Abstract
THOSE who devote attention to educational questions are looking with interest for the publication of the new schedule for the Indian Civil Service competitions. But past experience of the Civil Service Commissioners, who are largely responsible for these matters, and on whom the various departments must chiefly rely for the carrying out of their ideas, causes the interest of many of us to be not unmixed with a considerable degree of anxiety lest there should be in this case a repetition the recent Woolwich and Sandhurst fiascos. Therefore, notwithstanding the favourable character of Sir John Gorst's recent reply to Sir Henry Roscoe, we hope that those at the Universities who are interested in the question, and the leaders in science, will not yet rest upon their oars, but that they will bring under the direct notice of the authorities at the India Office the present position of science studies at the Universities and the views that are held there on this important subject, in order that the latter, who we believe hold fair views upon the subject, may be in a position to judge of the fitness of any scheme that may be submitted to them and of its correspondence or the reverse with the present condition of higher education. We bring this subject again under the notice of our readers, partly because of its importance, and partly because in the new regulations for the India Forest Service we have recently been afforded a fresh example of the inability of those who are officially intrusted with these matters to properly estimate the requirements of the public services. These new regulations are, no doubt, better than those which they are intended to replace in several respects, notably so in that the absurd list of fourteen compulsory subjects by which this examination has hitherto been distinguished has now been abolished, and also in that the examinations will now run somewhat closely on the lines of the army competition—a change which will probably secure for them a wider field of candidates than they have hitherto had. But, considered as a method of selecting those who are most likely to do good work in a scientific profession, the scheme must be pronounced to be a failure, since it will neither insure the selection of the most promising men for the particular service required of them, nor, as many will think, encourage those who intend to compete to give themselves a really liberal education.
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The Indian Civil Service and the Indian Forest Service Competitions. Nature 42, 265–266 (1890). https://doi.org/10.1038/042265a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/042265a0