ON THE INTLUENGE OF EXAMINATIONS. 441 



Specialists and judge accordingly, while they give little or no weight to a 

 sound background of training in other subjects. I have no faith in first 

 forcing specialisation by scholarship tests and then attempting to redress 

 the balance by enforcing supplemental subjects through subsequent re- 

 quirements. This will but aggravate the evil and produce successive 

 bouts of cram — ' Pull baker ! pull devil ! ' — according to the emergency. 

 It is better to leave them alone, recognising certain concomitants of 

 mischief as inevitable. The synchronising of examinations is a great 

 abatement of previous evils. 



S 5. Entrance scholarship examinations at Oxford and Cambridge, 

 especially those given for mathematics and science, mischievously aifect 

 ' general training ' and encourage undue specialisation. The coil of their 

 system propagates itself downwards through the public schools into the 

 preparatory schools. 



S 17. The professional examinations are bad, inasmuch as they do not 

 take the school training into account, but merely knowledge of facts. 



S 19. University scholarship examinations tend to over-specialisation ; 

 hardly any encouragement is given now to the double man at either 

 Cambridge or Oxford. The high range of knowledge exacted for mathe- 

 matical scholarships and the inordinate amount of experience in working 

 problems which a candidate must now possess, compels a specialisation in 

 mathematics which is certainly very detrimental to general development 

 of the mind, and tends to atrophy of the imaginative faculties, which 

 require literary nourishment. The want of this at the ages of sixteen 

 to nineteen can never afterwards be made up. Over-specialisation in 

 classics is less detrimental, as the study tends to widen the range of ideas 

 rather than narrow them. 



S 18. London County Council Exhibition Scholarship examinations 

 force specialisation at an absurdly early age. This is true of other 

 County Council examinations. 



S 4. It is the offering of money rewards for learning certain things 

 which is so pernicious. 



8 14. Specialising should be discouraged in every way. For school 

 examinations a school might be invited to submit its cui-riculum and 

 method. If this was pronounced sufficient for its type, it might be 

 inspected on it and judged by it. The question is, what are the results 1 

 Viva voce should always form a part, a V.V. on the ground covered. 



Too little time is allotted to the literary work in organised science 

 schools ; too little for the mere training of mind. Mere school science, 

 unbalanced by thorough linguistic training — training in thought, not 

 mere grammar detail — is one-sided. It produces in second-rate minds 

 too exclusive an attention to mere symbols. Such minds find all 

 nuances of language extraordinarily difficult to master. 



If a boy is transferred from the general side, rather late, to the 

 organised science side, he 'licks the heads ' of the ordinary boys in a little 

 while in their own subjects. 



S 3. There is much to be said for specialisation by a boy at the end of 

 his school course. It is a fashion to decry all specialisation as ' undue ' ; 

 but a boy after he is seventeen gets a vast deal of good out of one side of 

 his work thoroughly dealt with which he would not get if he carried on 

 the one or two hours a week at everything, which is good up to then. 

 Of course I dislike complete dropping of all other subjects while he crams 

 for a school ; but I think he would do better, if he is in the Vlth form, if 



