h case on the result of an oral examination conducted
by H.M. Inspector, the employment of a written test in any class
being strictly forbidden by "My Lords." In this examination proof
of the possession of information was all that the inspector could
demand; and the quickest and easiest way of obtaining such proof
was to ask the class questions which could be briefly answered by
the children individually. Questions which were designed to test
intelligence might, of course, have been asked, and in some districts
were freely asked; but to have reduced the grant because the children
failed to answer these would have provoked an outcry; while, had the
inspector asked questions which demanded long answers, he would, in
the limited time at his command, have given but few children the
chance of showing that they had been duly prepared for the
examination. The consequence was that the oral lesson on a "class
subject" usually took the form of stuffing the children with pellets
of appropriate information, some of which they would, in all
probability, have the opportunity of disgorging when they were
questioned by the inspector on the yearly "parade day."

Not only, then, did the official examination in history, geography
and elementary science direct the teaching of these subjects into
channels in which the golden opportunities that they offer for the
practice of written composition were perforce thrown away, but also
the examination was so framed that even the practice of oral
composition, in preparation for it, was actively discouraged. And the
neglect of composition acted disastrously on the teaching of the
subjects in question; for wherever self-expression on the part of the
child is forbidden, the appropriate "sense," or perceptive faculty,
cannot possibly evolve itself,--perception and expression being, as
we have elsewhere seen, the very life and soul of each other; and in
the absence (to take pertinent examples) of the historical or the
geographical sense, the possession of historical or geographical
information cannot possibly be converted into knowledge of history
or geography. The prompt, accurate, and general answering which was
rewarded by the award of the higher grants for "class subjects" was,
in nine cases out of ten, the outcome of assiduous and unintelligent
cram,--a mode of preparation for which the policy of the Education
Department was mainly responsible.

But when separate grants ceased to be paid for cla