THE REFORM OF THE MEDICAL CURRICULUM 551 



can score. Of course, on the other side of the picture, we have 

 to consider whether the questions set deserve honest answers or 

 can receive them even. But there cannot be a doubt, if simple 

 practical questions were set with all due care and substantially 

 correct answers were required, entrance examinations would 

 be revolutionised and rendered an effective means of directing 

 education : now they neither direct it nor do they ensure the 

 supply of properly trained students to the colleges. The game 

 is mainly one of Crammer v. Examiner, in which the former 

 usually wins, the poor deluded examinee being the victim. 



If the Chinese can resolve to enter upon so vast an inter- 

 ference with social custom as is involved in proscribing the use 

 of opium, surely we can prescribe saner methods of examination. 

 At present, most examinations serve merely to pick out the more 

 studious, who are not necessarily the more able for service in 

 the workaday world — in fact, there is not the least doubt that 

 by examinations we are gradually selecting out a special kind of 

 person, of a literary type, for all professions for which University 

 study is a preparation ; professions in which alertness of mind 

 and practical common sense are requirements are bound to 

 suffer in consequence. Armchair study cannot develop these 

 attributes : materials must be handled and processes and actions 

 studied if such qualities are to be educed or cultivated to 

 perfection. 



The Indian Civil Service examination is a case in point : for 

 its purpose, probably it is one of the most irrational tests that 

 could well be devised ; some day perhaps we shall see that this 

 is the case and admit that it is almost as barbarous a mode of 

 testing those whose ability is to be gauged as is the method 

 adopted by engineers in testing the strength of materials — that 

 of smashing the pieces tested, so injuring them that they cannot 

 afterwards be used. The moral injury done to candidates by 

 forcing them just to cram is not considered ; the mental injury 

 which must accrue is never thought of. 



In higher examinations the standard is set at such a pitch that 

 passing becomes impossible except to those who have the faculty 

 of cramming — of acquiring knowledge of a mass of facts, of 

 arranging these in orderly fashion and then reproducing them 

 at word of command. It is a more than significant fact that 

 women and Oriental students are taking the higher places in 

 such examinations, which exactly suit the acquisitive type of 



