IV EXAMINATIONS 185 



ensures his attention to their requirements as well 

 as their respect for what is not merely given for 

 nothing. Compare this with the position of the 

 professor who teaches under the auspices of the 

 University of London, or even with that of the college 

 lecturer of Oxford or Cambridge. The university, in 

 order to carry out its system of examinations, is 

 obliged to produce a detailed schedule of every subject 

 in each examination, and it is only in accordance with 

 this schedule that the professor or lecturer can open 

 his mouth. Such schedules necessarily become anti- 

 quated ; they are often futile and objectionable even 

 when freshly prepared by the "boards" of examination; 

 but the most gifted teacher is tied down to these 

 schedules, drawn up often by those who have passed 

 from a former period of "activity" to a later and 

 mischievous period of mere " authority." The pupil 

 necessarily under this system looks upon his teacher 

 as an inferior person, who like himself is subject to the 

 dictation of examiners ; he resents the introduction of 

 any matter in the course of the teaching offered to 

 him which is not in the schedule, or will not pay 

 in the examination ; he pays his fee not to study 

 a subject, but to be " put through the examination," 

 and, under the system of open competition among 

 teachers which exists in London, he tends to seek 

 that teacher who most frankly accepts the odious 

 position of the examination hack. 



In my own opinion, as having had experience of 

 it at University College, the attitude thus forced on 

 pupil and teacher by the examination system actually 



