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CHAPTER V.

BRAIN COMPETITION AND ITS RESULTS.

BUT the evil results of the competitive brain-examination system are by no means limited to their action upon the health and vigour of the particular boys who compete.

Even though we pass over the widespread national wretchedness, which is the undoubted consequence of our blind devotion to the principle of universal competition, and confine ourselves to the consequences of brain-competition at schools, we may well adopt an expression used in 1883 by the President of the Health Department in the Social Science Congress, and say— "Competition has become a plague-spot." It certainly has become so in schools.

I believe that many a headmaster is, whether he is conscious of it or not, prevented from introducing many a wholesome reform into his school, owing to the sense of the oppressive presence of the competitive examinations and competition generally. Unless some other

"historical star of the first magnitude"(as Dean Stanley once told me he considered Dr Arnold to be) "swims into our ken," schoolmasters must unite their comparatively feeble individual strength against this deadly foe to all natural and healthy development of a schoolboy's faculties. For (to confine the question within some reasonable limits), as things stand at present, we are in danger of allowing ourselves to regard a boy mainly from the point of view of a prospective competitivebrain-examinee, and to regulate our school arrangements accordingly.

Now, supposing examinations were such as they ought to be, and every boy in a school (with of course the necessary exceptions of boys abnormally constituted) were expected to come up to a certain qualifying standard of mental and physical proficiency combined, I for one should regard such a stimulus as a most salutary one both to schoolmasters and schoolboys. For we should be stimulated respectively to produce and to become men that should possess all those characteristics which go to form happy individuals and happy societies, great men and great nations. Indirectly, though perhaps with a nearer approach to directness than many of us think, we should be stimulated to the attainment of much that may seem to the superficial observer to be outside the present subject.

Who among us could impose a limit on the upward reach of a State enactment, which required that every

boy should give public evidence of possessing, not a brain more disproportionately developed than his neighbour's, but a robust and healthy mind in a robust and healthy body?

While it certainly is true that no State legislation on the subject of examinations can make a nation moral, yet it is true that a nation can be helped to be moral by such means, and can be almost forced to be healthy. Further, it is certain that State enactments on this subject of examinations can (and do with us) force many members of the community to be unhealthy, and can encourage multitudes to be immoral. For some of the meanest qualities in humanity, and some of the qualities which bring with them much misery to their possessors, are directly fostered by the system of Stateencouraged competition. And its mischievous effects are evident in schools, in all kinds of ways.1

1 One of my friends, who has helped me much by his criticisms and suggestions, tells me that he thinks I have laid too much stress upon competition, as though the great mischief lay there. He instances some of the medical examinations, which, though merely qualifying for most candidates, are so severe that not more than half the original candidates finally qualify. But this is surely exactly what is desirable in all examinations. The object of an examination ought to be to test whether the candidate possesses the qualities and the acquirements requisite for the proper discharge of the particular duties which he aspires to fulfil. And in no profession is it, I should suppose, more desirable that a high standard should be maintained than in the profession of medicine. Let the qualifying standard be high enough to exclude all who are not fitted for the par

It is, at least, partly responsible for the existence of a custom which prevails in a few of the oldest and most influential schools. I mean the monstrous custom of limiting the selection of masters to those who have obtained a first class at Oxford or Cambridge. It is not as though the headmasters of these schools, having, as they have, the pick of the market, need never go further down the list than the first class, for that the best schoolmasters are sure to be found there. This is by no means true. I certainly hold it to be true that a firstclass man, other things being equal, is better than a second-class man. Taking the thing in the rough, he will have the better intellect, and is thus certainly to be preferred to the second-class man.

But what if other things are not equal? What if it is a fact that a headmaster, by imposing upon himself this first-class limit, is occasionally rendering it impossible for himself to admit as a member of his staff a man who has notoriously proved himself to possess extraordinary powers, a man who would be a tower of strength to the school into which he was introduced? But he has not taken a first, nor a second perhaps, nor even a third. And so he cannot be admitted.

If this foolish and mischievous custom were limited, and likely to be limited, to a few of the old schools, it would not be so necessary to allude to it. But unfor

ticular work they will have to do. But this is a very different principle from that of mere competition.

tunately some of the younger schools also are beginning to adopt it, and it is actually finding its way down to the Preparatory Schools. The headmaster of one of these schools, who had been very successful in passing his boys high into various Public Schools, lately told me, with an accent of pride, that he had never had a master with a lower degree than a second class!

But what is the natural tendency of all this? It tends, first of all, to discourage from entering the scholastic profession every young man, whatever be his force of character and his force of brain, who has not succeeded in taking a first class. For he knows that certain schools are absolutely closed to him, and that nearly all the good schools will look askance at him.

There is, of course, no doubt whatever that force of character usually goes along with force of intellect, and that the man or boy who has not the average amount of brains has rarely the average amount of character. On the other hand, there is no reason whatever for supposing that physique and character are in any way related to one another. It stands to reason that the first-class man has usually more intellectual force than the secondclass man, and is, therefore, other things being equal, to be preferred to him. But I believe that other things are often not equal. For his excessive devotion to bookwork, year after year, in many cases from early boyhood, has frequently had the most disastrous effects upon the first-class man. He has had little time, and has often