SCHOOL CERTIFICATE SYLLABUS
Sir,-Having just listened to a programme on School Certificate and University Entrance Exams, may I voice a complaint which I feel will be echoed by many post-primary teachers, and for that matter, parents and pupils? I refer to the anomalous state of the English School Certificate Syllabus. A number of remits have been sent by teachers to their representative organisations, but judging by this year’s School Certificate paper, without effect. English is surely a pitiful and meagre subject, if that to which the language owes its greatness is excluded from study. Yet how can teachers be expected to spend time on a comprehensive literary course when there is only a remote chance that the novel, play or poem asked for will. be the one that has been studied? The possibilities of missing out in Question No. 9 are so great that the matter is reduced to the level of the New Zealander’s favourite sport, which is hardly appropriate when a pupil’s future is at stake. The only sensible course is zo concentrate on certainties and cut out the literature. But is this desirable? A fair solution would be to have either a more generalised question on literature or "set" books. The present half-way house is most unsatisfactory.
W. H.
THOMAS
{Auckland).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19531211.2.12.9
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 752, 11 December 1953, Page 5
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214SCHOOL CERTIFICATE SYLLABUS New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 752, 11 December 1953, Page 5
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