Chronicle-1935

-12-, •t t subject from vsar to year. There are adopted in other parts of the vTOrld t Boa.rd mi^t reasonably institute. several admirable methods hich the Matriculati on- "If the Examination were retained as a.University entrance examination only, then either it oijght to be considerablj^ moredifficult or there onght to be an age limit for entrance to. the Jniversity. The boy of more than, average ability ~ and, after all, the University is for him — can reach"the present Matric ulation standa.rd Irithout undue v/ork before he is sixteen. "This is too youthful an age for a University student. "An age limit i7onj.d force the schools to provide facilities for specialisation — a compulsion which most wo-old welcome and which some would not need as they already provide a post Matric ulation course. A man entering Oxford or Cambridge"University has usually aoout three years study beyond the Matriculation standard before he enters his University. "If the Matriculation examination is to continue to be the doorway to most of the professions and to emplojnnent in gen eral, -bheh I welcome the suggestion that credit is to be given for all individual subjects in which a 40 per cent pass is ob tained, A glaring case, exposing the occasional injustice of the present system, occurred in this school a few years ago, when a boy sat for three sets of papers, passed in every subject once, in five subjects twice, in the aggregate twice, and yet failed to satisfy the conditions of any one examination. ^"I note withregret the emphasis that is being placedupon a wider and yet wider syllabus. The tendency is to make it so wide that it will be possible to pass the examination in a set of .subjects that may be narrowly vocatiorjal, and leave no room for education in its true sense whereby a pupil should be taught to live rather than Just how to earn his bread and butter. "In one minor direction I feel that we need to retrace our steps somewhat, For years there has been an increasing emphasis on interesting the pupil and in getting his logicalxacalties to develop. As a result there has been a neglect of the necessary? drudgery, I notice in mathematics an increasing inaccuracy combined with a, clear ruiderstancLing of the basis principles,and

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