Modular Infotech Pvt. Ltd. - DSpace

EXAMINATIONS 118
The whole of this tome Bevir copied out, and got the
boy to begin learning the lot by heart : criticisms olio
poets he had not heard of before and an extraet just long
enough for a two hours' paper. After the "coach" and
the pupil had nearly done for themselves with this nauseating
travesty of learning, they turned to England to
flmi that the regulations had been suddenly altered, the
English paper abolished and all tqeir brain-fag wasted I
The boy;however, passed in well, and in two years was
administering a large district in India.
An interesting comment on this thoroughly English
proceeding was made to me some years later by a very
able critic of Indian affairs, Sir Alfred Lyall. He had
had opportunities of comparing the youths who came out
to govern. the Hindus under the "Competition Wallah "
with their predecessors, chosen, I suppose, quite at random.
His verdict was that the crammed boys, many of whom
were childishly ignorant of men and things, shy, shortsighted,
utterly undeveloped, and, in short, apparently
impossible, after two years of responsibility grew to be
every whit as efficient and resourceful as any scion of the
most favoured families in the land.
About that time, 1882, all examinations began to improve,
testing originality rather than memory. But it is
not generally noticed that a youngster who shows originality
early is precociOUB : and precocity is the very last
quality that ought to determine our selection for public
service. Yet in all civilized countries we rely on it blindly.
Why?
. In 1881 I dined with a colonel attached to Sandhurst,
a ribald old gentleman, who gave in highly spiced language
evidence of the rotten state of army examinations
at that time. The examiners were ridiculously overworked
and underpai7l., and l;.he results inevitable-ignoramuses
passed in at random and some of the best candidates
were ploughed ; but it was the interest of the former to
"hold their tongues, and the latter, if they complained,
were not believed.