The Curse of Examinations
EVERYBODY acknowledges that examinations are " a curse." The child who has to present himself for an examination is encouraged to crowd his memory with disconnected facts instead of to understand the spirit and meaning of history ; he is encouraged to memorize instead of to reason. And yet examinations— or, at all events, a great many examinationsbelong to the category of inevitable things. They go on existing, not because the world and his wife have much good to say of them, but because they fulfil some function for which no adequate alternative has been discovered.
And, after all, we suppose it will be admitted that in some circumstances no alternative is needed. It is impossible to conceive how Universities could confer a degree except as the result of examination ; and it is not easy to conceive how the professions of the law, medicine and so on could award their diplomas of competence except as the result of examination.
We must distinguish. And Dr. Norwood, the admired Head-master of Harrow, distinguished in a very inspiring if sometimes very rash manner in an address which he delivered last week to the British Association. He spoke in particular of the School Certificates and the Common Entrance Examination to the Public Schools. In the first year of the School Certificate examinations there were 14,232 candidates, but in the last year for which the figures are available there were 54,593 can- didates. Candidates for the School Certificate can pick and choose between subjects, but the tendency has been for the examination to become, in the main, academic. The Universities naturally insist upon certain subjects being taken, as the winning of the School Certificate is generally accepted as entitling the pupil to enter the University, and as relieving him of the first minor University examination. Dr. Norwood argues that there should be two distinct kinds of School Cer- tificate—that for the Universities and that for the ordinary boy or girl of a Secondary School. There would be no question of calling one class superior to another ; it would be merely a case of acknowledging that there was a difference. One certificate would satisfy the Universities, and the other would merely be a proof that the boy or girl had taken at school that course of education which had been considered most suitable. This seems entirely reasonable.
Dr. Norwood was on dangerous ground when he went on to discuss the Common Entrance Examination to the Public Schools. Up to about the end of last century, and perhaps for a few years longer, there was no such competition to get into the Public Schools as there is now. A boy was frequently accepted by a Public School on the accounts given of his work at his private school. The examination for which he had to sit when he arrived at the Public School was merely to decide in what division or form he should be placed. To-day entrance to the principal Public Schools is practically an affair of competition. Dr. Norwood does not forget, however, to point out that, as so much of the boy's future depends upon his success in the Entrance Examination, it is natural that at his private school he should be trained to answer as many questions as possible on a large variety of subjects as rapidly as possible. The _boys are made "to switch their small minds with accuracy from Genesis to Ivanhoe, from Henry VIII to the cause of rainfall. The bright boy finds it easy ; the average boy in many cases, and the dull boy in all cases, finds it terribly hard."
One of the results of this method which Dr. Norwood pillories is a handbook of mere cram. This book con- tains an analysis of all the past papers in the Common Entrance Examination. All the sovereigns of England are ranged in order according to the frequency of their occurrence—Queen Victoria ninety-seven times down to Edward V, who " failed to score." So, again, in English literature—Westward Ho ! occurs fourteen times, Idylls . of the King twenty-one times, but Rip Van Winkle and Jahn Gilpin only once each. Dr. Norwood's comment • is that it cannot be wondered at that at some private schools boys " read no authors but only do examina- tion papers, read no history but memorize names." He says that there is only one cure for such an intolerable system, and that is to abolish it. He lays it down as an educational axiom that there should never be any examination of a child under fifteen, except by his own teachers.
Dr. Norwood has the advantage of being a head- master of a Public School. The masters of private schools have another story to tell, and some of them have told it in letters to the Times. They say that the system which immediately preceded the Common Entrance Examination—the system which required the boy to present himself at a Public School for an entrance examination—was inconvenient and expensive. The present method was introduced as a help for both parentS and school-masters. It is said that the cramming of which Dr. Norwood complains applies to only two out of twelve or thirteen papers set in the Entrance Examina- tion, namely, history and literature. You cannot very well cram a boy, as one correspondent says, for an exami- nation in arithmetic, algebra or geometry, or in trans- lating Latin, Greek, French or German, or in geography as it is generally taught nowadays. Besides the cram book has been the laughing-stock of most private schools.
Let us venture our own comment. If examination papers can be so compactly analysed as in the cramming book to which Dr. Norwood refers, is there not some- thing wrong with the method of setting these papers ? Either this must be true or the book must be a travesty of the real significance of the examination. Certainly examination papers can be devised which give a very small opening for the products of cramming. Winchester does not accept the Common Entrance. Nothing, there- fore, seems to prevent Dr. Norwood from abolishing it at Harrow. Again, is there not room for more viva voce examinations ? We should not care to dogmatize on this point, as it is well known that some nervous children shrink from answering questions by word of mouth even more than they shrink from the sight of empty foolscap paper, and in any kind of examination by personal interview would be very unlikely to do themselves justice. On the other hand, an examiner worthy of the name could quickly discover whether the boy or girl was " serving up " cram or answering out of a properly trained intelligence.
Last of all, there is the point of view of the parent. We believe that when all has been said and done, there .is much support (as well as dislike) among parents for examinations. They say that examinations give the rewards of merit without favour,
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