t is enough that they should know that their reports would
be scrutinized, to keep even the most reprobate of teachers from bearing
false witness in favor of their pupils.

Secondly, I believe that unnecessary temptation is now being placed before
all parties concerned in examinations. The proper reward for a good
examination should be honor, not pounds, shillings, and pence. The
mischief done by pecuniary rewards offered in the shape of scholarships
and exhibitions at school and University, begins to be recognized very
widely. To train a boy of twelve for a race against all England is
generally to overstrain his faculties, and often to impair his usefulness
in later life; but to make him feel that by his failure he will entail on
his father the loss of a hundred a year, and on his teacher the loss of
pupils, is simply cruel at that early age.

It is said that these scholarships and exhibitions enable the sons of poor
parents to enjoy the privilege of the best education in England, from
which they would otherwise be debarred by the excessive costliness of our
public schools. But even this argument, strong as it seems, can hardly
stand, for I believe it could be shown that the majority of those who are
successful in obtaining scholarships and exhibitions at school or at the
University are boys whose parents have been able to pay the highest price
for their children's previous education. If all these prizes were
abolished, and the funds thus set free used to lessen the price of
education at school and in college, I believe that the sons of poor
parents would be far more benefited than by the present system. It might
also be desirable to lower the school fees in the case of the sons of poor
parents, who were doing well at school from year to year; and, in order to
guard against favoritism, an examination, particularly _viva voce_, before
all the masters of a school, possibly even with some outside examiner,
might be useful. But the present system bids fair to degenerate into mere
horse-racing, and I shall not wonder if, sooner or later, the two-year
olds entered for the race have to be watched by their trainer that they
may not be overfed or drugged against the day of the race. It has come to
this, that schools are bidding for clever boys in order to run them in the
races, and in France, I read, that parents actually extort money from
schools by threatening to take away the young racers that are likely to
win the Derby.(17