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amination for Junior Optimes from the examination for Higher Mathematical Honours, and making the former take place, and have its result decided, before the latter is entered upon.

263 It appears to me that this plan might also be made to remove an inconvenience sometimes complained of, that the classical candidate cannot know beforehand whether he will be admitted to be a competitor or not, since he may fail in his attempts to obtain the requisite mathematical honour. If the plan were adopted which I have suggested, this inconvenience would be removed or alleviated. The Examination for Junior Optimes might terminate at the end of the Michaelmas term, and its result be declared by the 16th of December. The Examination for the Classical Tripos begins on the fifth Monday in Lent Term; and therefore the interval would be above two months; and for those who were not candidates for Mathematical Honours, a time entirely uninterrupted by University requirements. This would be as long a time as ought to be given to the mere preparation for an examination; which is an employment, as we have already said, not altogether beneficial to the mind (149).

264 The plan, therefore, of an Examination for Junior Optimes, ending with the end of the Michaelmas term, and extending, as to the viva voce part of it, through that term, appears to have many recommendations. I do not think it would be difficult to put it in such a shape as to make it entirely consistent with the Statutes of the University and the other parts of the University System; and, when it is recollected how recently it has ceased to be the business of the Moderators to preside over vivá voce exercises during the greater part of the year, it cannot be considered a startling innovation to wish to revive this during one term in each year.

SECT. 3. Of Private Tuition at Cambridge.

265 The prevalence of Private Tuition, in a manner which interferes with the Public Tuition of Colleges, has already been noticed as one of the evils resulting from a system of mere examinations (154). When there is a tendency to such a state of things, so that its inconveniences become manifest, it is natural that those who are the guardians of the constitution of the University and of its Colleges, should endeavour to repress the practice which thus interferes with the beneficial influences of the established system. With this object, the University may prohibit candidates for honours from reading with a Private Tutor during the latter part of their studies; and may thus teach them that their stores of knowledge, however accumulated at first, are to be appropriated by their own proper acts of thought, before they are fit to be offered as claims for honours. Such measures have been adopted by the University of Cambridge, as we shall see.

266 Or again; Colleges may impose restrictions upon the reading of their pupils with Private Tutors, which shall disarm such reading of its evils. Private Tuition, employed in harmony with, and in subordination to a course of progressive literature and science, of which the scheme is determined by Public Lectures and Examinations which the pupil has to attend, may be a valuable element in our Educational system; and, under such conditions, is to be encouraged in many instances, as I have already intimated (124). On the other hand, Private Tuition not duly limited may, as we have seen, tend to supersede the operations of Colleges altogether. It may, for instance, grow up into a regular and permanent scheme, occupying the vacations of College Lectures; and in such a scheme, it might become a practice of the students, to prepare themselves for the Examinations in the periods of

vacation, and to pass in social amusements the periods assigned to College Lectures. The tendency to such a state of things requires to be guarded against in the administration of the Colleges.

267 But all measures having for their object the repression of Private Tuition should be devised and carried into effect with great caution and tenderness; since they must, more or less, make the University, or the College, appear to look with an unfriendly aspect upon a body of able, learned, and estimable men; for such, the persons most sought as Private Tutors will usually be. Moreover, such measures seem as if they tended to repress the zeal for study, and the love of distinction, which impel pupils to seek for this assistance; and hence, they are likely to fail in obtaining that general sympathy without which laws can hardly be effectually enforced.

268 The excessive prevalence of Private Tuition is, as we have seen, not the source, but the symptom of the evil. In a system entirely governed by examinations, men are naturally led to rest their main dependance on Private Tutors;-still more, if these are mere paper examinations, the answers being unpublished (156) ;-still more, if the examiners be a rapidly changing body (157):-and still more, if the same persons can, within a short interval of time, discharge the office of Private Tutors and Examiners. And the remedies which I have to propose for the evil, are contained in what I have already said. They are, a definite and progressive System of Studies in the Colleges, occupying the earlier part of the Student's University residence ;-a Standard Course of Permanent Studies for the Lower University Honours, and of Progressive Studies for the Higher Honours; each of these courses to be drawn up and revised from time to time by a body having in it permanent as well as rapidly mutable elements;-a vivá voce examination

making part of the examination for the Lower Honours; and the publication (I do not mean the printing, but the public exposition) of some of the best answers. I think that these measures would tend to limit the practice of reading with Private Tutors, so far as it is desirable that the practice should be limited. I think too that the same measures would, as I have already attempted to show, tend to restore to our educational system some of its beneficial influences which have of late been impaired.

[268] In thus urging that a greater publicity should be given to our examinations, I shall not, I trust, be by any person so entirely misunderstood, as to be supposed to imply that there is in them at present any want of fairness and impartiality. I can repeat with pleasure what I formerly said*. "The University of Cambridge is proud, and with much justice, of the acknowledged purity of her examinations. They are free from all taint of sinister practices; above partiality and the suspicion of partiality." The change which I suggest, is recommended as a matter, not of justice, but of improved polity;-not as an improvement in the administration, but in the system. And in this view, I believe such changes would produce the beneficial effects I pointed to; and among the rest would remove, if not the dependance upon Private Tutors, at least that blind and universal dependance which impairs the value of our University Education.

269 I have intimated that the University has already legislated with a view to the suppression of evils produced by Private Tuition. At one time, this appears to have been done on the ground of its being necessary that the examinations should be above suspicion. The fact of Moderators examining their own pupils, might readily give rise to partiality, real or

* University Education, p. 56.

supposed. The first Grace on this subject, so far as I am aware, is the following; and its penalties are directed against Tutors who, when they are about to be Moderators, take Private Pupils who are about to be candidates.

1777. Jun. 21. "Cum Academiæ maximè intersit in examinationibus publicis Sophistarum æqui justique rationem tum haberi diligentissimê, tum habitam liquido patere;

"Placeat vobis Ne cui unquam qui hisce examinationibus præfuerit post diem primum sequentis Termini, in Tutelam suam privatam liceat ad docendum recipere Juvenem ullum, qui proximis sit Comitiis Gradum Baccalaurei in Artibus suscepturus; Quod si quis contra hoc Decretum peccaverit ab officio suo prorsus amoveatur."

270 Notwithstanding this Grace, it would appear that the practice gained ground in the University; for the next Grace speaks of it as almost universal among the Sophs.

1781. Jan. 25. "Cum mos nuper in Academiâ invaluerit ut

unusquisque fere Sophistarum aliquem sibi auxilii causâ inter studia quæ ad Gradum Baccalaureatûs in Artibus spectant sub privati Tutoris nomine asciscat, non sine Academiæ Infamiâ et gravissimis eorum expensis qui summo labore suo et curâ studiosos alunt:

"Placeat vobis ut si quis in posterum Scholaris intra biennium gradum suscepturus, inter studia quæ ad Gradum Baccalaureatûs in Artibus spectant prosequenda, cujuslibet usus fuerit auxilio intra Academiam directè vel indirectè, stipendio aut mercede conducti, sive privati Tutoris, seu alio quocunque sub nomine hujusmodi, omnem sibi aditum ad senioritatem baccalaureis reservatam præclusum intelligat."

271 This latter Grace, was, I believe, for a time effectual; inasmuch as it expressed the opinion of the governing part of the University; and placed a person who was a candidate for honours after having read with a Private Tutor during any part of the last two years, in the condition of a competitor who takes a forbidden advantage. But in order to make this legis

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