210 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



on a certificate to mark the successful completion of all their courses, 

 and do not rest until all the subjects which they teach have been brought, 

 for instance, within the ambit of the school certificate. The subjects 

 which of all others ought to be the most free, and are in my opinion in 

 their own interests least examinable — music and art — are, I suppose, the 

 means for awarding more certificates by examination than any other, 

 and the blame for this I lay largely at the door of my professional brothers 

 and sisters. It is not, I think, seriously true that teachers are cramped 

 by the examinations ; on the whole examinations follow the school 

 curricula, and do not control them ; the teachers, moreover, are well 

 represented on the examining authorities, and can make their voices 

 heard. It is not possible to say whether a boy or girl knows a subject 

 save by asking questions ; these must be the same for all, answered under 

 the same conditions in the same time, and that makes a written examina- 

 tion necessary. No one suggests that examinations are more than they 

 are, a very human and sometimes fallible means of finding out whether 

 a candidate knows what he ought to know, and no one in his senses claims 

 that they pick out the person who will be ultimately the most successful. 

 What is true is that in early years they tend to dull the edge of the desire 

 for true knowledge, and that throughout school life there are plenty who 

 are quite incapable of showing on paper what they have in their head ; 

 they are not fools, though they may be written down as such, but they are 

 bad examinees. Moreover, in any system of examination which is more 

 or less universal — as is the case with the school certificate — we have to 

 think of the dull and of the slow developers, who suffer badly when they 

 are crammed and forced to an unnatural level. 



I believe, therefore, though the time is not yet, that the right course 

 will be to abolish all external examination for the average boy and girl, 

 though leaving it as the avenue to the universities and the professions. 

 In the case of the average boy and girl the properly inspected and efi&cient 

 school will issue its own certificate that A or B has attended for four or 

 six years as the case may be, and has reached a satisfactory level of per- 

 formance. The power to make such an award implies a high standard of 

 professional honour, and perhaps a higher level of efficiency than yet 

 exists, but it would enable the schools to teach a pupil what he could 

 learn, to teach him in the right way, and not drive him in the wrong way 

 to a wrong standard. The mere size and complication of the examination 

 system will tend to break it down. Doubtless 55,000 candidates have sat 

 for the school certificate this summer, each doing six, seven, or eight 

 papers ; the number of qualified examiners free to undertake the work 

 is very limited. In another twenty years there may be 100,000 candi- 

 dates, for the Hadow Report asks for a special leaving examination for 

 all the pupils at those modern schools which it hopes to see established. 

 Certainly the question will become acute, whether so great an effort will 

 be repaid by any advantage which can accrue from the issue of tens of 

 thousands of certificates each year, certificates which state that the 

 holders have in effect reached a very moderate standard of knowledge, 

 such as you might expect from an average person of their years. Would 

 not the issue of a similar statement by a responsible school have a precisely 

 equal value ? 



