Guess what they were telling exam candidates in 1898?

My principal is prone to brain tremors at this most nervous time of the school year. Last week he talked me into preparing a written list of exam techniques for circulation among exam classes. Desperate to find something original, I perused sections of a teachers' manual which was de riguer in Ireland in 1898.

The writer declared that "the most common cause of the errors and blunders committed at examinations is over haste" in reading and answering questions. Exam candidates were warned that they "should read each question coolly and carefully before he begins to answer it; from want of caution in this respect, a candidate often answers, not the question before him, but a different question altogether, and of course gets a cipher (zero) for his answer".

The spirit, if not the content, of the next piece of advice is as relevant today as it was then. "One very common fault of young candidates at an examination is to answer more than is asked. They are asked to write out six lines of poetry, and they write twenty. "Name the maritime shrines along the south coast of England, beginning at Cornwall' - and the candidates not only names them but give their chief towns, which does himself no good, and gives the examiner trouble. The candidates often do it to show how much they know. The tendency, from whatever cause, should be rigidly repressed."

In working through a paper of arimethical questions, the instruction was "to invariably take the easiest question first, leaving the longest or most difficult for the last. If he takes the hardest or longest first he is in danger of getting puzzled over it, and then he loses his heart, gets frightened and nervous, and goes wrong even in the easiest sum." Ah, how times have changed, yet how constant is human nature and exam skills.

Teachers were urged to exercise systematic preparation for exam so that the pupil "will not be frightened at the sight of a paper of questions; he will be cool through custom; and he will not fill his paper with blots, errors and blunders through mere nervousness". No gender equality in 1898.

These stentorial-toned exam techniques were aimed at senior classes in national schools and deemed pertinent to students taking exams in the intermediate (post-primary) system. This was the Murder Machine deplored by Patrick Pearse; the educational emphasis was on rote learning, cramming and regurgitation of facts at exams.

When I finished my list for the principal, I was surprised to find that all I had done was adapt and develop the above list. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Were there exam techniques in 1798?