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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3262, 17 August 1881, Page 2

Amusement, tempered by regret, was caused at the meeting of the Board of Education at the appalling ignorance displayed in some of the written answers by candidates for scholarships at the recent examination. But though we may laugh at the results of cramming uneducated children, we'may surely express our surprise at the nature of some of the questions. For instance: —"Write briefly what you know of the history of Ireland during the Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stuart period"? The candidate might have been excused for asking whether the Examiner considered that from the year 1154 to 1700 was one period. Then again : " State shortly what you know of Fox, Chaucer, Raleigh " ? Which one of the many celebrated men of the name of Fox was meant? Did the Examiner mean Edward Fox, the friend of Cardinal Wolsey, or Richard author of the Book of Martyns ; or George Fox, the founder of Corpus Cbristi College at Oxford ; or John Fox, the Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends ; or Charles James Fox, the distinguished statesman; or William Johnson Fox. the liberal member of Parliament, and the advocate of the repeal of the corn laws ; or Sir William Fox. the New Zealand teetotaler ; or the school inspector's own particular fox, which he has depicted in his lessons to teach the young idea of Napier that foxes are shot by English sportsmen from horseback ? There is a good deal to be said on behalf of children whose halfdeveloped brains are humbugged by questions that would puzzle a great many adults.