436 REPORT— 1903. 



to mechanics and science at London ; to history and English at Victoria 

 University ! Or, again, a boy is preparing for the Army : if he takes 

 the Woolwich or Sandhurst route, Greek is virtually (except under heavy 

 forfeit) disallowed ; if hnally he prefers Oxford, it is enforced. Even if 

 he passes Responsions twelve or fifteen months before going into resi- 

 dence the college insists upon his keeping up Greek for matriculation 

 purposes and subordinating or neglecting modern languages and mathe- 

 matics until residence begins. These are but illustrations of a com- 

 plicated mass of divergences. The total result of such pedantic and 

 inelastic compulsions is disastrous, and is needlessly intensified by the 

 usage of ' school books ' in language examinations. The preliminary 

 examinations for graduation (Smalls, Little Go, &,c.) have been flung 

 upon the schools, unity of curriculum has been made impossible, and the 

 final year of school preparation is broken up by distracting and dis- 

 cordant examination calls. 



Consider first the abler boys, candidates for scholarships or exhibi- 

 tions. Successive scholarship competitions, ' Responsions,' 'Preliminary,' 

 or ' Additional ' examinations at Oxford or Cambridge, college entrance 

 and matriculation tests, added to the indispensable school examinations 

 on work done and for the adjudication of school awards, break up the 

 year with harassing (and expensive) ab.sences, and not much less than 

 a quarter of a boy's whole time is luasfed in examinations ; while the 

 preparation of set books on subjects encroaches seriously upon the 

 remainder left available. 



For less able boys the latter form of encroachment becomes much 

 more serious. In practice for one, two, or (in extreme cases) three terms 

 of the final school year boys must be withdrawn from parts or the whole 

 of the school curriculum, forfeiting the stimulus, the emulation, and the 

 interest that attaches to collective learning, and must be set in ones or 

 twos to prepare the particular subjects or authors imposed by the 

 authority to whose regulations he must conform each detail. To make 

 matters worse, the examinations are timed quite irrespectively of school 

 terms, and as a net result produce more idleness, more bad and broken 

 and undirected work, than any other single cause to which I could point. 



As to the effect of examinations upon study and teaching, external 

 and impersonal examinations certainly tend to narrow, not to widen, 

 the range ; and the higher the stage reached, the more this becomes true. 

 In the field of humanistic studies time and interest expended upon literary 

 contest or side issues (e.ff., historical, arch.^ological, artistic, mythological, 

 philosophical, ic.) will pretty certainly be thrown away, and from the 

 examination point of view what pays is close adherence to the standard 

 commentary or text-book on the subject. On the whole this sets, and 

 probably rightly, the limits beyond which the impersonal examiner 

 hardly feels it proper to travel in examining a mixed field of candidates. 

 Of some branches of science this is less true. But here, too, examination 

 is apt to be restrictive and sterilising unless intimately co-ordinated with 

 the teacher's work. In biology, for instance, or botany, two hours 

 a week given to some representative corner of the subject is incom- 

 parably more educative than general outlines ; but if gauged by impersonal 

 examination tests might seem to yield an absolute zero of result. 



But it seems waste of time to enlarge upon these obvious and admitted 

 evils. Is any remedy or alleviation possible ? 



S 30. General examinations in all subjects are wholly pernicious in 



