USE AND ABUSE OF EXAMINATIONS. 
849 
is to my mind a fairly self-evident proposition that whoever examines 
controls. What is more notorious, for instance, than that under the 
influence of the English university locals there are scores of school- 
masters and thousands of boys whose knowledge of Latin literature 
is confined to certain selected parts of Cscsar and Virgil.* Eor many 
years (and it may be still) the College of Surgeons prescribed in Latin 
for entrance examination one book of C^sar. A similar body in Ireland 
pinned its faith and practice in Greek on the “ Dialogues of Lucian.’ 1 
This fixed book system as imposed by universities or bodies of 
university rank is the bane of elementary scholarship, besides being 
an intolerable yoke and shackle. My experience of New Zealand, 
with which I am slightly acquainted, leads me to bring forward the 
subject of Greek as illustrative of the axiom — whoever examines 
controls. There is in New Zealand an admirable system of leaving 
scholarships. These are now fifteen in number annually, with con- 
siderable money value, and are open without restriction to all-comers. 
They are controlled as to subjects, tenure, and payments by the 
University Senate. They are offered at the end of each school year, 
and naturally attract a great deal of the best school work in all parts 
of the colony. In this leaving-scholarship competition the university 
fathers have placed Greek in marking at two-thirds the value of 
mathematics and Latin, and on a par with English and Elementary 
Science. To anyone who, as a practical teacher, kuows the aggre- 
gate amount of work requisite for bringing a pupil to the Greek 
standard as compared with that needed to bring him up to the Science 
standard, this estimate seems quite inequitable. What has been the 
effect? Of the last 100 scholarships awarded under this system, 
Latin and Mathematics have been taken in every case, Greek in 
seven. f It is estimated that, setting apart young aspirants . to 
the ministry of Christian bodies, the number of persons studying 
Greek is so small that the subject has little or no weight in the 
general apparatus of education. In New Zealand the grammar 
schools are all endowed — some liberally, others sparingly ; hence 
secondary education stands clear of any disturbing influences. It 
would seem, therefore, that the decline of Greek in the New Zealand 
conception of a liberal education is due altogether to the action of 
the university. There is a curious subsidiary result traceable in an hat 
may be called the residuum of local opinion on the matter. To know 
Greek exposes a man to an estimate of himself that hurts; he is 
looked upon as one who has wasted serious time as one who should 
profess amidst the calls of business to be a doer of catching tricks 
with oranges or a swallower of knives. 
Not to digress further; the main point that whoever examines 
controls, seems incoutestible. Eor this loss of freedom a teacher 
should naturally get some quid pro quo . There have been, perhaps 
there still are, certain compensations. . In the early epochs of the 
examination age, many varieties of discipline were called into being at 
the demand of the schoolmasters. After the methods of Orbilius had 
gone out of vogue, the methods of those other schoolmasters Horace 
* A speaker in 1884, addressing the International Conference on Education, 
assured his audience that for tvventy-tive years he had ^taught nothing in Latin but 
some Csesar and a modicum of Virgil, lieport iv., p. 21o. 
f N. Z. Univ. Calendar, 1894-1895, ad fin. 
