Abstract
EXAMINATIONS, like fire and many other useful things within their proper limits, are good servants, but very tyrannous masters. It is excellent that knowledge should be tested; that men—and shall we say women—shall be found out for their souls' good if they innocently deceive themselves as to their acquirements, for the sake of the community if they assume knowledge they really do not possess. Unfortunately, what was once a means bids fair to become an end; and it is quite certain that a great deal of knowledge is acquired nowadays which finds its only use within the walls of the examination room. It is perhaps a law of human nature that those who have bitterly endured the harrow—not to suggest metaphorically another implement—are ever afterwards eager that all mankind should endure the same process with no feature of its asperity mitigated. In the Report of the Sub-committee of the Annual Committee of the Convocation of the University of London on the Examination and Inspection of Schools, this feeling makes itself curiously apparent:—
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The University of London and School Examinations . Nature 13, 261 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/013261a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/013261a0