Page:Thirty years' progress in female education.djvu/17

13 And it should be the constant aim of teachers to counteract by the spirit and tone of their teaching all that there is in this system to over-stimulate the mind, to present knowledge as a means of getting marks, or to promote ungenerous feeling. But it ought not to be impossible to use examinations without abusing them. To dispense with them would be no security for the preservation of the higher spirit of study. An examination is a guide to both teacher and pupil; it serves as a convenient goal; it is the only available test of diligence and sound knowledge; it applies a constant stimulus to flagging industry. With all its defects and dangers—and I think I am not insensible to them—a system of examination seems to me indispensable as instrumental machinery for the education of the many.

It has been a distinction of Queen's College from the first that no prizes have been offered to its students, except a very few scholarships which have been thrown open to competition. It was characteristic of Mr. Maurice that he was inclined to look down upon prizes as offering bribes to lower motives than those to which he delighted to appeal. The precedent of doing without prizes was set in his time, and it has been followed since as a rule of the College. We are most of us so implicated in the prize-giving system, that it would be inconsistent in us to disapprove of prizes at Queen's College as a matter of principle. Mr. Maurice himself did not refuse to distribute prizes elsewhere and to congratulate the receivers of them. I do not feel that we are pledged not to entertain the question of giving prizes, such as books or medals, at the College. We are pledged, as Mr. Maurice would have reminded us, to the cultivation of a higher spirit, not to any rule or custom. But I am glad to think that the want of prizes has never been felt amongst us. Our girls are for the most part so willing to work, that there is more need to caution them against overwork than to rouse their energies by any stimulus. It may be a little disappointing to some of them to hear of nice prizes won elsewhere, by girls as well as boys, and to go home at the end of each year empty-handed; but we certainly do not want to urge our best pupils to increased exertion, and it is not proposed that we should make any change in our custom with regard to prizes.

But success in an examination, as proved by marks or a certificate, is of the nature of an honorary prize, and Queen's