On educational reform, school museums, and the feeding of school children : a lecture delivered in Clifford's Inn 1905 / by Jonathan Hutchinson.

  • Hutchinson, Jonathan, Sir, 1828-1913.
Date:
[1905?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On educational reform, school museums, and the feeding of school children : a lecture delivered in Clifford's Inn 1905 / by Jonathan Hutchinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    student and teacher for the most part untram- melled by curricula. An element of most vexatious uncertainty at present attaches to all our public examinations. The candidate’s chances are left to depend far too much upon the personality—I had almost said the caprices and prejudices—of the examiner. Nor does a knowledge of their scope afford to the student that assistance in guiding his studies which they might, I cannot but believe, easily be made to give. Take away from the examiner all right to ask extemporised questions. Prepare and print lists of carefully considered questions in all branches of knowledge, and let these be published and obtain- able by all students. The questions should be brief, explicit, and admitting of brief, definite answers. They should be such as would enable the candidate to display his knowledge or reveal his ignorance in very few words, often perhaps in a single one. These lists of questions would not be of the nature of catechisms, for they would give no answers and would convey no information excepting in so far as a well-stated interrogatory may often serve to re- arrange facts already known and place them in a clearer light. On each several subject these lists of questions would be adapted to different ages and different stages of education ; some would be quite elementary, others might go deeply into the topics concerned. 1 he advantages claimed for restricting the examiner to the use of prearranged questions are : (i) that by so doing a nearer approach to uniformity in the results of examinations conducted at different places and by different bodies would be obtainable,