USE AND ABUSE OF EXAMINATIONS. 
853 
his memory o£ examinations should be one of confusion and dismay 
for in these latter days the whole of education is a clatter of exami- 
nation. Should a boy, as many colonial boys do, proceed through a 
primary school and a grammar school to a university and his degree, 
he will in all probability have passed through the mill twelve or fifteen 
times. In England bis case would be worse. There are more scholar- 
ships, open competitions, and university boards lying in wait for him 
in merry England. lienee one is never out of the sound and fury of 
the machine. What is the result ? The speed and fineness of the 
machine imperceptibly increase. Latham remarked in 1877 lhat 
the tendency of all modern examinations is towards augmented 
abstruseness. f It is a point of honour to invent new questions, 
because the publication of all previous questions brings them 
into the common workshop of the crammer. Now, it is the 
duty of the examiner to outwit the crammer, as it is the task 
of the crammer to floor the examiner. Consequently, examination 
papers become more and more a summary of mere side-issues and 
difficulties connected with the subject of examination. In Latin 
you get questions on forms of speech that are quite possibly mere 
blunders on the part of the writers. In arithmetic sums become 
mere algebra problems in disguise. The French papers are a wrangle 
with etymologies and points upon which learned Frenchmen them- 
selves have not cotne to any conclusion. Extend these remarks 
indefinitely to every point in the circle of knowledge, and one would 
not be far wide of the mark. Hence the dismay on the face of a 
middle-aged man — of one whose life has been passed in practical contact 
with the subjects handled. 
Sir Joseph FayrerJ challenges his professional brethren, and 
desires to know whether, should anyone read the papers now set in 
any qualifying examination, be it in medicine or other faculty, would 
he be able to answer the questions set? W ould the past masters of 
the subject — would the examiners themselves ? By the form of the 
question Sir Joseph seems to imply a negative answer. Mr. Frederick 
Harrison follows in the same strain. The great protest made against 
examinations in 1888 has been adverted to above. It was an 
exceedingly bitter cry, and from the number of protestants a very 
loud cry. One hundred members of the British Parliament signed 
the protest, and of teachers a great battalion. The protest is super- 
ficially an indictment of the spoils system in education. It is 
fundamentally an attack upon the general tendency of our modern 
world towards the pursuit of wealth in association with the doctrine 
of quick returns. The protest says very truly that uuder the com- 
petitive examination system — 
“ The pupil allows himself to be mechanically guided for the sake 
of success. His mental sympathies become bounded by the narrowest 
horizon. What will pay? in the examination becomes his ruling 
* Except the Bishop of Carlisle, in Nineteenth Century, Feb., 1880, p. 315. 
f So also Archdeacon Browne in 1884. The statistics of the London Mat. Exam, 
illustrate this point. In 1859 the percentage of failure was 13. This percentage 
steadily rose until 1869, when it stood at 52 ; since that time it has remained at 
about 54 per cent., yet the standard of teaching was rising steadily all the decade 
quoted. 
X Nineteenth Century , February, 1889, p. 302. 
3u 
