COMMENTS ON THE '^ SACRIFICE OF EDUCATIONS 545 



him to do a piece of actual work, try liim backward and forward 

 in spontaneous, unexpected ways, as the quality of each candidate 

 seemed to suggest. He would not burden himself with more than 

 four or five candidates at a time. At the end of a week, a sensible 

 man could perfectly make up his mind which of the four or five 

 was the best fitted for the particular work required, and he would 

 almost certainly be right. Nothing of this is possible in the offi- 

 cial examination. The " rules " are stricter than those of a prison. 

 There is absolutely no " discretion." Discretion might let in the 

 demon of Favoritism. The candidates are often numbered and 

 ticketed like prisoners, to avoid the disclosure even of names. 

 The precise number of papers is prescribed, and their preposterous 

 multiplication leaves the examiner about one minute for each 

 page of manuscript. With one or two hundred candidates to get 

 through in a week or ten days, the examination is really like the 

 inspection of a regiment. The uniform and accoutrements must 

 conform to the regulation standard. 



It is supposed that examiners are masters of the situation and 

 have a large range for a " free hand." It is not so. The exami- 

 ner's mind runs into grooves, and a highly skilled class have sorted 

 and surveyed the possible field. In each subject or book there 

 are only available, in practice, some few hundreds of possible 

 " questions." The system of publishing examination papers, and 

 close study of the questions over many years, have taught a body 

 of experts to reduce, classify, and tabulate these. So many be- 

 come stock questions, so many others are excluded as having been 

 set last year, etc. ; and in the result a skilled examinee, and still 

 more a skilled crammer, can pick out topics enough to make cer- 

 tain of passing with credit. Knowledge as such, and knowledge 

 to answer papers, are quite different things. Student and exami- 

 nee read books on quite different plans, if they wish to gain 

 knowledge, or if they are thinking of the examination. The 

 memory is entirely different. The examinee's memory is a ten- 

 day memory, very sharp, clear, methodical for the moment, like 

 the memory cultivated by a busy lawyer, full of dates, of three 

 different courses, of four distinct causes, of five divisions of that, 

 and six phases of the other. It is a memory deliberately trained 

 to carry a quantity of things with sharp edges, in convenient 

 order, for a very short period of time. The feats which the ex- 

 aminee can perform are like the feats of a conjurer with bottles 

 and knives. The examinee himself can not tell how he does it. 

 He acquires a diabolical knack of spotting "questions" in the 

 books he reads. He gains a marvelous flair for what will catch 

 the examiner's attention. As he studies subject after subject his 

 eye glances like a vulture on the " points." Examination is a sys- 

 tem of " points." What has no " points " can not be examined. 



VOL. XXXIV. — 35 



