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CHAPTER IV.

BRAIN COMPETITION.

BUT the same danger arises also from a cause which is, as things stand at present, only to some extent within a schoolmaster's control. I allude to the pressure put upon him to pass boys straight from school for the various public competitive examinations. And here the schoolmaster's dilemma is very real and very perplexing. It is this:" Shall I encourage the boy to work much harder than I know to be good for his health (as he will have to do if he is to stand any chance of competing successfully), and so sacrifice the greatest of all principles that should guide a schoolmaster, the principle of the harmonious and contemporaneous development of all a boy's faculties; or shall I refuse to give up this principle, and so force him to leave school just at the time when he is getting most good from a wide and healthy education there,-just, that is, when the assumption of various duties and responsibilities is be

ginning to fit him for rightly facing and discharging the manifold duties and responsibilities of life?"

This is a terrible dilemma for a schoolmaster to be placed in; and his difficulty is increased in proportion to the strength with which he believes in his principles. For his principles are to him no mere dry theories. They are nothing to him, excepting in so far as they have to do with the flesh and the blood, the mind and the spirit of the boys for the training of whose lives and character he is mainly responsible, and who are to him an object of such interest as can be realised by no one but an earnest schoolmaster. And now he must either publicly give the lie to one of the most essential of these, and allow some of his boys to enfeeble their health and vigour by an excessive application of their brains to a certain number of books; or he must dismiss them altogether from school, where at least much that is healthy would surround them, to spend a year or two of the best portion of their lives, handed over to the most extreme form of a mischievous and cruel system-the system of "cramming."

What is to be done? The boy and his parents both naturally desire that the examination should be passed. Must the schoolmaster keep him at school and let him be subjected to a course of cramming, which is a kind of mild imitation of the real thing, as practised elsewhere; or must he refuse to cram him himself, and send him away to some one else, from whom he will

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get the genuine article? Must he dismiss him to a "crammer "?

I certainly have no solution of the problem to offer, whilst things remain as they are. But I feel so keenly the injury that is being done to boys by the system of public competitive examinations, as at present existing, that on the possible chance of directing attention to what is such a poisonous element in education, I must go further into the subject.

The criticism that has been directed against the results of the system of State Competitive Examination has, I believe, been of comparatively little service, owing, first, to its usual want of particularity; and secondly, to the fact that it accepts the present state of things as a national necessity, and makes no serious suggestions for a radical reconstruction of the present system. It makes a wry face, but it swallows the mixture.

I shall select one special State Competitive Examination, and any criticisms and suggestions I may have to make will be confined to it. And this must, almost of necessity, be the Indian Civil Service Examination. For of all the great brain-competitions, the great National Examination races, this is the Grand Prix, the Blue Ribbon. Needy or ambitious parents, plodding or precocious boys, alike turn their eyes to it. As well batter down the outworks and leave the walls and citadel standing, as attack all other examinations and leave this unassailed.

Is it then possible for a boy to be prepared at school for this examination as at present conducted, and at the same time to lead a healthy and vigorous life? Is it possible for a schoolmaster, in the treatment of such a boy, to avoid sacrificing those principles which are, or ought to be, so dear to him?

I do not for a moment blame any schoolmaster who, finding himself in this dilemma, deliberately elects, on the ground of the boy's total welfare, to keep him at school, and prepare him there for the examination. But I do most earnestly enter my protest against the assumption that this is not a compromise with the enemy. It may be dictated by wisdom, and may be the best way out of the difficulty, but it is a compromise.

Say what we will, it is, I believe, quite certain that any boy, not possessed of most unusually exceptional capacities, who passes the Indian Civil Service Examination straight from school, has, in order to do so, done violence to the principles of education which must prevail at any school, where its members are to be robust and healthy. He must have worked his brain to a dangerous excess, have sailed very close to the wind. For I believe that those skilful and successful teachers who have reduced the preparation for such examinations to a fine art, and have been rewarded for doing so by receiving the significant sobriquet of "crammers," know pretty well what they are about; and that the closer we approximated to their system, the better chance

should we have of passing our boys straight from school.

What, then, is their system?

I shall give an example of a year's life led by a boy whilst preparing for the examination, under the direction of a very skilful and successful "crammer." I had my information direct from the boy himself and from his mother, who was living with her son at the time.

The boy had everything in his favour. He, if any one, could stand a year's severe strain. He was emphatically tough, both in mind and body. He had lived a very healthy and vigorous life at school, and was a firstrate athlete. Moreover, he had unconsciously given himself the best chance of successfully resisting a very severe and protracted mental strain. For it had not occurred to him to go in for any severe examination until within about a year previous to the time that he did actually go in for this examination. He had consequently been saved much anxiety, much mental wear and tear. He had been in the Sixth Form for a considerable time; but, while by no means allowing his mental faculties to be idle, he certainly had not been conspicuous for special brain-application.

Suddenly he determined to go in for the Indian Civil Service Examination, and bent the whole force of his. brain and of his will (and the force of each was exceptionally great) to the attainment of his object. For a year he worked very hard, but still lived a fairly healthy