♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[November 1, 1888. 



request of some of his old pupils, and circulated amongst a 

 good many of the thinking men of the day. 



Professor Baden Powell wrote, thanking De Morgan for his 

 lecture, and added : " I wish it could Ije more widely circulated 

 among our candidates at Oxford and Cambridge. Perhaps 

 there was something in this respect better in the system of 

 cm- ancestor' disputations, in lieu of examinations. I 

 have often wished that there was something like making a 

 man read a dissertation on a subject of his own choosing, 

 and then cross-examining him on his own arguments. 

 Many would be plucked for not understanding their own 

 meaning." Sir John Herschel wrote, " I was greatly 

 delighted with your protest against the cramming system in 

 your opening lecture," and Dr. Whewell wrote that he 

 was anxious that some experiment should be made as to 

 the possibility of getting rid of such examinations. 



De Morgan did not object to examinations which were not 

 competitive : for example, he felt that examinations by 

 teachers to test the amount of knowledge really gained 

 were very useful to guide them in their efforts to direct 

 the thoughts of their pupils and interest them in the sub- 

 jects taught. He believed that the most effective education 

 commences when the pupil begins to teach himself; when 

 he is drawn onward by interest in the subject to think for 

 himself rather than driven by the desire for approval or 

 money reward to store his memory with facts or words. 



Since De Morgan's day we have been diifting continuously 

 in the direction of selection by competitive examination. 

 Large sums of public money are now distributed accord- 

 ing to the verdict of examiners, so that school managers 

 and schoolmasters are induced to look at the children of the 

 poorer classes as instruments for earning Government 

 money, and boys in the richer and middle classes are pressed, 

 frequently to the injury of their health, to store away 

 material "likely to enable them to answer questions whicla 

 may be set by examiners. The fierce goad of emulation is 

 applied frequently before the strength and development of 

 the boy warrants it, to urge him to reproduce rapidly the 

 thoughts of others, in order that he may be educated at the 

 expen.se of the public or of some one else than his parents. 



De Morgan thought that with those young men who 

 struggle to be highest, and who suffer in the struggle, no 

 stimulus is needed beyond their own pleasure in learning, 

 and that if a teacher cannot make them feel this pleasure, 

 he does not deserve the name of teacher. Educators have 

 to learn that the aim of education is to develop power, and 

 not to cram knowledge, and also that the mental and moral 

 faculties come into activity at very different times in differ- 

 ent individuals and types. The system of selection for 

 Government employment by competitive examination 

 probably handicaps the Saxon as compared with Jews and 

 other Orientals who come to maturity at an earlier period 

 in their life history ; but I will not dwell on this probabi- 

 lity, as it is doubtful whether, with the exception of 

 generals and heads of departments, it is for the advantage 

 of a community that the best individuals should be taken by 

 the Government from private callings where they are likely 

 to have more influence upon the action and thought of the 

 public than they would have if trammelled by official usages, 

 and induced to rest on their oars by the knowledge that they 

 have an assured position and a pension to fall back upon in 

 old age. 



It has frequently been said that the Duke of Wellington 

 would, by reason of his bad spelling, never have succeeded 

 under the modern system in entering either Woolwich or 

 Sandhurst ; but, be this as it may, it is certain that the 

 present system of examination is not suited to select youths 

 who possess many important qualities which are likely to 

 prove useful in the battle of life, such as judgment, truthful- 



ness, good moral feeling ; and it would be difficult to con- 

 trive a method by which these qualities could be selected 

 in the examination-room. But where it Ls necessary to 

 select, a better choice than competitive examinations afford 

 would probably be made if a period of probation weie re- 

 quired, and the selecting officers had an opportunity of 

 watching the candidate while attempting the class of work 

 at which he would be afterwards employed. 



The most serious evils brought about by the system of 

 competitive examination are those which affect the methods 

 of thought of teachers and of the pupils subjected to exami- 

 nation. What will pay in the examination-room becomes 

 the first question, and any intellectual interests which would 

 lead to inquiry or separate investigation are treated as 

 luxuries which must be sternly swept on one side. This 

 has a tendency to repress the teacher who will teach best 

 those parts of a subject which he most enjoys, or with 

 respect to which he has made any original investigation, 

 or has some original thought, perhaps quite unsuited for 

 reproduction in the examination-room ; but these must be 

 suppressed, for to follow the text-book and to reproduce 

 statements received on authority is the habit of mind which 

 is rewarded with .success. His pupils become apt parrots. 

 He dare not teach them to think for themselves, or they 

 might be beaten in the race. He does not dare to introduce 

 them to the scientific methods of inquiry by which inde- 

 pendent advance is made. They learn to store up ideas, 

 but not to dige.'.t them ; and the habit is acquired, which 

 will cling to them through life, of reproducing the ideas of 

 others uncriticised and unassimilated. 



It is an axiom of physiologists that the over-development 

 of one organ tends to the atrophy of others. If the memory 

 is forced, the powers of reasoning and imagination will be 

 stunted. The fact that calculating boys usually lose their 

 exceptional powera — as their general education progresses — ■ 

 seems to show that atrophy may almost obliterate even 

 strongly marked fivculties. But with the present system of 

 classification by examination and the great prizes offered to 

 the successful, it is only to be expected that boys and young 

 men will train for them regardless of other considerations, 

 developing the memory at the expense of all other faculties. 



A. C Ranyard. 



ON SOME STRANGE FEMS OF 

 CALCULATING BOYS. 



Y object in the present essay is to con.sider 

 certain mental feats which seem calculated to 

 throw light on that wonderful organ on which 

 our consciousness, in the widest acceptation 

 I'f the term, depends. In particular, they 

 mmtu to indicate cerebral capabilities, un- 

 couimon at present, but which may one day 

 be possessed by many. I do not deal here 

 with the question, interesting though it is, whether hereafter 

 the human race may possess greater mental energj' than at 

 present, but simply to discuss, and if possible explain, certain 

 remarkable mental feats. I may, however, remark on this 

 point that we must not be misled by the consideration that 

 we do not recognise, in the few past centuries over which 

 our survey extends, a law of continuous mental develop- 

 ment, illustrated by the increasing greatness of the great 

 men of successive ages. In the first place, if the average 

 of intellectual development is steadily increasing, the men 

 of exceptional mental power must appear to stand less con- 

 spicuously above that higher level than the great men of 

 former ages above the lower average of their day. And, 



