and Christ's College and the football match between Christ's College and Boys' High School would find their counterparts on the intellectual side "While making these suggestions I wish to express my satisfaction with the papers set in the recent matriculation examination. It would indeed be difficult to praise too highly the history paper where the examiner, whom I do not know, in each case of his questions asked for knowledge which bore directly on the equipment of a good citizen. History under his guidance is a light from the past thrown on the mysterious path of the future."