250 MY LIFE 



(i) The Mariner's Compass is a thin bit of steel cut into 32 points. 



(2) The Mariner's Compass is a box with a card and a lot of needles. 



(3) The Mariner's Compass is a brass box with 24 circular cards 

 hinged on, no matter which way it rolls it carries these around with it. 



(4) The Mariner's Compass is a box and card with 32 points. 



(5) If a sailor was shipwrecked on a desert island he could find a 

 north and south line if he had a Nautical Almanack. 



(6) The Mariner's Compass is a circular bit of wood with a nail put 

 through it, and into this is a pivot which is very easily shook about, and 

 the Captain brings this to sea with him. Of course it has the Cardinal 

 points on it, N.E., .SW., etc., and he knows where he is. 



(7) To repel the other great magnet, the earth, and to prevent the 

 ship (because of the iron) being attracted to the earth. 



Of course it will be said that the examples here given 

 are all extreme cases, and that a majority of the papers show 

 a considerable amount of knowledge. But this is altogether 

 beside the question. I never had time or inclination to inter- 

 rupt my work in order to copy all the very ignorant answers, 

 but only a few here and there which specially struck me. For 

 each one thus copied there were at least a dozen equally bad, 

 but often so wordy and involved as to take too much time to 

 preserve, while a far greater number exhibited a little knowl- 

 edge so intermingled with gross ignorance, as for any useful 

 purpose would be equally bad. 



But the point I wish to insist upon is, the utter failure of a 

 system which, at the end of twenty years, allows of any such 

 candidates as these taking part in an examination. The 

 failure is twofold. First, in the notion that any good can 

 result from the teaching of such a large and complex subject 

 to youths who come to it without any preliminary training 

 whatever, and who are crammed with it by means of a lesson 

 a week for perhaps one year; and, in the second place, the 

 attempting to teach such a subject at all before a sufficiently 

 capable body of teachers have been found who know the 

 whole range of subjects included in it, both theoretically and 

 practically, and who also know how to communicate to others 

 the knowledge they themselves possess. 



In these examinations scores and sometimes hundreds of 

 papers come from single large schools, and it is a familiar 



