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the same state. The examination system flourishes best where there is
no genuine desire for mental cultivation. If there were any widespread
enthusiasm for knowledge as an integral part of life the revolt
against this mechanical and commercialised system of testing results
would be universal. As things are, a clever boy trains for an
examination as he trains for a race; and goes out of training as fast
as possible when it is over. Meanwhile the romance of his life is
centred in those more generous and less individual competitions in the
green fields, which our schools and universities have developed to
such perfection. In classes which have small opportunities for
physical exercises, vicarious athletics, with not a little betting,
are a disastrous substitute. But the soul is dyed the colour of its
leisure thoughts. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." This is
why no change in the curriculum can do much for education, as long as
the pupils imbibe no respect for intellectual values at home, and find
none among their school-fellows. And yet the capacity for real
intellectual interest is only latent in most boys. It can be kindled
in a whole class by a master who really loves and believes in his
subject. Some of the best public school teachers in the last century
were hot-tempered men whose disciplinary performances were ludicrous.
But they were enthusiastic humanists, and keen scholars passed year by
year out of their class-rooms.

The importance of a good curriculum is often exaggerated. But a bad
selection of subjects, and a bad method of teaching them, may condemn
even the best teacher to ineffectiveness. Nothing, for example, can
well be more unintelligent than the manner of teaching the classics in
our public schools. The portions of Greek and Latin authors construed
during a lesson are so short that the boys can get no idea of the book
as a whole; long before they finish it they are moved up into another
form. And over all the teaching hangs the menace of the impending
examination, the riddling Sphinx which, as Seeley said in a telling
quotation from Sophocles, forces us to attend to what is at our feet,
neglecting all else--all the imponderables in which the true value of
education consists. The tyranny of examinations has an important
influence upon the choice of subjects as well as upon the manner of
teaching them; for some subjects, which are remarkably stimulating to
the mind of the pupil, are neglecte