COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIH,-I am very glad to see Mr. C. C. Cotterill's "Suggested Reforms in Public Schools" reviewed with hearty commenda- tion in the Spectator; but except in his praise of the book, your reviewer has hardly said a word with which I find myself able to agree. His suggestions to schoolmasters will, no doubt, be received by them at their right value, and I will notice only his defence of the competition system which is forced on school- masters by the public. Most of those who are qualified to form an opinion will, I think, demur to the following statement :— " That competition should be eliminated or appreciably reduced, is a mischievous doctrine, which would restore the evil days of patronage, privilege, and patricianism." Surely, after the last Reform Act, we may consider what is best for education with- out being scared out of our wits by the bogey of "patronage, privilege, and patricianism." We might as well be told by those who approve of black clothes for evening dress that the regulation swallow-tail is our only protection against relapsing into woad. In one thing I do, indeed, agree with the reviewer, —viz., that "a great deal of nonsense is talked about the suc- cessful competitors at school and college ;" and a great deal of folly will continue to be talked, and, still worse, done, till we have given up thinking of our young people as " competitors "
in literary or other contests, and have set about training them not for examinations, but for doing their life's work happily and healthily, wisely and well.—I am, Sir, dzc.,
R. H. QUICK.
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