rder of merit,"
to appeal to his vanity. Our educationalists have also taken care
that during the periods of childhood, adolescence, and even early
maturity, every prize that is offered for competition shall be
awarded after a formal examination and on the consideration of its
tabulated results. The appointments in the Home, Colonial, and Indian
Civil Services, the promotions in the Army and Navy, the fellowships
and scholarships at the Universities, the scholarships at the Public
Schools, the medals, books, and other prizes that are offered to
school-children, are all awarded to those who have distinguished
themselves in the corresponding examinations, no other qualification
than that of ability to shine in an examination being looked for in
the competitors. There are, no doubt, exceptions to these general
statements, but they are so few that they scarcely count. We have
seen that the ascendency of the examination system in our schools and
colleges is largely due to the vulgar confusion between information
and knowledge; and we have also seen that the examination system
reacts upon that fatal confusion and tends to strengthen and
perpetuate it. If, then, the effect of the prize system is to
consolidate the authority of the formal examination and intensify
its influence, we shall not go far wrong in assuming that in the
various competitions for prizes the confusion between information
and knowledge will play a vital part. And, in point of fact, the
cleverness which enables the child--I ignore for the moment the
adolescent and the adult student--to win prizes of various kinds is
found, when carefully analysed, to resolve itself, in nine cases out
of ten, into the ability to receive, retain, and retail information.
As this particular, ability is but a small part of that mental
capacity which education is supposed to train, it is clear that the
clever child who gets to the top of his class, and wins prizes in so
doing, may easily be led to over-estimate his powers, and to take
himself far more seriously than it is either right or wise of him to
do. His over-confidence may for a time prove an effective stimulus to
exertion; but the exertion will probably be misdirected; and later
on, when he finds himself confronted by the complex realities of
life, and when problems have to be solved which demand the exercise
of other faculties than that of memory, his belief in himself, which
is the outcome of a false criterion of merit,