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II.

I WOULD first point out that, whether the statements made in the Protest are right or wrong, they constitute an attack on interests far wider than even those embraced by the Octopus of the examination system. The Protest is, when its grounds and allegations are scrutinised, nothing less than a protest against certain facts and tendencies which seem to characterise our modern English life as a whole. What is the description given of the more subtle evils' of the present competitive system? They are (p. 619) 'the cultivation of a quick superficiality and power of cleverly skimming a subject the desire to appear to know rather than to know, the forming of judgment on great matters where judgment should come later... the dependence upon highly skilled guidance, the belief in artifices and formulated answers.'

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Could a more scathing and yet, at the same time, more accurate description be given of the methods of many of our public men and their supporters throughout the country? Do we not know their hurry, their half-knowledge, their eye to the main chance, their public omniscience, their private dependence upon the highly skilled guidance' of this or that leader? And do not the words of the Protest regarding the forming of judgment on great matters where judgment should come later,' remind us that we have deliberately postponed the education of the classes, whose votes now rule the country, to the measures passed for their enfranchisement? Again, could the true spirit of good citizenship be more appropriately defined than in the following words, applied by the Protest to that love of knowledge for its own sake which the examination system is accused of killing-the desire to get knowledge (subaudi political) for the sake of understanding the world in which the young student has to live, the marvellous forces amongst which he has to act, the humanity of which he forms part'?

Further on, our Protestants denounce the sacrifice of men of higher aspirations to the inferior-minded . . . who can only be tempted to follow Knowledge because she means a sum of money, the public triumph of a successful class, or the gaining of a place.' Are these inferior minds peculiar to the world of education? Are the

many members of Parliament who have signed the Protest equally contemptuous of the periodical outcry for paying members of Parlia ment, and of the doctrine, which revives after every general election, that the spoils belong to the victors'?

Again, we have the complaint (p. 618), that, under competition, 'all education tends to be of the same type,' that no more unfortunate tendency could be imagined,' because 'uniformity means arrest of growth and consequent decay; diversity means life, growth, and adaptation without limit.' True enough, but let us remember that the England of 1888 is more purely democratic than France, Switzerland, or the United States. The democratic spirit makes its chief boast of levelling inequalities, of abolishing exceptions, privileges, and distinctions of all kinds, of merging individual status in the ranks of the mass. It is impatient of the very existence of schools and universities which adhere to the ancient ways and studies. And now two Oxford Professors have spoken. Professor Max Müller tells us that the England of the competitive age is full of equally worthy mediocrities, but is losing its intellectual athletes' and 'born leaders of men.' Professor Freeman, assuredly no political Tory, speaks regretfully (p. 643) of 'the older subjects where something of the better tradition of the past is still kept up,' of the traditions of better times, times when men read great books with a tutor, instead of filling note-books with the tips of a crammer.' Do none of our oldfashioned politicians make similar complaints?

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As regards the universities, our democracy is proud of having successfully nationalised' them? In the 'better times' of Professor Freeman, democracy called them clerical preserves' and 'museums of the dead languages.' The change is now complete. The classical and mathematical monopolies have ceased. Subjects of study are varied ad infinitum. So far for the studies; now for the students. Many very poor men are in residence, men whose presence would have been impossible but for the pecuniary support of some scholarship-secured, very possibly, by a permanent sacrifice of health. If Professor Harrison holds that such men have no business at Oxford and Cambridge, let him say so, instead of ridiculing the Mill' which is to them bread and butter for life,' and let Professor Freeman join him in saying so, before denouncing a first-class with its pecuniary value.'

I would, in short, have it recognised that the competitive system, with all its many imperfections, is merely the educational manifestation of the democratic movement in general. La carrière ouverte,' says Professor Max Müller. Give every man a fair chance,' says democracy. The effect of frequent general elections (and some would have them annual or triennial) on statesmanship is precisely that which, according to the Protest, is exercised by examinations on 'the best teaching.' The teacher,' we read, ' loses his own intelligent

self-direction. . . as he is constantly controlled by the sense of the coming examination, in which, of course, he wishes his pupils to succeed. Similarly, the statesman cannot work out a definite or continuous policy, as he is constantly controlled by the sense that his opponents may force on a general election, in which, of course, he wishes his party to succeed.' (The italics are my own.)

I have no wish to dwell unduly on this parallel between the education and the politics of to-day. But those who so unsparingly condemn the competitive system cannot be allowed to make it the scapegoat for sins which belong, as I hold, to the spirit of the age. In every department of modern life there is one and the same feature a wild anxiety to secure an immediate result, however misleading or intrinsically mischievous that result may be.

And now a word on the actual faults of the examination system, a system of which I have myself had an active and varied experience, both as patient and as operator. That examinations are too frequent, that we pull up the plant so often that it has little time to grow, that there is very much bad or perfunctory examining, that examiners, whether bad or good, work under a hot pressure of time (which is, by the way, not of their own creating), that vivâ voce examinations are a farce unless there be a liberal allowance of time—all these facts are indisputably true. But the signatories of the Protest have dwelt rather on effect than on cause.

test.

Examinations are necessarily frequent, because the number of examinees is growing as it were, by leaps and bounds. Whence comes the increase of examinees? Not only from the general increase of the population, but from a special increase due to that growing hatred for manual labour which is fostered by cheap schooling, cheap printing, and cheap politics. Crowds of candidates, with constitutions enfeebled by bad food and want of care in infancy, are now engaging in educational competitions, which are far more trying to them than any handicraft would have been. The poorer tissue of these, which we may call the ill-fed classes, cannot stand the strain. Hence the victims whose physical collapse is deplored in the ProLet us not forget, here, that the advocates of 'free' education for the children of the people have now extended their demand to 'free' dinners. Educational pressure is death to the half-fed body. Now that the same test is being applied to all classes, it is becoming manifest that the children of the so-called 'privileged' orders have had something more than privilege on their side. Next, the Women's Rights movement has now subjected women to the tests once peculiar to men. They have answered to the new call in enormous numbers. These numbers were lately accounted for, by a leading 'educational' journal, by reference to the fact that the number of women now brought up with the tastes and habits of gentlewomen,' is indefinitely increasing. Three years' experience of the female

candidates for certificates in French, at the Cambridge Local Examinations, enables me to say that a large part of them were obviously intended by Nature to work with their hands only.

A multiplicity of examinations involves a multitude of examiners. Every class of officials contains good, bad, and indifferent men. An increase of the class made to meet a sudden growth of work will, very probably, admit more bad and indifferent men than good. There is at present no time of probation for examiners; they enter at once into full work. Professor Harrison speaks most generously of the attempts of many examiners to do their duty, and to do it well. But the outside world has but one feeling about them, that of inconsiderate anxiety to get a result from them. Give examiners,' says the Professor, more time, more discretion, more room!' But who, in modern England, has either time, or discretion, or room? Examiners have many masters. Take the general element of hurry out of our life of to-day, and then perhaps the examinees, and the parents who have had them hastily crammed with the Liebig's Extract of Knowledge, and the public and private dispensers of the employment which is the reward of success in the examination, will combine to grant the Professor's prayer. In the next place, examiners, according to Professor Max Müller, are, as a rule, too young. With great deference, I answer that age has much less to do with the question than constitutional and mental fitness. No examiner, whatever his age, is fit for his post unless he has, in some degree at least, the judicial faculty. A man who has looked over very many competitive exercises is not, on that account only, an 'experienced' examiner in the true sense of the word. Schoolmasters and college tutors, who have passed all their lives among examinees' and their work, are often the very worst of examiners. This is so (1) because the disciplinary and instructive faculties are more commonly found in them than the judicial faculty; (2) because they know the personalities and circumstances of the bulk of their examinees too well. This knowledge often adopts a stereotyped form at an early period in the connection of boy and master. The boy's character and abilities may have profoundly changed with years, but the tutor's idea of him may, and often does, remain unchanged. A boy who had undergone such a change, and who had just secured the chief scholarship of his school, was, some years ago, thus addressed by his tutor, a most kindly man and a very ripe scholar: If I had had an idea that you were capable of getting that thing, I should have worked much harder with you.' The examiners in that case were outsiders, and knew none of the candidates.

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Space is limited, and I can only deal with two more points. Professor Freeman is horrified by the idea of a 'tutorial profession.' So am I, but the profession exists. A young Cambridge tutor lately expressed to me his sure and certain hope that the entire available

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revenues of his college would eventually support members of that profession--and their wives and children. Again, we have (p. 621) a protest against devoting corporate endowments to scholarships and fellowships, when they might be applied to increasing teachingpower, attracting men of high and varied learning as teachers to the Universities,' &c., &c. For teaching-power' read 'tutorial profession,' and you have the grounds of my Cambridge friend's hope. As for the men of high and varied learning,' is this not our old friend 'Endowment of Research' in a slightly altered dress? Have we not already enough eminent and well-paid, but class-less Professors, living upon the dwindling revenues of Alma Mater?

men.

One word more on the substitutes for competition which are rather vaguely hinted at than solidly formulated in the Protest and its three appendices. Our common problem is to distribute 100 posts among 1,000 candidates, so as to secure the best men. The Protest itself protests against the assigning of Government positions by competition;' but here Professors Max Müller and Harrison break away absolutely from the document which they have signed. So here, according to them, competition is unassailable in practice. Professor Harrison further abandons the elementary schools to their fate. What then, to take the Civil Service Examinations, is the substitute?'Appointment by patronage is too much for human nature,' says Professor Max Müller, referring to the former patronage of great Are we to substitute the patronage of our two great political parties? There is certainly American precedent for the course, and our own election cry of the spoils to the victors' is in the same order of ideas. But let us recognise the fact that between competition and nomination, alias patronage, there is no workable compromise. The system of nomination was, by some unworthy persons, so used as to quarter on the public services men whose only claim lay in their patrons' good will. The system died very hard, and there may be life in it even yet. Whether on the whole it provided us with bad public servants, is a question I should be very sorry to affirm in a hurry, but that patronage would revive if competition were abolished, or even modified, is, to my mind, beyond argument. The Protestants would select public servants on public grounds,' and by 'practical test,' from candidates who reach a certain standard of excellence.' Professor Max Müller advocates a gradual change of competitive into qualifying examinations.' I reply that, unless the standard of 'qualification' is so high as practically to involve a severe competition between those who reach it and those who do not reach it, the number of persons 'qualified' will always very largely exceed the vacant posts. Is the next step to draw lots? And what are the 'public grounds' upon which some qualified' persons are to be selected and others rejected-grounds which we presume will have, in these days of party recrimination, to be successfully purged of all political VOL. XXIV.-No. 142.

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