The Secretary of War was satisfied by personal inquiry in 1855, that nothing could do so much to narrow and cramp the full development of a boy’s mind, as his long confinement from so early an age among lads having the same limited attainments, special studies, and destination;—that a majority of those admitted on nomination and through influential friends, had only the minimum qualifications specified by law;—that to most cadets the severer studies were irksome and imperfectly mastered, on account of immaturity of mind and imperfect preparation;—that the certainty of promotion by influence and purchase, after obtaining the diploma of the Academy, and not unfrequently without it, took away all stimulus for continued study;—that resignations were common, when the profession of arms ceased to be a pastime, or could be exchanged for something that paid better—and the service was incumbered by officers without large and trained capacity for command, although not deficient in courage and dash. Under these circumstances the Secretary of War, advanced the minimum age of candidates from fourteen to eighteen years, removed all the general studies of the Academy into the preparatory course, and opened the doors of admission to those only, who could prove their title to enter by personal merit, in a free competitive examination. The same principle was applied to appointments and promotion in the new regiments called for by the exigences of the great war in which England found herself engaged.
Subjects, time, and places of examination, were officially made known throughout the kingdom, and commissions to conduct the examinations were appointed, composed of men of good common sense, military officers, and eminent practical teachers and educators. The results as stated in a debate in Parliament, five years later, on extending this principle to all public schools, and to all appointments and promotions in every department of the public service, were as follows:—In the competitive examinations for admission to the Royal Military Academy, candidates from all classes of society appeared—sons of merchants, attorneys, clergymen, mechanics, and noblemen, and among the successful competitors, every class was represented. Among the number was the son of a mechanic in the arsenal at Woolwich, and the son of an earl, who was at the time a Cabinet Minister—the graduates of National Schools, and the students of Eton, and other great Public Schools. The most successful candidates were between the ages of eighteen and nineteen, as is found to be the case in competitions for admission to the Polytechnic School of France. Out of 579 successful candidates for the latter, between 1854 and 1857, 450 were over eighteen years. But the most important result of the competitive examinations for Woolwich, was the superior mental ability, the vigorous health, and eagerness for study exhibited by the new classes, and the small number who have failed on account of ill-health or incompetency. On this point, Mr. Edward Chadwick, in a Report before the National Social Science Association, at Cambridge, in 1862, says:—
“Out of an average three hundred patronage appointed cadets at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, for officers of engineers and the artillery, during the five years preceding the adoption of the principle of open competition for admission to the Academy, there were fifty, who were after long and indulgent trial, and with a due regard to influential parents and patrons, dismissed for hopeless incapacity for the service of those scientific corps. During the five subsequent years, which have been years of the open competition principle, there has not been one dismissed for incapacity. Moreover, the general standard of capacity has been advanced. An eminent professor of this university who has taught as well under the patronage as under the competitive system at that Academy, declares that the quality of mind of the average of the cadets, has been improved by the competition, so much so, that he considers that the present average quality of mind of the cadets there,—though the sorts of attainment are different, has been brought up to the average of the first classmen of this (Cambridge) university, which of itself is a great gain. Another result, the opposite to that which was confidently predicted, by the opponents to the principle, has been that the average physical power or bodily strength, instead of being diminished, is advanced beyond the average of their predecessors.”
The opening of the Royal Military School at Woolwich to competition, on the basis of a more advanced age, and more thorough general education, has not only drawn in pupils of higher average ability and attainments, but has enabled the authorities to extend the course of instruction. In this, the only safe way, they solved the problem which has tortured the ingenuity of the friends of our Academy—of crowding new studies acknowledged to be desirable if not indispensable, into a course already too crowded for cadets so unequally, and, many of them, so imperfectly prepared for the course as it is.
Another result of immense importance to the educational interests of Great Britain has followed the introduction of these open competitive examinations for appointments to the Military and Naval Schools, to the East India service, as well as to fill vacancies in the principal clerkships in the War, Admiralty, Ordnance and Home Departments of the government:—a stimulus of the most healthy and powerful kind, worth more than millions of pecuniary endowment, has been given to all the great schools of the country, including the universities of England, Scotland and Ireland. As soon as it was known that candidates, graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, had succeeded over competitors from Oxford and Edinburgh in obtaining valuable appointments in the East India service—the professors in the latter universities began to look to their laurels. As soon as it was known to the master of any important school, that some of his leading pupils might compete in these examinations, and that his own reputation as a teacher depended in a measure on the success or failure of these pupils, he had a new motive to impart the most vigorous and thorough training to his whole school.
The success of candidates who had never seen the inside of a government Military School, in open competition for appointments to the Artillery and Engineer Corps, in the new regiments raised in 1855, over those who hold the diplomas of the Royal Military Academy, was one of the reasons which led to a thorough revision of the whole system of military education.
These results, imperfectly presented here, will, the Visitors believe, be realized from the changes, which they now suggest, in the requirements as to age, attainments, capacity and aptitude, and especially in the mode of ascertaining these qualifications, of candidates for appointments to the Cadet Corps of the United States Army.
To the present low requirements, and mode of selecting cadets, do they attribute the hostility which they know exists, to some extent, against this Academy, in different parts of the country. The charges of personal, and political favoritism in making nominations, and the absence of reasonable search, among all the youth of a district, for the best qualified in natural endowments and acquired knowledge irrespective of the poverty, or wealth, or occupation, or family, or party relations of the parents or guardians, we are forced to believe, in too many instances, to be well founded. To these hasty and injudicious nominations, do we attribute the bitter disappointments of so many individuals and families caused by the numerous failures to pass the almost formal entrance examinations in reading, spelling, penmanship, and elementary operations of arithmetic, or if admitted, to maintain a respectable standing in conduct and studies during their first year’s connection with the institution. To this inequality of preparation and maturity of mind on entrance, do we attribute the astonishing disparity of capacity and attainments in the members of the same class, and the very large proportion of all who are admitted, who fail to graduate in very high standing as men of science or military promise.
To this want of preparatory knowledge, maturity of mind, and taste for mathematical and military studies, do we attribute most of the difficulties of internal administration, and class-room instruction. So long as the cadet is a boy, or if full grown in body, a youth with only boyish tastes, and without scholarly and soldierly aspirations,—so long as not a few are in the Academy, not because they sought its privileges from an inward and irrepressible impulse to a military career, but for the eclat of a military position to be resigned when such position involves sacrifices; so long will the admission of each new class, and especially, the period of encampment be signalized not only by boyish pranks, but by personal outrages on unoffending members of the same corps, which we had supposed to belong to the dark ages of collegiate institutions, when boyish inmates were congregated in large numbers, away from the restraints of family discipline;—so long will the time, skill, and patience of able professors, which should be devoted to the elucidation of difficult scientific principles and their applications to military art, be engrossed in supplying the defects of an elementary education, which should have been obtained by the cadet as well, or better, at home; so long will the severe mathematical studies, and their special applications, difficult enough to task a well disciplined mind even with the preparation provided in a thorough knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry,—be irksome in the extreme, and be never mastered to any useful purpose to the army of the United States, by more than one half of the graduates of the Academy;—so long will the country be disappointed in the subsequent career of many graduates, for whose military instruction and training all these appropriate and costly preparations have been made.