200 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
tion syllabus; and any one who knows anything about the teachers of the 
present day will recognise that thousands of them would gladly train their 
pupils’ minds, and not merely prepare them for examinations; but no one 
who has seen much, at any rate of Secondary Schools, and has heard on every 
Speech-day the predominant emphasis on the results of examinations, and the 
proofs which every school confidently produces that its averages are above 
those of the whole country, can doubt that the attitude towards exami- 
nations which is forced upon schools is wholly wrong ; and I have no 
doubt that herein lies the chief obstacle to an education which should 
produce men and women of alert and independent minds, proof against 
ready-made answers to any problem, adaptable and originative, and with 
the powers of vision and of criticism with which nature has endowed them 
unblurred and ready for use. It would take too long to-day to enter 
upon a discussion of the remedies, which might in fact involve a very 
large reconstruction of our whole educational system. The thing most 
essential is to distinguish examinations as an aid to education from 
examinations as a test of fitness for purposes external to the school. As 
it is, the attempt to combine the two aims has had a sufficiently long trial, 
and has proved a most unhappy failure.6 The external purpose has 
virtually eclipsed the internal. I should certainly not abolish exam- 
inations, even external examinations—which may be of great use to a 
school if they are based on the actual and freely arranged work of the 
school ; but there should be no issue of certificates of any kind, nor 
any publication of results beyond the school itself. Scholarships and 
positions outside the school might be awarded for the most part upon 
special examinations involving no specially prepared work, and much 
more weight might be given to school records (in schools much more 
thoroughly and regularly inspected than at present) ; and the activities 
of Local Education Authorities might be restricted, so far as possible, to the 
non-educational aspects of school life and work. I cannot develop these 
suggestions to-day, and I make them in the full assurance that they will 
never be put into practice. But unless the habit of working and teaching 
for examinations before everything else is abjured, I see little hope of the 
type of education which alone can save democracy, and bring up a race 
of free men and women. 
There are other reforms which are urgently needed, if our present 
system of education is to be brought nearer to the fulfilment of such an end. 
The prolonging of the time of education is obviously one, provided that 
the education is of the type which liberates and trains the mind, and 
does not merely rivet its fetters more tightly.?/ A great reduction in the 
size of classes in most subjects is another ; not necessarily in all subjects, 
nor for all purposes ; but such a reduction as will give the individual 
member of the class a chance, and will enable a teacher to encourage a 
® Of course so long as the present system continues, it will be the work of the 
examining bodies to diminish the mischief done by it as far as they can, and so 
far as I can judge they are doing this very conscientiously. 
* The fact that in Russia education is compulsory up to the age of eighteen is 
not without significance. 
