If, however (as I presume to think), it is
useful, or if any education at all is useful, it must be tested by the
tests most likely to show whether the candidate possesses it or not.
To ascertain whether he has been well educated, he must be
interrogated in the things which he is likely to know if he has been
well educated, even though not directly pertinent to the work to which
he is to be appointed. Will those who object to his being questioned
in classics and mathematics, in a country where the only things
regularly taught are classics and mathematics, tell us what they would
have him questioned in? There seems, however, to be equal objection to
examining him in these, and to examining him in anything but these. If
the Commissioners- anxious to open a door of admission to those who
have not gone through the routine of a grammar school, or who make
up for the smallness of their knowledge of what is there taught by
greater knowledge of something else- allow marks to be gained by
proficiency in any other subject of real utility, they are
reproached for that too. Nothing will satisfy the objectors but free
admission of total ignorance.
* Not always, however, the most recondite; for a late denouncer of
competitive examination in the House of Commons had the naivete to
produce a set of almost elementary questions in algebra, history,
and geography, as a proof of the exorbitant amount of high
scientific attainment which the Commissioners were so wild as to
exact.
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