General Knowledge

BY MOTEL.

SOMEONE has been attacking, and someone else defending, the educational value of. General Know- - ledge papers. This is a very favourite controversy, and as in all (correct me if I am wrong) modern controversies there is a great deal to be said on both sides. But not by me. My contribution will be short and to the point.

Now, as I see it, the party most immediately and deeply concerned is the boy (or girl) Who is periodically

, called upon to answer that formidable list .of questions about axolotis, and why hot air rises, and the Monroe doctrine, and who said "L'etat, c'est moi." It is, I know, unfashionable to recognize this fact. It is the modern schoolboy's misfortune that the theorists are always sacri- ficing his present to his future ; his existence is condi- tioned by the speculations of his elders with regard to what they vaguely and rather morbidly call his After Life. It is thus with General Knowledge papers. No doubt in the last analysis it is wise and right to gauge the value of these tests by their effect on the future citizen, the potential applicant for employment. But to overlook the actual for the hypothetical, to ignore the living and important boy in your efforts to create a paragon in a bowler hat, is to carry wisdom to the pitch of pedantry. There is such a thing as being too far-sighted. You would be pardonably annoyed if your tailor kept on trying to measure you for a coffin.

Very well then. Let us consider the General Knowledge paper from the point of view of the examinee. What passes through the mind of the small boy when he reads, at the bottom of the examination time-table, the laconic announcement " Tuesday, December 20th. 9.30-12. General Knowledge."

Not, I am glad to say, despair. The thought of a General Knowledge paper does not give rise to those dark, those extraordinarily painful forebodings which scarcely a single one of the other subjects for examination fails to

. excite. For—whatever its sternest critics may allege . against it—the General Knowledge paper has in his eyes two great and undeniable advantages. First, there is nothing to prepare for it ; Second, you cannot fail.

You cannot fail. The General Knowledge paper may, as its warmest supporters claim, approximate more nearly than anything else in the curriculum to a test of the boy's fitness to be a citizen in the twentieth-century world ; but the fact remains that the boy can score nought in it with impunity. Abysmal, unabashed ignorance on the • most comprehensive scale brings with it none of those evil consequences associated with a failure to get thirty marks out of a hundred in Greek Composition. For once, the boy is safe. He has nothing to worry about.

There is another aspect to be considered. In a General Knowledge paper it is practically impossible to cheat. You will be lucky indeed if these excerpts from the Encyclopaedia Britannica which you have jotted down on your cuff possess, in the hour of trial, the saving grace of relevance. For all the tabloid tendencies of our age, the standard aids to omniscience still run to bulk ; you cannot smuggle them under your desk. But I said " prac- tically, impossible " ; for supposing, that some little rascal (after birds' nests, no doubt) should find his way into the

school printer's and there happen on an advance proof of the General Knowledge paper, he can profit by the discovery far more than if it had been any of the other papers. For in their case to be forewarned of such a question as "Estimate Shakespeare's debt to Lyly " (where the demand is for something more than bare facts) is nothing like as useful as to know that you are shortly going to be asked, " Who, and on what occasion, said that he would rather have written which poem than taken where ? "; for, there is only one answer to that, and you can look it up.

So that, although I do not myself regard the results of a General Knowledge paper as an entirely reliable guide to the competitors' form in After Life, I have no hesita- tion in saying that, if any boy has rather unexpectedly got full marks, that boy will Go Far.

One of the chief arguments in favour of the General Knowledge paper is the informal—the almost flippant— atmosphere which surrounds it. Set, as likely as not, by one of the junior members of the staff, and answered on the very threshold of the holidays, it is pleasantly free from the solemn and inhuman conventions which make most examinations such a burden to the soul. With the connivance of both sides, the formalities arc a little relaxed. It is even sometimes permissible, when you are asked, " What do you know about (a) the Defenes- tration of Prague; and (b) the Rosicrucians ? " to answer with a frankness not normally considered disarming, " (a) Very little indeed ; and (b) absolutely nothing." For the fact of the matter is that none of those imme- diately concerned take the General Knowledge paper very seriously.

It is left to the theorists to do this. And since most of these are engaged on the compilation of such works as The Business Man's Outline of History or The Imbecile's Guide to World Thought they are understandably anxious to stimulate our demand for, and faith in the value of, information in the raw. The majority of the theorists are in favour of General Knowledge papers.

I dare say they are right. That monster, the Bright Boy, gets an innings on the sort of wicket he likes best ; and for his fellow-pupils there is an invigorating tang of pure chance about a set of questions designed to cover the whole field of human knowledge. Those whose aunts were leaders of the Suffragettes, or whose grand- fathers took part in the Jameson Raid, or who know which is the capital of Burma because they were born there, are enabled for the first and last time to capitalize what they had hitherto regarded as liabilities. There is a reassuring feeling that the best man will not neces- sarily win.

So I suppose that I, like the majority of the theorists, am in favour of General Knowledge papers, so long as nobody takes them too seriously.

"Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have oft-times no connection"

wrote the poet Cowper, smarting (we can hardly doubt) under the memory of some early failure to supply the examiners with the -name of Caliban's mother or the number of miles to a verst. And the poet Cowper was right.