AND ANOTHER THING
Candidates are requested to write clearly and not to defy the computer
PAUL JOHNSON
he publication of this' year's spectacular A-level results has been greeted predictably with self-congratulatory cries of approval by the government. By contrast, the CBI and other bodies representing those who have to provide gainful employment to the gormless multitude churned out by the system emit sceptical sniffs. Are our schools improving or is it merely that exam standards are being deliberately lowered? I do not know, or care much, Like most people of my age, I am con- vinced that education is degenerating, though when I see an actual exam paper, irrespective of the subject or grade, I find myself quite incapable of answering any of the questions. Expensively educated when Young, and having spent my life feverishly seeking knowledge by travelling the world and by reading and writing books, I now find myself knowing nothing the experts consider worth examining. This does not distress me either. Shaw wrote, 'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.' To which I add, 'And those who cannot even teach, examine.'
Though good at exams in my day, no skill I have exercised to earn my living bears any relation to the things on which I was exam- ined. As I say to the VAT inspector who queries my books, 'When I was at school I was taught how to write Greek verse, not accounting.' There was one exception: writ- ing essays, historical or general. So closely does writing articles follow the discipline of the essay, for which we were allowed one- and-a-half hours in exams, that even today I find myself writing a piece (as Lamb called it) in 90 minutes flat. I see that the German Abitur, earlier this century, allowed six hours for the German essay, which may explain why articles in the Frankfurter Allge- ?Heine Zeitung are rather longer than those in the Daily Telegraph. All the same, I rather like the lore and legends of the exam room, including the fact that the Latin word examen means the tongue of a balance. At my school, the desks in the huge room where all but the eldest took exams had two lateral lids. At certain moments in the tension of long exams, wicked boys would begin a two- handed flapping of these lids. Other boys Would take up the sport until the entire f°0111 was banging away, producing a noise like hysterical thunder — I have known stern invigilators flee in terror. This was the equivalent of the notorious claquement des Pupitres by extremists which, in the old Paris Chambre des Deputes, used to silence unpopular ministers at the rostrum.
I like the vernacular of the old exams — tripos, responsions, little go, smalls, mods and greats, the prelims, polls, aegrotats and wranglers. Exams were probably more effective in eliciting evidence both of knowledge and of promise when they were oral, and in public. At Bologna in the 13th century, a man up for a doctorate was given two passages, or puncta, in canon or civil law in the morning, took them away for study, then delivered a public lecture in the afternoon, followed by questioning. Today a doctoral student produces in secret an abstruse and horrible dissertation, which is not a dissertation at all since it is never delivered but is judged, again in secret, on the density of its footnotes, and which is then, in 99 cases out a hundred, consigned to an oubliette.
Public exams are an excellent trial of strength. In June 1807 a remarkable young man of 19 with red hair and a Lancashire accent — his father and grandfather were cotton-masters — appeared before the examiners and 'a fashionable assembly' in Christ Church hall. In the course of an hour or more he produced such brilliant answers to the searching questions that, at the end, the dons stood up, raised their mortar- boards, and awarded the lad a double first. One said, `That man will go on to be prime minister.' Thus did Sir Robert Peel make his first public appearance. In due course his protégé and successor, W.E. Gladstone, took a detailed interest in exam results, especially at Eton and Oxford, with a view to recruiting talent for the public service. He and others eagerly scrutinised university prize essays and poems, in English and Latin, which were published in those days. This weeding-out of exceptional talent among the elite continued up to the first world war, which killed it, along with most of the younger prize-win- ners, and it is light-years away now.
Yet knowledge is more important than ever in determining everyone's income and status in society. And, for the first time in history, that knowledge must be both opera- tive and theoretical. I become increasingly aware of this gritty fact as I fall further behind in the race to keep up with the tech- nology of transferring my thoughts to paper. I now have only one of the typewriters I can use left, and that is kept in London. Down here in Somerset, the ancient computer finally collapsed this week, and a new one of inconceivable sophistication was installed by a Taunton magician. It recognised an ama- teur the moment I began to write this article. Like one of those Swedish social-democratic cars which admonish you in a singsong voice for breaking the rules — `You have not fas- tened your safety-belt yet?' — this supercil- ious machine keeps up a running commen- tary of criticism. I do not mind it drawing attention to my spelling mistakes — I am a bad speller, though better than Muggeridge or Evelyn Waugh, whose copy I corrected in the old days —but I object to its underlining `And another thing' in green, apparently on the grounds that one should not begin a sen- tence with 'And'. It underlined 'gormless' in red ink, signifying it was not an acceptable word in politically correct society. Finally, this left-wing juggernaut decided it did not approve of me at all, came to a mysterious stop and erased everything I had written.
So I am now writing this article by hand. This may be retrogressive, and slow, but it is sure. I have been studying the work of Tung Ch'I-Chang (1555-1636), the great Chinese painter, calligrapher and art historian, who not only practised handwriting as an exquisite art form but was the first to anal- yse it and explain its mysteries to outsiders such as me. Indeed, I think I can say I now know more about Chinese calligraphy than about computers, and certainly get more pleasure and soul-satisfaction out of it. I am aware that Chinese art calligraphy goes back to the 2nd millennium BC, that Chinese examinations for the public service are first recorded in about 1115 Bc, that the two are connected and that the age-old reliance on exams to recruit the mandarin class, and so those who rule China, is held responsible for the country's eventual backwardness. On the other hand, mandarinism alone kept this vast heterogeneous people together.
I notice, anyway, that revolutions always begin by abolishing exams, then reinstate them later in far more rigorous form. This happened in China, too. Mao's Cultural Revolution abolished written exams and practically everything else of value. But they are now back again, and the future leaders of 1.1 billion people are scribbling away against the clock. Or should I say tapping away? I end, as I often did in my exam days, on a note of interrogation, and with an appeal: 'Dear Examiner, I have a great deal more to say on this topic, but my time is up.'
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