Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/814

Rh 778 EXAMINATIONS bj settled by an appeal to the Bible or Aristotle, a habit of looking to authority was engendered. We may catch sight of analogous evils in the examination system ; for under this the points that are most likely to yield questions are the most studied. The .tvo plans are only different ways in which the student may make a display of the powers or the knowledge he has acquired. We may observe that disputa tions bring out &quot;powers,&quot; such as ease of expression in Latin, quickness in logical fence, and fertility of resource, more thoroughly than they do actual knowledge ; they are better adapted for &quot; Arts &quot; than for sciences. Each member of the &quot; faculty &quot; had a right of putting questions to the candidate for admission into it in addition to that of formally opposing him in his &quot;Act,&quot; and this was freely exercised. This was the germ of the examination, which has since developed itself in England, and displaced the disputation. The transition from disputations to ex aminations took place in England during the 18th century, and it can be clearly traced at Cambridge, where the com petitive system first attracted notice, from the eclat attaching to the : tripos list &quot; and the senior wranglership. The name &quot; tripos &quot; has given rise to various strange guesses ; the facts are as follows. For the appointment of some univer sity officers, and for settling precedency, a list of those who took their B.A. degree was drawn out in older of priority of admission. This rule of priority was originally deter mined by favour ; it was a piece of patronage belonging to the &quot;moderators,&quot; who presided at the acts, and the proctors ; afterwards it was settled according to the perform ances of the candidates at the acts, and eventually by the results of an examination in mathematics and natural philosophy. The day when these bachelors were inaugurated was called the &quot; tripos &quot; day, because on that occasion one of the old bachelors was appointed to take his place on a stool, and to dispute with the new bachelors. It was his business to make sport by a kind of mock disputation, and he was allowed much licence in his remarks. He was called &quot; the bachelor of the stool &quot; or &quot; tripos,&quot; and the day was called &quot;the tripos day.&quot; The list of names was called the tripos list, and it is probably owing to this need that there was for an order of seniority that the Cambridge tripos list came to be arranged in order of merit. The subjects of discussion were originally taken chiefly from Aristotle ; but soon after the publication of Newton s Prntdpia it became usual to take one at least of ths three questions which the candidate had to maintain from that work ; a second was frequently taken from Newton s Optics, and a third from ethical philosophy. The authorities, we fir.d, endeavoured in vain to prevent ethics from being thrust aside, ami Lo maintain something like respectability in the Latin. Interest was concentrated on the mathemati cal subjects, three-fourths of them belonging to what we should call mathematical physics. These subjects couU not be dealt with thoroughly in a disputation, and therefore the moderators adopted the plan of giving out questions which were answered in English. This eventually led to printed papers of questions being given, and in 1838 all vestige of the &quot;Act&quot; for the B.A. degree disappeared, although it was retained for a time in divinity, law, and medicine. ^ The history of the tripos serves to bring into relief different views as to the end which an examination is meant to serve. Originally it was intended to guide men so that they might learn what was thought best for them, and in the best way; this was the educational view. But colleges had fellowships to dispose of, and the tripos list furnished a ready gauge of merit for the purpose. This made it incumbent on the moderators to exercise rigorous im partiality ; and great pains were taken to secure fairness and to judge rightly. A list in order of merit would hardly have approved itself to public opinion in the way the tripos list did, but for the fact that the examination was almost entirely on one subject, and that a subject which admits jf questions being set of every shade of difficulty, and for which there is a definite right and wrong. If several sub jects had been combined, or if, as was the case at Oxford, the ethical element had been allowed to preponderate, the results could not have been so accurately weighed, there would have been room for difference of opiuicu, and ihe only safe course would have been to distribute the names alphabetically in several classes, or in a few classes containing wide brackets, which is nearly the same thing. The most important change in an educational direction was effected by the influence of Dr Whcwell in 1848. He introduced a compulsory examination of adequate length in the elementary subjects, especially elementary natural philosophy; this checked the practice of reading &quot;scia^s&quot; of the higher subjects. The old educational party aimed at turning out men in the most effective condition for the ordinary struggles of life, while a later party sought to turn out mathematicians to supply the demands of the scientific world. In the old times the notion was that the senior wrangler would go to the bar, or stay at Cambridge and follow an academical career ; now his destination is very commonly a professorship in Scotland or Ireland, or in the colonies. Hence the course at Cambridge has been made to include a technically scientific as well as an educational training ; and it has been thereby so much extended that the amount to be carried into the tripos is excessive. As the whole cannot be read in the three years allotted, the tripos no longer affords a fair field for all those who collect together as freshmen, as it did forty years ago. A very high place can hardly be hoped for now unless much ground has been got over before admission to the university. This point has attracted notice, and changes are about to be made (1878). Before considering other methods, it will be well to take a general view of the action of examinations. First, it may be observed that the employment of examinations rapidly spreads. An examination at a school may at first be confined to a few subjects ; it is then found that the rest are neglected, and however ill suited they are for examination, they must be brought in somehow. Again, if certain boys or classes are being prepared for an examin ation, the others think that they may take their ease, because they are not going to be examined, and the thoughts and interests of the teachers will commonly turn to those who have to prepare for this ordeal. Moreover, if some professions are guarded by an examination, those which are not so will become the resort of the dunces. Hence when examinations are once started they spread in all direc tions. It is found that some branches of study arc better suited for examination than others; and something more must be said as to the fitness of different classes of subjects for this purpose. Certain studies endow the pupil with the faculty of doing something he could not do before, such as that of translating foreign languages, or of solving mathe matical problems; and there are others, like history, which though they may add greatly to the wealth of the man s mind, yield no such definite faculty or technical dexterity. We can test the possession of the first sort of acquirement directly, by calling on the student to put in practice the powers he is expected to have acquired. But with respect to the latter we can only ascertain that he recollects some portions of what he has prepared. By choosing these por tions judiciously, we can tell whether the student has care fully studied, the subject, and linked the various parts of it together, but we cannot make sure of the permanency of this knowledge. Young men used to examiuatioL ,vi!l pick uj: