i6o On Technical Education . [March, 
impossible in some cases, as I shall show further on, to 
arrive at the number of individual students, owing to the 
manner in which the returns are given in the Department of 
Science and Arts Reports. The number of papers does not 
of course represent the number of individual students, — as 
a student may, and frequently does, go in for examination 
in several subjects, and he is furnished, of course, with a 
separate examination paper for each subject. 
At the May examination, 1881, 72,300 papers were issued. 
The total successes amounted in round numbers to 67 per 
cent : of this total of successes 53 per cent passed, including 
both classes, first and second, in the elementary stage ; 13 per 
cent passed, including both classes, in the advanced stage ; 
and 0*7 per cent, including both classes, in the honours 
examination. 
Teachers who prepare pupils for competitive examinations 
must teach the subjects of instruction in the way that will 
best prepare their pupils for the class of questions the ex- 
aminers will be likely to give ; but when the teacher’s payment 
also depends, as it does under the Department of Science 
and Arts system, on the pupils passing, -the teaching becomes 
completely and absolutely subordinated to the examinations. 
The teacher is entirely precluded from displaying any indi- 
viduality in his teaching ; he cannot teach his pupils according 
to their individual wants and capacities ; he must teach on 
the one groove that will best prepare them for the examiner’s 
papers. This evil system — for it is an evil one — is still 
further increased by the examinations as well as the admi- 
nistration being completely centralised. This- system of 
examinations and competitions on the great scale is illus- 
trated in China, “where it has produced a general and incurable 
senility .” But we need not go so far as China to learn the 
ill effects of the system : we need only contrast two neigh- 
bouring nations, France and Germany, to learn the different 
influence on a nation, — whether the teaching is subordinated 
to examinations, as it is in France, or the examinations are 
subordinated to the teaching, as it is in Germany. The 
effects of these two different educational systems was strik- 
ingly shown in the Franco-German war : the officers and 
the men in the one army had been educated under one of the 
systems, and the officers and men in the opposing army under 
the other. “The unanimity,” states the Right Hon. Lyon 
Playfair, in his pamphlet on Teaching Universities and 
Examining Boards, “ is surprising with which eminent 
French men ascribe the intellectual paralysis of the nation 
to the centralisation of administration and examination And 
