186 EXAMINATIONS IV 



at work is most pernicious to the intellectual develop- 

 ment of the student, and to the teacher almost un- 

 bearable. Fortunately for me my experience has been 

 largely mitigated by the fact that I have independ- 

 ently held the post of examiner at Burlington House 

 during the greater part of the time in which I have 

 been teaching at University College. And this 

 brings me to a curious and important consideration. 

 The advocates of the examinations of the University 

 of -London claim, and from the first have claimed, 

 that their great recommendation as contrasted with 

 the examinations of a German or a Scotch university, 

 in which there is no schedule and the professor is 

 examiner is that in the London system the schedules 

 are laid down by an independent board of learned and 

 impartial authorities, who are not teachers, and that 

 the examinations are conducted by highly -paid 

 examiners who have no interest in or knowledge of 

 any of the candidates ; therefore (it is said) the results 

 deserve the very greatest confidence they are abso- 

 lutely impartial. Now as a matter of fact the world 

 is so constructed that this pretence of impartiality is 

 sheer nonsense. A superior class of beings who can 

 draw up schedules and examine without teaching does 

 not exist. The examiners of the University of London 

 are, as a matter of fact, teachers ; and often, as in my 

 own case, a fourth of the candidates in an examination 

 have been taught by the examiner, whilst the remain- 

 ing three-fourths suffer the disadvantage of not having 

 been so taught. 



A final objection to the " special examiner " system, 



