lf when there is no longer a teacher at his elbow to tell him
what to do and how to do it, and to stand over him (should this be
necessary) while he does it? Why should he go on with studies which
he has neither the inclination nor the ability to pursue, and
which, in point of fact, he has never really begun? And why should he
continue to exert himself when, owing to his being at last beyond the
reach of punishment, the need for him to do so--the only need which
he has been accustomed to regard as imperative--has ceased to exist?

The objections to the hope of reward as a motive to educational
effort are of another kind. Prizes, as I have said, are for the few;
and it is the consciousness of being one of the elect which invests
the winning of a prize with its chief attraction. The prize system
makes a direct appeal to the vanity and egoism of the child. It
encourages him to think himself better than others, to pride himself
on having surpassed his class-mates and shone at their expense. The
clever child is to work hard, not because knowledge is worth winning
for its own sake and for his own sake, but because it will be
pleasant for him to feel that he has succeeded where others have
failed. It is a just reproach against the examination system that
while, by its demand for outward results it does its best to destroy
individuality, the essence of which is sincerity of expression, it
also does its best to foster individualism, by appealing, with its
offer of prizes and other "distinctions," to those instincts which
predispose each one of us to affirm and exalt that narrow,
commonplace, superficial aspect of his being which he miscalls his
_self_.

Thus the hope of reward tends to demoralise the clever child by
making an appeal to basely selfish motives. At the same time it is
probably deluding him with the belief that he has more capacity than
he really has. If the examination system is, as I have suggested, the
keystone of the arch of Western education, it is by means of the
prize system that the keystone has been firmly cemented into its
place. An examination which had no rewards or distinctions to offer
to the competitors would not be an effective stimulus to exertion.
That being so, our educationalists have taken care that to every
examination some external reward or rewards shall be attached. Even
if there are no material prizes to appeal to the child's cupidity,
there is always the class-list, with its so-called "o