The Days of a Man 1907 



Too much 

 examina- 

 tion 



cheapens 

 scholar- 

 ship 



until another set of papers could be passed upon. 

 Better for New Zealand to lose the batch every year 

 than to subordinate its instruction to cut-and-dried 

 requirements drawn up under very different condi- 

 tions. The Dominion has teachers quite as well quali- 

 fied to judge the attainments of their students as any 

 outsider can be. In England there is a tendency to 

 regard those who teach in colleges as mere coaches for 

 getting students ready, with an eye single to the 

 questions likely to be set. " Professors/' on the other 

 hand, constitute the examining board which grants 

 degrees. A really great teacher under this system is 

 an anomaly, for traditional examinations deal mainly 

 with the dregs of learning, permitting the great soul 

 no scope to lead students on excursions into the un- 

 known ! The exigencies of such tests have little to do 

 with true scholarship, and the student is prone to scan 

 old lists of questions rather than to deal with the sub- 

 ject itself. In New Zealand, at least, men often leave 

 college in order to " study up"! 



By good rights an examination should be mainly a 

 pedagogic agency for clearing the mind of student 

 and teacher, helping the former to organize his 

 knowledge, the latter to test his own methods. The 

 examination or even the degree should not be the end 

 or aim in education. 



For a dozen years my article continued to be the 

 subject of serious discussion in New Zealand. But the 

 union of the four colleges at one place proved imprac- 

 ticable, notwithstanding the obvious advantage of 

 consolidating educational forces. The various units 

 are widely separated in a scantily populated country, 

 and local interests are too strong to be overcome by 

 any considerations of the larger welfare. The best 



