Faraday to Joseph Ellison Portlock   1 December 1851¹

December 1, 1851.

My dear Portlock, - ... As one of the Senate of the University of London, and appointed with others especially to consider the best method of examination², I have had to think very deeply on the subject, and have had my attention drawn to the practical working of different methods at our English and other Universities; and know there are great difficulties in them all. Our conclusion is that examination by papers is the best, accompanied by viva voce when the written answers require it. Such examinations require that the students should be collected together, each with his paper, pens, and ink; that each should have the paper of questions (before unknown) delivered to him; that they should be allowed three, or any sufficient number of hours to answer them, and that they should be carefully watched by the examiner or some other officer, so as to prevent their having any communication with each other, or going out of the room for that time. After which, their written answers have to be taken and examined carefully by the examiner and decided upon according to their respective merits. We think that no numerical value can be attached to the questions, because everything depends on how they are answered; and that is the reason why I am not able to send you such a list at the present time.

My verbal examinations at the Academy go for very little, and were instituted by me mainly to keep the students’ attention to the lecture for the time, under the pressure of a thought that inquiry would come at the end. My instructions always have been to look to the note-books for the result³; and so the verbal examinations are only used at last as confirmations or corrections of the conclusions drawn from the notes.

I should like to have had a serious talk with you on this matter, but my time is so engaged that I cannot come to you at Woolwich for the next two or three weeks, so I will just jot down a remark or two. In the first place, the cadets have only the lectures, and no practical instruction in chemistry, and yet chemistry is eminently a practical science. Lectures alone cannot be expected to give more than a general idea of this most extensive branch of science, and it would be too much to expect that young men who at the utmost hear only fifty lectures on chemistry, should be able to answer with much effect in writing, to questions set down on paper, when we know by experience that daily work for eight hours in practical laboratories for three months does not go very far to confer such ability.

Again: the audience in the lecture-room at the Academy always, with me, consists of four classes, i.e. persons who have entered at such different periods as to be in four different stages of progress. It would, I think, be unfair to examine all these as if upon the same level; they constitute four different classes, and we found it in our inquiries most essential to avoid mixing up a junior and a senior class one with the other. Even though it were supposed that you admitted only those who were going out to examination, and such others from the rest as chose to volunteer, yet as respects them it has to be considered that I may not go on from the beginning to the end of their fifty lectures increasing the importance and weight of the matter brought before them, for I have to divide the fifty into two courses, each to be begun and finished in the year, and I ever have to keep my language and statements so simple as to be fit for mere beginners and not for advanced pupils.

I have often considered whether some better method of giving instruction in chemistry to the cadets could not be devised, but have understood that it was subordinate to other more important studies, and that the time required by a practical school, which is considerable, could not be spared. Perhaps, however, you may have some view in this direction, and I hasten to state to you what I could more earnestly and better state by word of mouth, that you must not think me the least in the way. I should be very happy, by consultation, in the first instance, to help you in such a matter, though I could not undertake any part in it. I am getting older, and find the Woolwich duty, taking in as it does large parts of two days, as much as I can manage with satisfaction to myself; so that I could not even add on to it such an examination by written papers as I have talked about: but I should rejoice to know that the whole matter was in more practical and better hands⁴.

Ever, my dear Portlock, yours very truly, | M. Faraday.

I refused to be an examiner in our University. | M.F.