THE DEMANDS OF THE EXAMINERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 22

THE DEMANDS OF THE EXAMINERS

The following question was set in an examination for minor scholarships by a county authority, says the "Manchester Guardian": — "Mr. O'Brien, who was very much troubled by moths in his house, was advised by a friend to try moth-balls as a remedy. (Moth-bans are made of camphor and their smell is disliked by moths.) He bought some, and a few days later went again to the chemist to buy five pounds more. When the chemist expressed surprise Mr. O'Brien said that months were very difficult to hit. "Give an account of the conversation between Mr. O'Brien and his friend, describe Mr. O'Brien's efforts to get rid of the moths, and show how he misunderstood his friend's advice." . The examiner evidently had,a poor opinion of the mentality of the men of the "distressful country" and a very high one of the juveniles of his own. I The curious moth-ball intelligence! test posed by a county authority and mentioned the other day is far from being unique in its eccentricity (wrote j a correspondent a few days later). A few years ago an examination paper) placed before small boys anxious to begone messengers in the Civil Service

contained some rather odd and apparently irrelevant questions. "Grow a carrot or an onion and deal with the insects that attack it," was one poser hurled at the boys' devoted heads. Having dodged it, they were faced with this one; "Make a couple of clematis flowers, a bud, and half a dozen leaves into a conventional design filling an equilateral triangle on a six-inch base, the triangle not being subdivided into repeats." ; Even Macaulay's famous schoolboy would hardly, at the first glance, see the obvious bearing of this conundrum on the carrying of letters between offices in Whitehall. Still, not his to reason, why—-his only to ponder, in growing despair, on the next question: "Draw a petrol-pump as it appears when not being used." Contrast > these mental and graphic puzzles with the test set a few years later (in 1933) at Belle Vue, Manchester, to find the most efficient cyclist messenger-boy. The boys were asked to ride cycles with a carrier, dismount, collect a heavy parcel, and deliver it before racing to the tape at the end of the course, which was a third of a mile long. This method has the disadvantage of neglecting the intelligence altogether, but it at least avoids the charge of promoting nervous breakdowns in the young.