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Scholarship Candidates.—The names of 3,746 scholarship candidates and 373 pupil teachers,
a total of 4,119, were sent to the medical officer for medical examination and report from 20th June
to 24th July, 1905.
The medical examination of about 4,000 individuals, between 11 and 16 years of age, presented
opportunities for many interesting and valuable scientific inquiries, but these had to be sacrificed to
the immediate practical question of doing exactly the work required within the limited time at disposal
and only notes of direct importance were made.
Heights, weights, chest measurements, and such routine matters as the examination of urine
or testing of colour vision were omitted as, by doubling the time, the cost of the examinations would
have been doubled without a corresponding gain in the results for which the examinations were being
made.
It is necessary to know what end is in view in awarding scholarships, restricted and open.
Restricted scholarships may be given to a special class such as the crippled, blind or deaf, not in the
hope that the holders will return the outlay, but in the hope that the whole class may be stimulated
to attain a higher level of work. In these cases, the individual holders are scarcely expected by their
efforts to repay the cost of their education, but the existence of these scholarships is a stimulus to the
whole class to do better work. The medical examiner in these cases will be right in passing all who
can in any way benefit. Eighteen such scholarships were awarded, of which three girls had to be
rejected on medical grounds, namely—one cripple, for progressive spinal disease ; one deaf, for very
defective vision ; and one blind, for disseminated sclerosis of the nervous system, already in an advanced
state.
The open scholarships are given to children of certain mental attainments as a definite
investment of public money, in the hope that the money so spent in education will be indirectly, but
well repaid, by the advantages derived from the individuals later.
If this doctrine be accepted we should refuse all who are at present unfitted and likely for the
next few years to be unfitted to follow a studious hfe with advantage, and also all who are not likely
to develop into efficient citizens.
It has been necessary to hesitate in the application of this doctrine, as in some ways it would
handicap more seriously many who are already at a disadvantage from liability to disease or damaged
as a result of it.
At the same time, the ordinary methods applied in a life insurance examination would not
hold, for many of these individuals, although damaged, are lively to serve many years of useful adult
life, especially those who are of better mental equipment and likely to avoid the various snares that
reduce the expectations of hfe derived from experience of a general population.
Some very doubtful cases who would have been unhesitatingly rejected as teachers, have nevertheless,
been accepted as junior scholars because they would have to remain at school in any case till
14 years of age, and we were met by the position that if unfit for scholarships they should equally be
considered unfit for school. The statement is not quite true, but it is an awkward one to avoid.
Cases, therefore, have only been rejected where there was no prospect of useful citizenship being
attained, or where the individual was likely to be damaged by a studious life.
Probably it would be doing a service to the general welfare of the population if the scholarship
scheme were further made an incentive to healthy living and physical education by fixing certain
standards to be required in the medical examinations.
The returns may be classified as follows :—