Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/74

64 The necessity for producing results for the instruction of others, seems to me to be a more effectual check on these tendencies, than even the love of usefulness or the ambition for fame.

But supposing the professorial forces of our university to be duly organized, there remains an important question, relating to the teaching power, to be considered. Is the professorial system—the system, I mean, of teaching in the lecture-room alone, and leaving the student to find his own way when he is outside of the lecture-room—adequate to the wants of learners? In answering this question, I confine myself to my own province, and I venture to reply for physical science, assuredly and undoubtedly, No. As I have already intimated, practical work in the laboratory is absolutely indispensable, and that practical work must be guided and superintended by a sufficient staff of demonstrators, who are for science what tutors are for other branches of study. And there must be a good supply of such demonstrators. I doubt if the practical work of more than twenty students can be properly superintended by one demonstrator—if we take the working-day at six hours, that is, twenty minutes apiece—not a very large allowance of time for helping a dull man, for correcting an inaccurate one, or even for making an intelligent student clearly apprehend what he is about. And, no doubt, the supplying of a proper amount of this tutorial, practical teaching is a difficulty in the way of giving proper instruction in physical science in such universities as that of Aberdeen, which are devoid of endowments; and, unlike the English universities, have no moral claim on the funds of richly-endowed bodies to supply their wants.

Examination—thorough, searching examination—is an indispensable accompaniment of teaching; but I am almost inclined to commit myself to the very heterodox proposition that it is a necessary evil. I am a very old examiner, having, for some twenty years past, been occupied with examinations on a considerable scale, of all sorts and conditions of men, and women too—from the boys and girls of elementary schools, to the candidates for honors and fellowships in the universities. I will not say that, in this case, as in so many others, the adage that familiarity breeds contempt holds good; but my admiration for the existing system of examination, and its products, does not wax warmer as I see more of it. Examination, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master; and there seems to me to be some danger of its becoming our master. I by no means stand alone in this opinion. Experienced friends of mine do not hesitate to say that students whose career they watch, appear to them to become deteriorated by the constant effort to pass this or that examination, just as we hear of men's brains becoming affected by the daily necessity of catching a train. They work to pass, not to know; and outraged Science takes her revenge. They do pass, and they don't know. I have passed sundry examinations in my time, not without credit, and I confess I am