Errors in school : their causes and treatment / by John Adams.

  • John Adams
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Errors in school : their causes and treatment / by John Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/344 page 9
    special General Knowledge paper; so after the bad fashion of these old examination days, an enterprising publisher brought out a little manual to meet the dire needs of the students. It was not a very suc¬ cessful manual from the very nature of the case, so the secondary schoolmasters are justified in their belief that there is now no available means of specific preparation for a General Knowledge paper.1 The schoolboy's only hope lies in the encyclopaedia. Few have the daring to face the Britannica or the International, and when it comes to the intermediate-sized encyclopaedia, youngsters are almost as much daunted by ten volumes as by thirty- three. Certainly there is a tempting little pocket cyclopaedia published by an enterprising soap firm at the alluring pre-war price of sixpence. Even at the advanced post-war rate the little volume is well worth its cost to the struggling candidate for uni¬ versal knowledge, particularly as it is darkly hinted that the masters themselves find the little manual not inconvenient as a source of questions. Such specific preparation by the pupils is really an attempt to defeat the ends of the examination—unless, indeed, the real purpose of the examination is to produce a luxuriant crop of howlers. It has sometimes been suggested that it would be instructive to have the teachers who set the papers in General Knowledge submitted to a similar test by some competent outsider. If this could be 1 As this goes through the press I have received the advertise¬ ment of a substantial volume on General Knowledge that is quite evidently written for pupils who have to face examination papers of this kind.
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