COMMENTS ON THE ''SACRIFICE OF EDUCATION:' 547 



will make a good " answer/' capital examination " copy." The 

 mill governs the whole period of education, from hie, licec, hoc, to 

 the final launch in a profession. I know little boys of ten, in the 

 ego et Balhus stage, who are being ground in printed examination 

 papers which I could not answer myself. And big men, older 

 than Pitt when he governed England, or Hannibal when he com- 

 manded armies, are still ruining their constitutions by cramming 

 up " analyses " and manuscript " tips " of great " coaches." The 

 result is that poor little urchins in frocks are in training for some 

 " nursery stakes," as an old friend of mine used to call the trials 

 of preparatory schools. The prize school-boy who sweeps the 

 board on speech-day, often gets a perfect loathing for books, and 

 indeed for any study that is not " cramming " ; and the youth 

 who leaves his university, loaded with " honors," may prove to be 

 quite a portent of ignorance and mental babyishness. He has 

 learned the trick of playing with a straight bat the examiner's 

 most artful twisters. But he can not bear the sight of a book ; 

 and, like any successful speculator, he has a hearty contempt for 

 knowledge. 



Examiners are very clever men ; but they ought not to form a 

 sort of Continental " Ministry of Education," controlling on one 

 uniform and mechanical scheme the entire field of education. 

 Examining is more irksome, less continuous, and worse paid 

 than teaching. Hence, as a rule, the professional examiners are 

 hardly men of the same experience, learning, and culture as the 

 professional teachers in the highest grades. They have not de- 

 voted themselves to special subjects of study ; they do not know 

 the peculiar difficulties and wants of the student ; they are not re- 

 sponsible for the interests of a given branch of learning. A body 

 of professional examiners, moving about from great educational 

 centers, tend to give a uniform and regulation character to all 

 learning. Our educational centers are yet in far too chaotic and 

 changing a stage themselves to justify them in stereotyping any 

 system. Knots of clever, eager, trained " experts " in the examin- 

 ing art are being sent about the country from Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge, marking, questioning, classing, and certifying right and 

 left, on a technical, narrow, mechanical method. They would be 

 far better employed in learning something useful themselves. As 

 it is, they dominate education, high and low. They are like the 

 missi dominici of a mediaeval king, or the legates a latere of a 

 mediseval pope. They pitch the standard and give the word. 

 Public schools revise their curriculum, set aside their own teach- 

 ers, and allow the academic visitor to reverse the order of their 

 own classes. The mill sets a uniform type for the university. 

 Colleges give way and enter for the race. One by one the public 

 schools have to submit, for prizes are the test; and success 



