Competitive examinations
are used for two purposes. At school and college they give a stimulus to study
by rewarding with reputation, prizes, and scholarships, those who show that
they have learned most. They are also used in the selection of officers for the
military and civil services. Looking at them from an educational point of view,
everyone must allow that they have a wonderful effect in encouraging hard work.
Many boys who, without the stimulus of competition, would refuse to take any
interest in their lessons, pursue their studies with the greatest industry if
the hope of surpassing their rivals. In this way they are induced to expend
upon their work the energy which otherwise they would display only in their
games. Only a few students love knowledge for her own sake. The majority seek knowledge as a means of
success in life, or as a possession which will give them the pleasure of
triumphing over their associates. Success in life is too distant an object to
influence powerful young schoolboys, so that in their case desire of the
reputation to be gained in competitive examinations is a much stronger motive.
When they grow older and approach the time when they will have to make their
own way in the world, the necessity of study as a preparation for success in
life becomes more apparent: but, to the very last the prospect of success in
competitive examinations is a great encouragement to hard study. e en when the
student has no reason to expect that a high place in the list will be a
recommendation to some appointment he wishes to obtain.
Thus competitive
examinations do good service in the encouragement of study. They are not,
however, without their accompanying disadvantages. In some cases competition is
such an excessively powerful stimulus that it leads to over—work and the ruin
of the physical health of too ambitious students. There is also a serious danger
of harm to the moral character. In a competitive examination the successful
candidate gains honor at the expense of his defeated rival. Owning to this fact
unrestricted competition is apt to encourage selfishness, and extinguish the
kindly feeling which ought to exist between young students at school and
college. In such struggles for success the competitors are tempted to stoop to
actual dishonesty. And it too often happens that they yield to the temptation.
These are grave dangers. Against which it is the duty of the teacher to do his
best to defend his pulps but in spite of their gravity the competitive system
is no necessary’ for efficient education that it could not he abandoned without
ruinous results,
As a means of testing fitness for
government service. Competitive examinations are so on the whole most-serviceable.
it is objected against the Civil Service and other such examinations, that
those who take a high place in the list are often mere bookworms, destitute of
energy and practical ability. This may
be admitted to be true in certain number of cases, but the admission merely
amounts to this, that the system of selection by competitive examinations is. Like
almost e cry thing else in the world, imperfect: that it sometimes admits the worse
and rejects the better man among the candidates. It is. However. Quite certain
that a large majority of the successful candidates in a competitive examination
are superior to those who have failed. Clearness in mastering languages. Literature
and science is. As a rule associated with general ability and the accurate of
difficult books is a proof either of great intellectual ability or else of
determined industry, which is as useful a qualification in a government servant
as intellectual ability.
Thus, on the whole, the
best men come to the front in competitive examinations; and. until a better
system of selection is devised, the competitive system should be retained. At
present the only alternative seems to be selection by patronage. Which is far
more likely to admit incapable men into the public service, and is pen to other
serious objections.