available, in practice, some few hundreds of possible 'questions.' The system of publishing examination papers, and close study of the questions over many years, have taught a body of experts to reduce, classify, and tabulate these. So many become stock questions, so many others are excluded as having been set last year, &c.; and in the result a skilled examinee, and still more a skilled crammer, can pick out topics enough to make certain of passing with credit. Knowledge as such, and knowledge to answer papers, are quite different things. Student and examinee read books on quite different plans, if they wish to gain knowledge, or if they are thinking of the examination. The memory is entirely different. The examinee's memory is a ten-day memory, very sharp, clear, methodical for the moment, like the memory cultivated by a busy lawyer, full of dates, of three different courses, of four distinct causes, of five divisions of that, and six phases of the other. It is a memory deliberately trained to carry a quantity of things with sharp edges, in convenient order, for a very short period of time. The feats which the examinee can perform are like the feats of a conjurer with bottles and knives. The examinee himself cannot tell how he does it. He acquires a diabolical knack of spotting 'questions' in the books he reads. He gains a marvellous flair for what will catch the examiner's attention. As he studies subject after subject his eye glances like a vulture on the 'points.' Examination is a system of 'points.' What has no 'points' cannot be examined. Many able and industrious students do take the trouble to acquire this flair; some will not, or cannot, acquire it. But certainly a good many acquire it, by an outlay of labour or money, who are neither able nor industrious at all.

A man going through the full school, college, and professional career now passes from ten to twenty of these examinations, at intervals perhaps of six months or a year. From the age of ten till twenty-five he is for ever in presence of the mighty Mill. The Mill is to him money, success, honour, and bread and butter for life. Distinctions and prizes mean money and honour. Success in examinations means distinctions and prizes. And whatever does not mean success in examinations is not education. Parents, governments, schools, colleges, universities, and departments combine to stimulate the competitive examination and the mark-system. None quite like it; but all keep up the tarantula dance-needs must when the devil drives.' The result is that the Frankenstein monster of Examination is becoming the master of education. Students and parents dare not waste time in study which does not directly help towards success in the test. One hears of the ordinary lad at school or college, either as amusing himself because he is not going in this year,' or else as 'working up very hard for his examination.' He is never simply studying, never acquiring knowledge. He is losing all

idea of study, except as 'preparation' for examination. He cannot burden his memory with what will not 'pay.' And a subject which carries no 'marks,' or very few marks,' is almost tabooed. Books are going out of fashion; it is only analyses, summaries, and tables which are studied. But published examination papers are the real Bible of the student of to-day-nocturna versanda manu, versanda diurna.

Next to old examination papers, the manuscript tips' of some famous coach form the grand text-books. One of the ablest men I ever examined, who bitterly complained that he had failed in a coveted distinction, was told that he had not read his books on a given subject. Why!' he said indignantly, he had not read the text-books; but he had mastered a valuable volume of "tips" in manuscript, which was said to contain every question which could be set in a paper.' He failed through pushing the system too far; and a tragedy was the end.

The Examination, thus made the fountain of honour,' governs the whole course of study. If the teacher takes up a subject, not obviously grist for the great Mill, the students cease to listen, and leave his classes. The instant he says something which sounds like an examination tip,' every ear is erect, every pen takes down his words. The keen student of to-day is getting like the reporter of an evening journal: eager after matter that will tell, will make a good answer,' capital examination 'copy.' The Mill governs the whole period of education, from hic, hæc, hoc, to the final launch in a profession. I know little boys of ten, in the ego et Balbus stage, who are being ground in printed examination papers, which I could not answer myself. And big men, older than Pitt when he governed England, or Hannibal when he commanded armies, are still ruining their constitutions by cramming up 'analyses,' and manuscript 'tips' of great coaches.' The result is that poor little urchins in frocks are in training for some 'Nursery stakes,' as an old friend of mine used to call the trials of preparatory schools. The prize schoolboy who sweeps the board on Speech-day often gets a perfect loathing for books, and indeed for any study that is not cramming;' and the youth who leaves his University, loaded with Honours,' may prove to be quite a portent of ignorance and mental babyishness. He has learned the trick of playing with a straight bat the Examiner's most artful twisters. But he cannot bear the sight of a book; and, like any successful speculator, he has a hearty contempt for knowledge.

Examiners are very clever men; but they ought not to form a sort of continental Ministry of Education,' controlling on one uniform and mechanical scheme the entire field of education. Examining is more irksome, less continuous, and worse paid than teaching. Hence, as a rule, the professional examiners are hardly

men of the same experience, learning, and culture as the professional teachers in the highest grades. They have not devoted themselves to special subjects of study; they do not know the peculiar difficulties and wants of the student; they are not responsible for the interests of a given branch of learning. A body of professional examiners, moving about from great educational centres, tend to give a uniform and regulation character to all learning. Our educational centres are yet in far too chaotic and changing a stage themselves to justify them in stereotyping any system. Knots of clever, eager, trained 'experts' in the examining art are being sent about the country from Oxford and Cambridge, marking, questioning, classing, and certifying right and left, on a technical, narrow, mechanical method. They would be far better employed in learning something useful themselves. As it is, they dominate education, high and low. They are like the missi dominici of a mediæval king, or the legates a latere of a mediæval pope. They pitch the standard and give the word. Public schools revise their curriculum, set aside their own teachers, and allow the academic visitor to reverse the order of their own classes. The Mill sets a uniform type for the University. Colleges give way and enter for the race. One by one the public schools have to submit, for prizes are the test; and success means prizes. Next the minor schools and private schools have to follow suit. And at last the smallest preparatory school, where children in nursery frocks are crying over qui, quæ, quod, has to dance the same tarantula.

For this state of things the remedies seem to be these. Let examinations be much fewer-they are ten times too numerous. Let them be much more free-they are over-organised, over-regulated. Give examiners more time, more discretion, more room. The more the teachers are themselves the examiners the better; the less examining becomes a profession and a special staff, the better. Do not set examiners to test teachers, as well as students; do not set up mechanical rules whereby to test the examiner. Believe that it is possible to learn without any prize, money, or reward in view. Trust the teacher; trust him to teach, trust him to examine. Trust the examiner, and do not set up a Mill. Above all, trust the student. Encourage him to study for the sake of knowledge, for his own sake, and the public good. Cease to present learning to him as a succession of races, where the knowing ones may land both fame and profit.

FREDERIC HARRISON.

THE CRY FOR USELESS KNOWLEDGE.

I AM glad to find that my paper on 'The Vague Cry for Technical Education' has met with much more concurrence than dissent, and I am also gratified to observe that such of my critics as have disagreed with me have expressed regret at my inability to join their cause rather than reproach for my having discouraged it. I am fully sensible that my opponents in this controversy are persons who are actuated by most laudable motives, and I am quite in harmony with them in desiring to see great changes in the present system of school education, though I differ from them as to the form that the new system should take. I am also an advocate for secondary education in a limited degree, and have emphasised my advocacy by giving it substantial support; but my observation and experience compel me to value both the extent to which it is required and the benefits to flow from it at a much lower estimate than that of the enthusiastic supporters of so called 'Technical Education.' The author of an article in Nature, while not disputing what I have said respecting the vagueness of the cry for technical education, turns upon me and says that I am equally indefinite and vague. The argument of 'tu quoque' is always a weak one; but in the present case it is also inapplicable. In the agitation for technical education now going on I am merely a spectator wishing to understand what the agitators mean when they so indiscriminately use the terms 'Technical,'Art,' and 'Science,' and it is not for me to furnish them with correct definitions. The same author says that in almost every paragraph of my article we recognize that we are reading the words of a true representative of that remarkable genus, the practical Englishman who has been the glory of his race in the past, but threatens to be its destruction in the near future.' Well, I have passed through the phase of being treated as an amateur and a theorist not likely to succeed for want of practical acquirements, and now I have arrived at the contrary phase of being treated as an old-fashioned man of practice deadened to the claims of theory and new ideas. I must leave my friends to judge to which extreme I belong, or what is my place between the two. In other respects the article is chiefly remarkable for the wail at the end that, if practical men

remain much longer of my opinion, then is the fate of our nation sealed.'

Sir Lyon Playfair, who, I believe, still fills a professorial chair, is the only writer who has affixed his name to a criticism of my article, and the fact of his paper not being anonymous and of its appearing in the important Review which gave publicity to mine entitles it to my especial notice. I can scarcely, however, call his article an answer to mine, because, instead of replying to my arguments point by point, he directs his chief efforts to minimising the differences of view that exist between us. In doing this he arrives at the conclusion that we are so nearly in accord that he wonders I am not a member of the Technical Association, or why I wrote my article. I may be permitted to say that, if he deems himself to be so much in unison with me, I have equal cause for wonder that he should charge me with throwing a dash of cold water' on the cause he advocates, or that he should have felt it necessary to write a reply. Professor Playfair is good enough to say that he would welcome my alliance as one who was unaffected by enthusiasm or emotion. I return the compliment by observing that I should be equally glad of his alliance on the ground of his philanthropy and influential name, though not on the score of the enthusiasm and emotion with which he treats the subject. I am afraid that his belief in the unison of our views will be sadly shaken by what I shall now proceed to say, and I shall endeavour to express my meaning in a manner which shall exclude ambiguity and misconception.

Sir Lyon Playfair declares himself an advocate of including within the scope of technical education the teaching of specific trades and industries. I, on the contrary, say that workshops and factories or other places where actual business is carried on are the proper schools for the learning of such trades and industries. Here at once we stand face to face in diametrical opposition. Nor is our agreement more apparent in his definition of the object of technical education, which he says is to give an intelligent knowledge of the sciences and arts which lie at the basis of all industries.' This is not very clear, but as he proceeds to mention with approval the attendance of bricklayers in a class of bricklaying, tailors in a class of cutting and fitting, and watchmakers in a class of watchmaking, we are at no loss to understand the scope to be given to the education he demands. But I ask, what does he mean by the sciences which lie at the basis of these examples of industry? It is certainly not usual to regard tailors and bricklayers or even watchmakers, so far as the operatives who make the wheels and parts are concerned, as practising trades which are founded on science.

But let us follow up Professor Playfair's premises to their legitimate conclusion. If we are to give technical education at the public expense to operative tailors and bricklayers, from what trades and