THE PEOPLE'S EDUCATION
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Tie most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week " paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR] . [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I was sorry that Mr. Oakley spoiled a delightful if perhaps unduly optimistic letter by his paragraph about " the usual gibe at examinations." He himself admits their defects by hisliter sentence : " If you can do that (provide a workable alternative to them) you will earn the gratitude of education authorities and teachers everywhere " ; and those defects- are nowadays' so patent that they need no restatement here. In all the volume of criticism that has-recently been poured over them it Seems a little difficult to believe that there is never a word of construction, never a suggestion which a zealous and intelligent edudation authority, " doing its best to render examinations less rigid and more just," could seize on and work out, giving a lead to its-less enterprising fellows and some hope to the great mass of us, teachers and laymen alike,
who deeply care for the future of English education. - May I put forward a few suggeStions for reform, starting with the most obvious and going on to the more revolutionary ; the latter of which must clearly not be taken too literally, as their merits and practicability could only be tested by experience ?
(r) No child should- be expected (or allowed) to take an examination in a subject which. he or she is not going to study further. The system of taking subjects in examinations . merely in order to be able to drop those -subjects immediately seems to me the purest folly. _ --
(2) Examinations in the subjects which are _going to be kept up should be designed to test the candidate's fitness to con- tinue those.- tubjects. This implies -a -test not- only of his knowledge of the basic facts of the subject, but also of his methods of working at them. For instance, in a history examination the candidates could-be supplied with -a text-book on some :period which they had not been studying and given time to get up and produce an answer on some question they- had never considered before. Or in a modern language test they :might be given time to prepare with a dictionary an answer to some really practical test of their use of the language, such as " What would you do if on your first visit to Paris you lost your family in the Gare du Nord ? "
(3) Written papers should carry less weight and reports from teachers more. This of course has tremendous dangers and some inevitable defects, but if the reports were (a) really confidential and (b) supplied for each candidate by a large enough number of different -teachers, I believe it would be workable and. would be a valuable modification of the system.
(4) Why not an interview of some sort ?. The numbers involved are of course tremendous, but by some scheme of interchange of teachers between schools it should be possible. And it is, I believe, the tendency in examinations for Govern- ment appointments to assign ever more importance- to the interview and less to the written papers. - - (5) It should be made clear to the general public that examinations on the present lines are not a test of intelligence or of fitness for any commercial position whatsoever. Failure in them may show that the candidate is unfit for, say, secre- tarial work, but that fact will inevitably have been obvious to his teachers for years, and its discovery need not entail all the elaborate machinery of the examination system. Success in them may very well indicate a most uncommercial type of - mind ; and it is very rare indeed to find _a good examinee who also possesses the best qualities required for business, while the examination cannot profess to give even a hint of- such invaluable qualities as organising ability. - (6) Examinations which come towards the end of a boy's or girl's career at school should bear some relation to the problems he or she will have to deal with after school by being made more complicated. To do this effectively it would merely be necessary to combine two or more subjects in a- single paper;- history and a language could very well be combined, for instances. or :history and English, or science and -English or any. other language. -This would- incidentally give University- examiners a chance to see how much possibility there was cf any candidate using his outside knowledge to help the study of his main subject, for instance by reading his history or his science in French or German.
Finally, a small point of organisation. All examinations should be held at a time which makes it possible to go through the papers with the candidates afterwards. What one writes in an examination sticks, whether it is right or wrong ; and there are few who have the energy and opportunity to look up the correct answers for themselves once the paper is over.
I hope these suggestions may show Mr. Oakley that the critics of examinations are not all solely destructive. If he will give these or better ones a trial, surely he will go down as a benefactor of English education.—I am, Sir, yours r r7 High Street, Eton.
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