be a lottery
p. 66 · Read in the full issue
An examination can be a lottery
How inadequate is the present “imposed” secondary school cur riculum in the South Pacific?
Project manager of the UNDP curriculum development unit. Dr.
G. D. Bishop, gave these instances in January: “In the Kingdom of Tonga several school principals pointed out the great disadvantages that children in the South Pacific suffer when they take external School Leaving examinations. In the recent New Zealand School Certificate examination pupils were set an English composition on the Golden Kiwi. Children in the South Pacific and even adults who had not been to NZ could be forgiven for sup posing the composition had some thing to do with a New Zealand bird. “I understand that the Golden Kiwi is the name for the NZ National State Lottery. No doubt most NZ children would know what the Golden Kiwi referred to, since their parents would buy these lottery tickets, but how on earth could the children in the South Pacific be expected to know this, least of all those in Tonga where lotteries are illegal?
“This is one further example of the need to change to our own local South Pacific Regional School Leaving Certificate as soon as possible.
“In this same NZ English paper pupils were asked to write a
composition on constructing an earthenware oven. Tongan children would have answered such a ques tion with glee, resulting from their considerable experience in this field. But not one pupil attempted what would have been almost a gift question because in the ques tion paper the Maori word for an earth oven was used, and Tongan children don’t know Maori.
“All principals of the high schools complained that in the biology examination all the photo graphs of the flora and fauna related to Australian or NZ ones, common to any school child in one of these countries but completely foreign to children in the South Pacific.
“The difficulty posed by children having to sit an examination in a language which is not their mother tongue is exemplified by this ques tion which pupils at Tupou High School (Tonga) attempted in the recent Victoria (Australia) School Leaving Certificate examination. In the history paper they were asked to comment on a statement that a particular policy was ‘not so much a failure as being too successful’.
In Tongan the words ‘too’ and ‘very’ are synonymous. The entire class of pupils answered the paper as though the statement referred to the policy being very successful.
One can understand their missing completely the subtlety of the statement.”