250 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



Since my time as a student at South Kensington, when Huxley was 

 still Dean of the college, science has grown not by accretion but by multipli- 

 cation. Our professors still adhere to the tandem principle, although one 

 detects in the time-tables a slight yielding to the demands of the more 

 complex life ; but an extension of the course from three to four years 

 in most of the ' schools ' has helped still to preserve the simplicity of the 

 student's night thoughts. 



Candidates for the diploma and degree in Biology, for example, in 

 their second year are compelled to take home with them twice a week 

 an afternoon lecture on Biochemistry or Organic Chemistry as well as the 

 morning lecture on Geology. Those who intend to specialise similarly in 

 Geology for their finals are compelled during the first half of their second 

 year every Friday to absorb a lecture on Zoology as well as one on 

 Botany, and even after they enter the Geology Department finally for 

 their third and fourth years, they have to attend more than one lecture 

 a day, although always on some recognised branch of Geology itself. 



Advocates of the tandem system claim that a student who has evening 

 revision work to do is liable, when following more than one subject at a 

 time, to give his extramural thoughts and study only to his favourite 

 subject, and to trust to subsequent cramming for the others before his 

 final exartdnatious. They claim that a student should sleep only on one 

 subject, preferably on one lecture only, in order that his subconscious 

 cerebration may be effective in classifying data and in discovering 

 principles for himself. An accessory advantage in a science department 

 is the complete relief of some of the teaching sta'ff from lectures and 

 demonstrations for definite and fairly large sections of the academic 

 session. This freedom from daily interruption facilitates research work 

 by the staff, especially where extensive laboratory accommodation is 

 necessary for their operations. 



As I have said, an essential feature of the system is that the final 

 examination in each subject or well-defined Part should be held at the 

 end of the period of training in that branch. To undertake the teaching 

 in tandem order and then to hold the examinations at the end of the full 

 year, or, as in the Honours schools, at the end of two years, defeats the 

 real object of the system ; for an examination impending in June on a 

 course which ended in February distracts the student's mind from the 

 subject taken between February and June. It is not the first subject 

 which suffers by delay, but the second : the student suffers, not from want 

 of memory-freshness regarding the subject in which his training ended 

 last year, but by the disturbing influence of an examination menace which 

 prevents his simple concentration on the later lectures and laboratory work. 



It is not easy to equate the merits of these two systems, and it is 

 impossible for one who has been brought up on the tandem system to 

 avoid bias. For a subsequent career in which scientific research forms a 

 major interest it seems fair to assume that the tandem system has a dis- 

 tinct advantage ; for a post-graduate career in business or administration, 

 when many unrelated questions have to be handled daily and with 

 promptness, one cannot help feeling that mental mobility is increased, or 

 at any rate more rigidly tested, by the composite system of training and 

 examination. 



