AN EXAMINATION PAPER.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 187, 22 January 1943, Page 3

AN EXAMINATION PAPER.

Sir-I was pleased to read your spirited defence (in this week’s Listener) of the progressive examiner who set the Matriculation history paper. This much maligned gentleman apparently. has the misfortune to be more modern than his critics-and, I am afraid, some of his colleagues-and must therefore submit to a flood of adverse criticism both from those who have for many years been teaching history as it should not be taught and from those who are opposed to any change or de-

parture from tradition. To the latter class we need not reply, since reason will not convince them; to the former class I should like to point out that even the poor wretches whose heads they have filled with dry-as-dust, "orthodox" 19th century history had a very fair chance of passing: questions 2(b), 3 or 4, 5, 10, and more than half of question 1 can be answered without any knowledge of present-day or Pacific history (other than our own). But the main point is: why should an examiner who enjoys the confidence: of the University Senate be forced to interpret a syllabus in the "orthodox" way? Why should he be attacked for not setting the questions that generations of schoolboys and schoolgirls have answered by quoting other people's views? I was educated at the Christchurch Boys’ High School, where the history teaching includes "Current Events" and where social problems are not taboo, This modern and sensible attitude is, I am sure, adopted by most schools in the Dominion. The examiner should therefore be thanked for rousing those "superior" schools, which, in defiance of the syllabus, have so far deemed present-day problems beneath

their notice,

E.

B.

(Christchurch)-

Sir-Damme, sit, emphatically I must protest. What’s the BBC coming to-doing a programme commemorating that dreadful Socialist, Keir Hardie? And what’s The Listener coming to, drawing attention to the New Zealand broadcast? It was bad enough polluting the minds of the young by asking a question about the fellow in that confounded Matriculation history examination. I hope that those who protested about those history questions will join, me now in protesting about this broadcast. We heresy-hunters must pull to«

gether,

BLIMP

(Wellington),

Sir,-The history paper for the 1942 Entrance Examination was certainly informative. It reveals unhappily, that our universities are still bent on teaching history along narrow nationalistic lines, There is a pressing need to-day for the development of a world outlook in the ordinary citizen, and the first and essential step towards this aim is to teach world history in our schools and uni-

versities:

D.H.

H.

(Invercargill),