MORE EXAMINATION HOWLERS.

Evening Star, Issue 12871, 21 July 1906, Page 3

MORE EXAMINATION HOWLERS.

Some examination bowlers which I (Mr T. P. O’Connor, M.P.) have just come upon immediately after having read a passage from Haeckel denouncing the overloading at school of the memory of the children embolden mo to say what, indeed, Montaigne said three centuries and a-half ago —that our whole system of education is } wrong. I am quite sure, 0.g., that our i cramming the mind with food which it is j not helped or oven asked to digest is re- j sponsible for most of the howlers recorded in ‘Past and Present’ by Mr Collinson as received by himself in examinations. In a word, such bowlers as the following are really less discreditable to the intelligence of the scholars than to that of their teachers, who fling a lot of coal on the fire without the trouble to stir it up and keep it alight, with the result that they put it out altogether; —■ An abstract noun is the name of something that has no existence, as, for example, “ Goodness.” An autobiography is the life of an animal written after it is dead, as a moral. An axis is an imaginary Ime on which the earth is supposed to take its daily routine. ~ -'A line is the shortest distance between two dots. The surface is the very top which you cannot see. A solid is that which hasn’t any space under the circumference. A circle is the amount taken in by toe line which goes all round. —Historical Howlers.—

As howlers are always popular reading, probably because they flatter us with a sense of our‘own superiority, I shall proceed to give some farther specimens from the note books of Mr Collinson and those i of other examiners. Hera are some historical gems;— The Wars of the Eoses killed a lot of the important knights, and they never got another start. Elizabeth had a better claim to the throne than Mary, for she had possession nine-tenths of the throne by law. Charles L was going to be married to the Infanta of Spain. He went to see her, and broke it off at onoe. The Pilgrim Fathers thought it better to be out of this wicked world, and so colonised Massachusetts {which surely should be accepted, at least by the Miussachuscttians. as a set-off against the gibe “Good Americans when they dk go to Paris”). Julius Cffisar invaded Britain 400 years before Christ, The condition of the Bri tons was in a rude state. The people lived in huts made of straw, and th l women wore their hair down theit backs, with torches in their hands, and joined in games such as cock-fighting. The Druids were an ancient people supposed to be Roman Catholics. The Battle of Waterloo took place in 1815, when the Duke of Wellington fell. His death was deeply regretted, for he was greatly beloved by all his country. \ After the ware of 1815 there was a great famine in England, for the country had been plundered and pillaged by foreigners, so that the ground would not bear fruit because of its bloodshed, and it was said that Christ and all His saints slept there. —“Untamed Bulls.’ —

It would need a Berkeley, Hartley, Home, or Locke to explain the association of ideas which inspired this last sentence. Had Golgotha any place in the lad’s mind? What is a “lathing strop,” and why should a bishop carry one about with him? “When Wat Tyler,” writes another historical student, “behaved insolently in not taking off his hat to the King, the bishop killed him with a lathing strop.” Another bishop, Anselm, in order to outwit William Rufus, “ pretended to bo a feeble sheep ploughing with an untamed bull.” “Untamed bulls” were, apparently, formidable invaders in the reign of Richard 11., since the Statute of Praemunire, passed in that reign, was designed “ to prevent bulls, cattle, and other things being sent by the Pope of Rome against the King of England ”; while another lad denounced the Schism Act of Anne’s reign as “dreadful, because it did away with governesses.” The invasion of Ireland by Strongbow is dismissed with contempt. “ A general, who lived in Pembroke, named Owen Glendower, went over to Ireland to stop a row there caused by someone running away with someone else’s wife.”

—Geographical Howlers.—

I think the beet geographical howler in my collection is that of the unconscious punster who wrote: “ The Nile k the only remarkable river in the world. It was discovered by Dr Livingstone, and it rises in Mungo Park.” Here, however, is a fine dashing description of Constantinople:— “Constantinople is on the Golden Horn—a strong fortress, has a university, and is the residence of Peter the Great. Its chief building is the Sublime Port.” As for Rome, it is “noted only for its catacombs, where skulls of great people are kept. These are very long and dismal ” —the dolichocephalic Carlyle typo of skull, which goes far to account for the pessimism of that saim, The North Pate is imagined to

be like that in the Zoo with the polar bear naturally on the summit, whiph, however, is in some way geared on to the sun, l thus producing the seasons. ■ “ The earth goes round on its axis, which is a pole put through the centre of the sun, which turns it round, and thus we get the seasons.’* Then there is another line which connects the terrestrial with the celestial globes—that of the Equator; “The Equator is a line running through the centre of the earth. At one end is the Tropic of Can-; oor, and at the other Hie Tropic of Capri-" com. 1 ’