THE SACRIFICE OF EDUCATION: 



403 



books, and give but little of their own personality to their work. 

 It is true that it is necessary to test the work of teachers ; but it is 

 not necessary, for the purpose of doing so, to take the whole soul 

 out of teaching. If examinations are to be defended on the ground 

 that they test the efficiency of teachers, then we reply that other 

 and better ways of doing this are to be found, and must be found. 

 We admit quite frankly that they can only be found and pursued 

 at the price of some trouble and experiment on the part both of 

 parents and those responsible for the conduct of teaching ; but if 

 trouble and thought and experiment are to be spared in this great 

 matter, we had better at once resign the hope of attaining any 

 moral and intellectual results of real value from what we are 

 doing. It has been suggested that masters and tutors might be 

 induced to publish regularly notes of some of their courses; it 

 has been suggested that some of the periodical examinations of 

 boys and young men by their own masters and professors should 

 be printed — with the questions and answers made — and sold in 

 some cheap form ; that parents and others interested should be in- 

 vited to attend viva voce examinations. It is urged that such 

 publicity would help to enlighten those specially interested as to 

 the teaching given at different schools and colleges ; and act as a 

 moderate and healthy stimulus both to teachers and taught, with- 

 out in any way producing the evil effects of the present fiercely 

 competitive prize-system. We can not here attempt to express 

 any opinion upon such proposals ; but every reasonable plan for 

 giving parents some acquaintance with what their sons are learn- 

 ing, and the methods pursued, deserve careful consideration. 



In conclusion, we protest against the waste that accompanies 

 the mischievous exaggeration of our present systems of examina- 

 tion. We protest against the great endowments of schools and 

 universities being applied as money rewards for learning, either 

 in the form of scholarships or fellowships, when they might be 

 applied to increasing teaching-power, attracting men of high and 

 varied learning as teachers to the universities, endowing concur- 

 rent chairs so as to admit the expression of different schools of 

 thought on the same subjects, lowering to a certain point the fees 

 taken for attendance, carrying the teaching of the universities 

 into many different parts of the country, and assisting education 

 in many other direct and useful ways. We protest against the com- 

 mon mistake of benefactors — anxious to help education — founding 

 new scholarships, and thus intensifying the evil that exists, instead 

 of founding local chairs and local courses of teaching ; we renew 

 our protest against the low ideals placed before young men ; against 

 the highly artificial competition to which both parents and teach- 

 ers give their adhesion, and which destroys the real natural com- 

 petition of method competing against method and type against 



