718 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 



useful function. This innovation may seem strange to those who have 

 long thought that a teacher is not capable of examining his own pupils. 

 The teacher, who is expected to stand at a high moral elevation, is 

 thought unable to exercise impartiality in examination. This one 

 obstacle prevents the only competent judge from exercising the function 

 of examiner. However, it is being gradually recognised that the teacher 

 should have at least an equal voice in examining. Professor Sir Wm. 

 Ramsay, in an address a few years ago to the students of University 

 College, Bristol, said that a teacher who is not to be trusted to examine 

 is not to be trusted to teach. The following extract from Nature, 

 November 8th, 1906, shows that these views are in course of recogni- 

 tion : — " The last report of the Scotch Education Department, dealing 

 with secondary education in Scotland, directs attention to a new 

 departure in the method of awarding leaving and intermediate certifi- 

 cates. The report states that last year the aid of the teacher was 

 actively enlisted in determining the question of success or failure, and 

 that much weight was attached to a pupil's school record as properly 

 attested by his teacher in the allocation of school bursaries. The 

 secretary puts upon record that events have completely justified the 

 confidence of the department. The teachers as a body have risen to 

 the responsibility that was placed upon them. Of course, there were 

 cases of miscalculation by the teacher, but these were rare exceptions. 

 The success which this Scottish experiment has met in the direction of 

 humanising the methods of appraising knowledge and intellectual 

 training with the object of selecting the best pupils should encourage 

 those responsible for examinations south of the Tweed to increase their 

 efforts to abolish the mechanical character of many of the current 

 tests to which young students are subjected." 



With a properly organised State educational system the need for 

 examinations would largely disappear. Many of us hope to see in 

 every sufficiently populated centre a complete local system of educa- 

 tion, with an even gradation from primary school to secondary, and 

 thence to technical school. In any school at the present time the 

 teacher passes the pupil on from grade to grade when he proves himself 

 fit for promotion. It is to the interest of the teacher to deal in any 

 grade with material of as uniform a character as possible. The teacher 

 has all to lose by moving up a pupil who is incompetent for the higher 

 work. When the highest grade of the school is reached the boy would 

 pass into the hands of the teacher of the higher grade school. Here 

 the boy might undergo examination, in which the teachers of the two 

 schools would co-operate, to decide as to the fitness of the boy to enter 

 the higher grade school. In America, I believe, even this examination 

 is often not called for. The university, for example, employs an 

 inspector who studies the work of schools from which pupils enter 

 the university, and, if satisfied, allows the teacher to pass in those pupils 

 whom he considers eligible for entrance. 



History repeats itself, and the system of nomination which was 

 superseded by Lord Macauley 150 years ago is now undergoing revival. 

 In the case of both the Rhodes Scholarships and the 1851 Exhibition 



