Holiday Quiz or Work Experience?

The January 1925 edition of The Draconian magazine drew attention to an article published a couple of months previously in the New York Times. It featured questions set for its pupils as holiday work by the Dragon School, Oxford.

By way of a light-hearted holiday task which might amuse the whole family, the boys had gone home for the previous summer holidays with a “School General Paper”, concocted by one of the senior staff, Gilbert Vassall (pictured above). Some Dragon School knowledge was required but, in those pre-google times, reference books from home or the local library (or remarkably helpful and informed parents) would have been essential. However, it was not so much a test or exam as a mildly intellectual treasure hunt to keep pupils usefully engaged over the summer holiday (along with doing a holiday diary).

Amongst the questions set were the following:

• How many times does a GWR [Great Western Railway] train cross the river [Thames] between Oxford and Paddington?
• Is a man allowed by law to marry his widow’s first cousin?
• What is the height of Fujiama, Everest, Ben Nevis, the top [diving] board, the flag-staff, your classroom, the stumps?
• Why does a horse get up forelegs first and a cow hindlegs first?
• Is freezing colder than boiling hot is hot?
• Do shrimps make good mothers?
• When did Good Friday fall on a Tuesday?
• Who said or shouted and why: 'Eureka'; 'Oyez, oyez'; a yell that rent the firmament; 'a horse, a horse'; 'On Stanley, on'; 'Thalassa, Thalassa'.
• With what animal would you connect: bugloss, geranium, columbine, celandine, pelargonium?
• Why does a midshipman wear buttons on his sleeve?
• Why does a tail-coat have two buttons behind?
• Why are gondolas black?
• Of the sun, the moon and the earth, which goes round which?
• How would you tell whether you had found the nest of a thrush or of a blackbird?
• Make a sketch of an oak leaf, an elm leaf and a maple leaf.
• Give the name and weight of each teaching member of staff under 30 years of age.

Children are notoriously unreliable when it comes to estimating the ages of adults, and how were they supposed to judge the weight of a teacher? No doubt this question was designed to provide amusement for the setter/marker of these papers.

There followed a series of schoolboy howlers, which had to be translated to explain what was really meant by: ?

• “Geometry teaches us to bisex angels”
• “Britain has a temporary climate”
• “The masculine of heroine is kipper”
• “There were no Christians among the early Gauls: they were mostly lawyers”
• “Guy’s Hospital was built to commemorate the Gunpowder Plot”
• “I regret to inform you that the hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket”.

At that time, there were a couple of American boys at the Dragon School and it seems one of them passed this “examination paper” to a journalist and lo, an article singing its praises appeared in the New York Times on November 9th 1924.

Oxford Rivals Edison’s Test in Mental Quiz

Intelligence tests have invaded… the sober English precincts of an exclusive Oxford school. This school stands high. While the boys’ ages run from 8-14 years, their knowledge has far outstripped their years…

Many celebrated professors send their young hopefuls to the Dragon School. General Bruce* comes in person to tell the lads all about his experience in his first effort to climb Mount Everest. John Drinkwater* comes and reads his poems to the boys, and Mr Hurley* tells them of his many and varied experiences in the strange corners of the earth…

When the boys from the Dragon School go away from Oxford for the summer they do not go to loaf and laugh away the time. The summer course follows them… ?

The Dragon School has made Mr Edison’s questions seem utterly and entirely proper. The army psychiatric test is only a slight mental relaxation compared to the summer course indulged in by these boys from 8-14 years…”

This “summer course” paper hit a chord due to the work of the inventor Thomas Edison, who in 1921 had introduced a test of 146 questions to assess the ability and character of potential employees. None of these questions had anything to do with the nature of the jobs on offer, but mastery of such a range of information showed candidates who had excellent memories, an aspect Edison rated highly in an employee. His questions were so difficult that few ever passed (including, apparently, Einstein - not that he was looking for a job!)

It has to be said that to compare this with the Dragon test is stretching it a bit and certainly Edison had nothing like the final task set by Gilbert Vassall, inviting the boys "to write a poem of 5-15 lines on one, any, or all of the following: Janet, David, diving, any leaving member of the school".

The New York Times, noting that poetry flourished at the school, happily included one boy’s offering:

I think if David lived today

Upon this mundane planet,

That he’d forsake the battle fray,

Bid the great Goliath go his way

And try to conquer Janet.

One would like to think that Edison would have offered this Dragon a job on the spot!

Footnotes:

1. *Of these three names, I can only evidence John Drinkwater as definitely having lectured at the school in this period. Hurley could be Frank Hurley, the famous explorer/photographer who sailed with Shackleton on Endurance, but he doesn't seem to have been in England much. It is strange that John Buchan was not mentioned. He was a frequent visitor to School House to read his stories - but maybe he was considered a mere novelist or was not so well known in the USA...(?!)
2. Further information on Edison's 146 questions can be found here.

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