4i6 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



(7) To repel the other great magnet, the earth, and to prevent the 

 ship (because of the iron) being attracted to the earth. 



Of course it will be said that the examples here given 

 are all extreme cases, and that a majority of the papers 

 show a considerable amount of knowledge. But this is 

 altogether beside the question. I never had time or in- 

 clination to interrupt my work in order to copy all the very 

 ignorant answers, but only a few here and there which 

 specially struck me. For each one thus copied there were 

 at least a dozen equally bad, but often so wordy and involved 

 as to take too much time to preserve, while a far greater 

 number exhibited a little knowledge so intermingled with 

 gross ignorance, as for any useful purpose would be equally 

 bad. 



But the point I wish to insist upon is, the utter failure of a 

 system which, at the end of twenty years, allows of any such 

 candidates as these taking part in an examination. The 

 failure is twofold. First, in the notion that any good can 

 result from the teaching of such a large and complex subject 

 to youths who come to it without any preliminary training 

 whatever, and who are crammed with it by means of a lesson 

 a week for perhaps one year ; and, in the second place, the 

 attempting to teach such a subject at all before a sufficiently 

 capable body of teachers have been found who know the 

 whole range of subjects included in it, both theoretically and 

 practically, and who also know how to communicate to others 

 the knowledge they themselves possess. 



In these examinations scores and sometimes hundreds of 

 papers come from single large schools, and it is a familiar 

 thing to examiners to find the same absurd error, often stated 

 in the very same words, running through a whole school, 

 except, perhaps, in the case of one or two exceptionally clever 

 lads who have, by reading or experiment, educated them- 

 selves upon the point in question. Now, the absurdity of the 

 system is, that the ignorant teacher never has his ignorance 

 pointed out to him, and imputes the failure of a number of 

 his pupils to their stupidity or carelessness, whereas it is 

 really all due to his own ignorance. 



