THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1875.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2175, 23 December 1875, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1875.

Now that the annual farces yclept 'examinations of schools are over,.and no harm can be'done eitherto school, pupils, fonteacher, by stating things as they are, !we should -like-to say a few words cori■peyning them.' When we "speak of the examinations of our public schools—and we may ;add private schools too—as Jfarc"es, we rdo hot-meati to say that'ill examinations' are necessarily so,- "or. even to include all schools among the number of those who habitually indulge in these performances. It is possible, we have; heard, to conduct an .examination in a manner thoroughly r satisfactory to pupils, teachers arid -friends ; - it may, we know, be.so conducted as not to leave much room for grumbling even in the unsuccessful "competitors, though, we confess, an an examination embracing only a few days it seems very hard to exclude the element of •'■♦■' luck ■■'■■■ altdgether; still, we are told it may be done, and it will suit our,pM^eri|i^nrgosejust as well tobelieve it. Now, an examination may be of two kinds^wjidelyj.differing from each other; it may be, first, an examination held with the praiseworthy motive to find out really who is" the abest pupil in a class; with | the objectf of awarding him or her r some prize already determined on; 1 or,".in other words, it may be for the glorification of some ■, one pupil above his fellows, by giving him some prize which he has fairly and; honorably (it is to be .hoped),gained by answering questions set to, all alike at the same time and under similar circumstances upon some predetermined object. This is all very well. Competition, properly indulged in, has a wholesome effect on boys, and men too for the matter of Chat, whatever

Mr A. H. Sayce and others of the " Fortnightly " contributors may say to the contrary, and a half-year passed without a*n examination and consequent prizes in view at the end of it, stands in jvery much the same proportion to a boy's education, as those weary aimless walks' which Iwe are told to take do towards our'health, useful perhaps in a ''valetudinarian point of view, but hardly;, satisfactory unless taken with a lively and agreeable companion of the opposite sex. Such sort of examination was, whatever its shortcomings^ the examination recently held for a history prize thrown open to all the schools in the Waiotahi district, and though -we are the"lasfr:to advocate the constantexamining and re-examining of boys as likely to destroy all tendencies to original thought, and make them more like precociousl walking: editions of " Enquire withiiiJ upon everything " than rational beings, we have no doubt that "an examination conducted upon the same principles as was that is a :step in the* -right direction. This sort of examination, then, having for its'object the'glorification of the most gifted, and, if possible, the most industrious boy or'girl, we hold to be not only advantageous, but, under certain regulations, absolutely necessary. But there is another kind of examination of a very different kind, which, fashionable though it;be at least at the Thames, we cannot speak of in terms too condemnatory. Wo mean the absurd and useless custom of examining boys and girls in public. This kind.of examination differs fundamentally from that which we have just been speaking of; for whereas the former has or ought to have for its sole object the glorification of the pupils, the latter has in ,reality; the glorification of the teachers, by displaying to the visitors at panoramic glance of all the children know, which, under the system of " cram " ■—which must be adopted to render these examinations Jelling with the publicrr-is often truth to speak very easily seen, for it is very: little; With this view the •system of question and answer ia adopted, and the. children .taught to. answer in a parrot-like manner certain stereotyped questions that have been dinned into their unthinking—because not taught to think —heads for the past half-dozen weeks or more; and when a child answers, more \ glibly than .usual, some question involving "along answer, the assembled visitors are expected to murmur among themselves " very good," and the teacher looks round with a glance of pride, as if to say, after the manner of the Yorkshire schoolmaster; when displacing the fleshy condition of the youthful Squeers, "See. what we can do at our establishment." The public examinations, as they are for the most part conducted in schools in this province, are valueless to show what the children know; they are worse than valueless if meant to exhibit what the teachers can do. They are valueless if held with a view of really testing what the children can do, for it is absurd to think that the work of an entire half-year can be satisfactorily accounted for by asking a child two or three questions in public, which ,he may, or .may not be able to answer, just as they chance to suit him or not; while, if as in some recent cases,-prizes have actually been ■ awarded as the result of these answers, the demerit of; unfairness added to uselessness makes them all the more to b'e-discburaged. Just fancy howttnsatisfactory it, must-be to any child to find that the work of the school half-year is taken to go for nothing, and that to some other child is awarded the prize because, perhaps, he was less reticent of .answering in public, or because- he: may have a couple of easier questions, or because, as is very likely, the examiner —- appointed at a moment's notice—is not very competent to decide. They are worse than valueless if held to show what the; teachers can do, for independent of theirstrong, tendency to promote cramming, they beget on the part of thosewhoare to show off the. teacher's excellence, a superficial smattering it may be, perhaps: a showy one, but after all—at best only — a smattering of> some few; subjects, to. the total sacrifice of any real ground rework of ' knowledge on which a child may base his; or her future excellence. These are only a few of the objections which public examinations are open to. Their real

use is nil. We do not mean to say that public distributions of prizes are not excellent and desirable. On the contrary, we think r that.the acknowledgement .in public of a boy's'; merits "is in evejy way to be encouraged as tending to pro-, mote a wholesome spirit „pf emulation,' and in no way can this : be better done than by giving him in public such a prize: as he may have earned, accompanied by such remarks from those he looks up to and respects as may urge him on to still greater exertions. The failure consists in attempting to combine two things wholly incompatible, via., the examination, of what... a boy can do, with the ac-; knowledgement of whathe has.done. An .examination should consist not in asking and. t answering; a few questions, even if these; questions; be really givenbona fide, and not prepared beforehand, but: in a thorough examination 6n.:paper extending over a series of days, and m<ade as thorough 'and? exhaustive^ as, the; power I,of the_ examiner—Whoshould be another than the master or mistress of the school I—can1—can suggest.; :^e.:/knpw i .ih"at_Vthis:leavesI'us;1'us; open2 * to J: the ■ objection; thai you cannot examine, in this way, children who cannot write, or even those who ~can write only little; TStft^tp' oupimna's, it; is to awartftne prize to children sucH'as these j for general good conduct or improvement during the half-year, or even leave them unesaiamed altogether for all the

good such examinations as are now in vogue arc likely to do them. There is one point more wo would take up our say pgainst, m& that is the absurd custom of multiplying prizes to such an extent that it now becomes not, a mark of merit to receive a/ prize but a mark of demerit not ,to receive "one. To such a pitch ha si this 1 come that prifces are not only awarded'for every conceivable positive excellence in a child, 'but al&o for some negative ones in the bargain. Fancy giving a pupil a prize for holding her tongue when she had nothing to say! Why if this sort of thing goes on, children will be rewarded not because they are gobd, but because they are not pbsitively n bad, and he or she who does not obtain at least one prize, will come to be considered —besides being positively stupid . —h/reft also of all claim to any one virtue, domestic, moral, or intellectual.