rate?[24] They are
certainly not very interesting, and are, indeed, well fitted to disgust
pupils with the classical tongues. Sir William Ramsay of Aberdeen, in a
letter to the _Herald_ some time ago, spoke strongly on this subject.

Sir William says, with justice, that a teacher should teach his subject
without any thought of examination. Every teacher would like to do that
if he could. As a matter of fact, the secondary schoolmaster is forced
to become a crammer. He codifies the catch questions of previous
university preliminaries, excogitates similar weird lists of anomalies
and exceptions, and doses the pupils on such stuff instead of really
teaching the important parts of his subject. Experience seems to prove
that the most effective way of rendering a subject dry, uneducational,
and generally useless is to set examination papers on it. What can be
more outrageous and grotesque than the practice of setting
out-of-the-way questions because of the ease thus afforded to the
examiners in correcting the answers of the helpless and puzzled
candidates! Even though the questions set were plain and
straightforward, it would be absurd to suppose that an hour or two in an
examination hall could furnish sufficient data to pass or fail a
candidate.

It used to be the glory of our universities that an average college
class contained representatives of every grade of society in the land.
Professor Ramsay says it is not so now: the professors have become
pedagogic coaches, and the students grind rather than study. Sir William
assures us that many who would make good students are frightened away by
the preliminary examination. It would be interesting to know where these
latter go when they leave school. Do they rush off to business at once,
or do they proceed with their education in some extra-mural way? If they
can afford the time, the university is certainly the place for them. Let
the university gates be opened as wide as possible to all serious-minded
youths, and let it be remembered that it is not necessarily those who
sweat most over their books or take the highest honours that get most
good from attendance at the lectures.

It does not appear that, at present, our universities are adequately in
touch with the nation. The great commercial community of Glasgow does
not benefit nearly enough from having a famous seat of learning in its
midst. We might learn a lesson from the Sorbonne how best to nationalise
our universities.