may induce him to
undertake what he cannot accomplish, and may lead at last--owing to
his having lost touch with the actualities of things--to his complete
undoing.

And as under the prize system the child who is high in his class is
apt to over-estimate his ability, so the child who is low in his
class is apt to accept the verdict of the class-list as final, and to
regard himself as a failure because he lacks the superficial ability
which enables a child to shine on the examination day. Again and
again it happens that the dunce of his class goes to the front in the
battle of life. But numerous and significant as these cases are, they
are unfortunately exceptions to a general rule. For one dunce who
emerges from the depths of "apparent failure," there are ten who go
under after a more or less protracted struggle, and sink contentedly
to the bottom. The explanation of this is that though every child
has capacity (apart, of course, from the congenital idiot and the
mentally "defective"), there are many kinds of capacity which a
formal examination fails to discover, and which the education that
is dominated by the prize system fails to develop. The child whose
particular kind of capacity does not count, either in the ordinary
school lesson or on the examination day, is not aware that he is
capable; and as he is always low on the class-list, and is therefore
regarded by his teachers as dull and stupid, he not unnaturally
acquiesces in the current and apparently authoritative estimate, of
his powers, and, losing heart about himself, ends by becoming the
failure which he has been taught to believe himself to be. In brief,
while the prize system breeds ungrounded and therefore dangerous
self-esteem in the child whom it labels as bright, it breeds
ungrounded but not the less fatal self-distrust in the child whom
it labels as dull.

We have seen that there comes a time in the life of every man when
the fear of punishment ceases to act as a stimulus to educational
exertion. It is the same with the hope of reward. Examinations, and
the prizes which reward success in examinations, are for the young.
What will happen to the prize-winner when there are no more prizes
for him to compete for? Will he continue to pursue knowledge for its
own sake? Alas! he has never pursued it for its own sake. He has
pursued it for the sake of the prizes and other honours which it
brought him. When he has won his last prize the chances are that
he