L.— EDUCATION. 249 



their degree ; and it was in these circumstances tiiat 1 found, to my sur- 

 prise as a newcomer, that in the Imperial College a very definite conviction 

 had been formed in favour of the tandem system, a conviction so strong 

 in some instances that certain of our professors would prefer the handicap 

 of an independent set of degree examinations for their students rather 

 than revert to the ' mixed ' system. 



I assume that for particular students both systems have their advan- 

 tages, but in all forms of educational practice we are forced by limitations 

 of time and staff to adopt systems that are most applicable to large groups, 

 and one must remember that all of our students at South Kensington 

 come from the same schools that feed other colleges, and all follow the 

 ' mixed ' method of training ; the question that I am trying to answer 

 is — Which for the average student of university standard is the better form 

 of education ? 



The difficulties of changing over from one system to another 

 are practically insuperable in any large college or university : it would 

 necessitate the closing of the college for some three years, and then starting 

 afresh with a clean slate. To advocate a general change-over seems out 

 of the range of practical politics ; but the merits of the two systems are 

 nevertheless worth consideration for better than academic reasons ; for 

 one notices that, even within a single Honours school, the mixed system 

 is adopted in most institutions, sometimes deliberately and in accordance 

 with an assumed theory of education, sometimes merely because the 

 ' mixed ' diet is taken for granted as the right thing for normally minded 

 students. 



It is not possible now to adopt the tandem system as a whole in any 

 long-established college working on the other more usual lines, but it is 

 possible within most dei^artments to adopt it for subjects which have grown 

 so enormously in recent years that Honours schools in science have now to 

 be subdivided. For example, in Geology the various subdivisions can be 

 gathered into two groups — the petrological and the palseontological 

 groups. Either group can be taken separately, and consequently, in an 

 Honours course of two years after the Intermediate, students of the 

 second and third year standard may be trained together, taking the 

 petrological branch in one year and the palseontological branch in the 

 next, instead of both branches simultaneously in two separate classes 

 for second-year and third-year students respectively. 



If there are merits in the tandem system the question is thus worth 

 consideration for at least departmental use in most colleges and universities. 

 It is not sufficient for those of us who favour the tandem system to assert 

 that the other has merely grown without conscious guidance, and that 

 vested interests and a complicated time-table now prevent reform. Among 

 those whom I consulted during our recent discussion with the London 

 University I found some experienced teachers who thought, and were 

 honest enough to say, that Huxley took the wrong turning when he 

 impressed his ideas on the old School of Mines and later College of Science. 



With these opinions held generally outside and the contrary opinion 

 held unanimously by our professors inside, there is obviously some justifica- 

 tion for attempting an estimate of the relative merits of the two systems 

 as alternative methods of treating the average student. 



