848 REPORT—-1904. 
Mr. Cloudesley Brereton hoped that the local authorities would not establish 
examination boards of their own, or the examination evil would be increased 
tenfold. 
Mr. W.L. Mollison regretted that the proposed scheme indicated an intention 
to consider Oxford and Cambridge as local or district Universities instead of 
national institutions. Considering how universally examinations were condemned 
as destructive of true education, he regarded it as amazing that a new scheme of 
examination should be put forward as a panacea for our educational woes. The 
Moseley Commission on American education showed how the Commissioners 
regarded the absence of examinations as among the best features of American 
education and one to be imitated in England. Further, he urged that a central 
board, as advocated by the Advisory Committee, would become infinitely more 
rigid than any of the existing examining bodies. The true solution was modifica- 
tions by the Universities themselves and arrangements for the interchange of 
their first public examinations. Negotiations for this purpose were now going on 
between Oxford, Cambridge, and London. 
The Rev. Dr. Gray said that he would not have intervened in the debate 
had not a reference been made to the Moseley Commission, of which he happened 
to have been a member. Mr. Mollison had said that American education was 
characterised by a freedom from examinations, a freedom unknown to English 
educationists. This was an unmixed blessing, and had had a beneficial effect on 
education in America. We in England wanted some stimulus, apart from exami- 
nations, to make our children love work for itsown sake. He, however, believed 
that we were starting a new educational era in this respect. 
The Bishop of Hereford said it was obvious that there must be a period of 
transition before the new system could be introduced, and he hoped that con- 
tinuity would not be broken. The financial side of the question could not be 
altogether neglected, but he was of opinion that we can evolve a new system, and 
that the financial difficulty could be easily settled. In conclusion, he would read 
a summary of the discussion which had been drawn up by Sir Oliver Lodge :— 
‘Tf the universities thought fit each to inaugurate a scheme whereby, in addition 
to existing examinations, which for the present can be taken as options, schools 
may submit themselves for specific inspection and examination on the general 
lines of the Report of the Consultative Committee and the Board of Education ; 
the result being that scholars above a certain grade shall receive a certificate 
specifying the range of subjects on its face, a certificate which shall be taken into 
account, and, if satisfactory, admitted as excusing the holder from the whole or 
any part of a general entrance test for any university or professional body; the 
members of this Section would welcome such a procedure and consider it educa- 
tionally desirable.’ 
5. The Need of Scientific Method in Elementary Rural Instruction. 
By A. D. Haut, JA. 
The author said that for some years now there had been a widespread effort to 
introduce into our rural elementary schools some form of instruction which 
should be based on things rather than on books, and which should be in touch 
with the activities of country life. It was of far more importance that the 
intelligence of the country child should be educated than that of the town child, 
who, as a clerk or artisan, had in after-life to carry out some small detail of a 
great organisation with care and despatch. But the country child would need to 
be an individual, as even the care of stock or the growing of cabbages could not 
be done purely by rote. The prime condition in the form of instruction needed 
was that it should be based on experiment, so that parent and child might both 
realise that school had something to do with life and was not a wholly useless 
convention. The particular subject of instruction was of less moment than the 
method, which should teach observation and the reasoning from observation. 
The experiment in every case ought to be done, and not merely described on the 
