SCIENCE TEACHING. 567 
were prepared for problem-working in exactly the same way as for 
book-work. We were directed to work through old problem papers, 
and study the style and peculiarities of the day and of the examiner. 
‘The day and the examiner had, in truth, much to do with it, 
and fashion reigned in problems as in everything else. The only 
difference I could ever see between problems and book-work was 
the greater predominance of the inspiriting element of luck in the 
former. ‘This advantage was more than compensated for by the 
peculiarly disjointed and, from a truly scientific point of view, 
worthless nature of the training which was employed to cultivate this 
‘species of mental athletics. The result, so far as problems worked in 
examinations go, is, after all, very miserable, as the reiterated com- 
plaints of examiners show; the effect on the examinee is a well-known 
enervation of mind, an almost incurable superficiality, which might be 
called Problematic Paralysis—a disease which unfits a man to follow 
an argument extending beyond the length of a printed octavo page. 
Another lamentable feature of the matter is that an enormous amount 
of valuable time is yearly wasted in this country in the production of 
these scientific trifles. Against the occasional working and propoun- 
ding of problems as an aid to the comprehension of a subject, and to 
the starting of a new idea, no one objects, and it has always been 
noted as a praiseworthy feature of English methods, but the abuse to 
which it has run is most pernicious. 
“All men practically engaged in teaching who have learned 
enough, in spite of the defects of their own early training, to enable 
them to take a broad view of the matter, are agreed as to the canker 
which turns everything that is good in our educational practice to 
evil. Itis the absurd prominence of written competitive examinations 
that works all this mischief. The end of all education nowadays is 
to fit the pupil to be examined; the end of every examination not to 
‘be an educational instrument, but to be an examination which a 
creditable number of men, however badly taught, shall pass. We 
reap, but we omit to sow. Consequently, our examinations, to be 
what is called fair—that is, beyond criticism in the newspapers— 
‘must contain nothing that is not to be found in the most miserable 
text-book that any one can cite bearing on the subject. One of my 
students, for example, who was plucked in his M.A. examination, and 
justly so if ever man was, by the unanimous verdict of three 
examiners, wrote me an indignant letter because he believed, or was 
assured, that the paper set by the examiners could not have been 
answered out of Todhunter’s Elementary Algebra. I have nothing to 
‘say, of course, against that or any other text-book, but who put it 
into the poor young man’s head that the burden lay with me to prove 
that the examination in question ought to contain nothing but what 
is to be found in Todhunter’s Elementary Algebra? The course of 
this kind of reasoning is plain enough, and is often developed in the 
newspapers with that charming simplicity which is peculiar to honest 
people who are, at the same time, very ignorant and very unthinking. 
First, it follows that lectures should contain nothing but what is to ke 
found in every text-book; secondly, lectures are therefore uscless, 
since it is all in the text-book; thirdly, the examination should allude 
to nothing that is not in the text-books, because that would be unfair; 
fourthly, which is the coach or crammer’s deduction, there should be 
