Abstract
SPEAKING as chairman of a meeting of the Associated Societies of Edinburgh University on Tuesday, Mr. Balfour ex pressed his views on examinations as follows:—I think the time is not very far back when the idea was prevalent that after all a University was little more than an examination machine for stamping a certain number of students with a hall-mark, in dicating that they had satisfied a certain number of examiners, and that they possessed a certain amount of knowledge on a certain amount of subjects. But that idea belongs to the past, and everybody who realises how the University machinery may do the work of higher education in the country has long recognised that the University to be at its best must not be an examining University merely or particularly, but what is wanted is a teaching University. I do not wish to overstate the case against examinations. I have always insisted that they are a necessity. They are evils, necessary evils, evils which no skill on the part of the examiner, no dexterity on the part of those responsible for University organisation, could wholly remove.
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University and Educational Intelligence. Nature 58, 634 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058634a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058634a0