The (almost really) Complete Works of Lewis Carroll

Dear Mr. Vice-Chancellor,
I much regret the necessity, under which I feel that the new Examination Statute has placed me, of resigning my present office of Public Examiner in Mathematics. In taking this step, I think it right to lay before you, and before the University, a statement of the reasons that have led me to it.

It is not for me to dwell on the general objection which may be raised against the new Statute, as affecting the study of Classics in this place: the objection, I mean, that, in permitting the Student wholly to abandon that study during the latter half (it may be) of his necessary residence, it involves a partial surrender, and so is a step towards a total surrender, of the principle, hitherto inviolate, that the Classics are an essential part of an Oxford education. This objection must be felt, and may be urged, far more forcibly by Classical Tutors: I content myself with mentioning it, and pass on to considerations more nearly affecting my special line of study.

In the first place, then, I cannot bring myself to take any part in the degradation of Mathematical Honours which, as I conceive, this Statute must produce. I have always believed it to be the very essence of Honours that they should be given simply and solely “honoris causa,” for work done over and above that which was necessary for any other purpose whatever. When that work comes to be utilised, and made to subserve the lower purpose of obtaining an ordinary B.A. Degree, it would seem to be a mockery to continue to apply the name of “Honours” to the Class List as a whole.

Secondly, it appears to me that, in the case of every candidate who just fails to obtain his Third Class, and whose time of standing is such as to allow of his trying again, it would be an act of common justice to pluck him, and so give him the opportunity of again offering himself in that School, rather than to put him into the Fourth Class, and so compel him to return to studies he may have long abandoned. I feel that to inflict a Fourth Class in such a case would be to visit a mere error of judgement with a penalty hitherto reserved for culpable idleness: and yet I cannot but fear that this course would virtually annul the Fourth Class, and so would much diminish the value both of the Third and of the Second.

Thirdly, I believe that it will be found necessary greatly to modify the present Final Mathematical Examination, and to draw up, and publish, a definite statement of the minimum amount of work sufficient to obtain a Third Class in Mathematics, if ever that Class is to be made a worthy test of the mental training hitherto implied in the Oxford B.A. Degree. Plausible as it may sound in theory, to say that this is not a case for a minimum standard at all—that those who begin to read for a Third Class will be led on to aim higher, and to do more than what is merely necessary for their purpose—I am quite sure that, in actual practice, it will be found necessary to provide such a minimum standard to meet the case of those who either do not aim higher, or who do so unsuccessfully; and that the Third Class will then be neither more nor less than a new Pass, only distinguished from the old by greater difficulty, and by the transparent disguise of a different name. These modifications and this standard must be settled by the Examiners of the time being, and I feel that I, as one who entirely disapproves of the essential principle of the change to be introduced, cannot possibly be a fit person to discuss such a question.

Sincerely hoping that the further changes, which I feel sure must follow this, may not have the effect of yet further dissocitating the names of Oxford and of Clasical education,
I remain, dear Mr. Vice-Chancellor,