Examinations for degrees
at the two great Universities have generally been as slender in
their requirements as those for honours are trying and serious.
Where there is no inducement to exceed a certain minimum, the
minimum comes to be the maximum: it becomes the general practice not
to aim at more, and as in everything there are some who do not
attain all they aim at, however low the standard may be pitched, there
are always several who fall short of it. When, on the contrary, the
appointments are given to those, among a great number of candidates,
who most distinguish themselves, and where the successful
competitors are classed in order of merit, not only each is stimulated
to do his very utmost, but the influence is felt in every place of
liberal education throughout the country. It becomes with every
schoolmaster an object of ambition, and an avenue to success, to
have furnished pupils who have gained a high place in these
competitions; and there is hardly any other mode in which the State
can do so much to raise the quality of educational institutions
throughout the country.
Though the principle of competitive examinations for public
employment is of such recent introduction in this country, and is
still so imperfectly carried out, the Indian service being as yet
nearly the only case in which it exists in its completeness, a
sensible effect has already begun to be produced on the places of
middle-class education; notwithstanding the difficulties which the
principle has encountered from the disgracefully low existing state of
education in the country, which these very examinations have brought
into strong light.
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