It's all on the web, except birch twigs

By PETER SINCLAIR

Driving nails of fact into the stubborn timber of young Kiwi minds has never been easy.

Especially, perhaps, now that chastisement has gone out of fashion; for at one time it was the main, if not the only, incentive to study at all.

This primitive method of acquiring an education was perfected at Eton in the early 19th century when, in the words of Lytton Strachey, "licensed barbarism was mingled with the daily and hourly study of the niceties of Ovidian verse" which the pupils were forced to absorb by "the furious incursions of an irascible little old man carrying a bundle of birch-twigs ... "

This was the legendary Dr Keate, Eton's longest-serving headmaster (1809-34), who subjected the boys to interminable floggings to help them master classical philology and little else.

I attended Christ's College in Christchurch, founded in imitation of Victorian Eton; but, unlike it, embracing almost every field of human knowledge. So I can testify to the success of the system.

I left school having mastered, in the shadow of the cane, an extraordinary range of subjects - Latin, Greek, mathematics, physics, French, geography, biology, history and a dozen other things besides.

So what happened?

I ask only because ... it's all gone. There's nothing left.

As exams loom and I obey an editorial request to evaluate local sites of an educational nature, I am forced to accept the fact that in terms of basic information I'm about on a par with a not-very-bright 14-year-old.

You see, I went over to StudyBuddy and decided to sit some of their mock exams papers. I chose bursary level physics because it involved mechanics, and I was quite good at that.

Question 1: A physics teacher whirls a mass of 0.20kg in a horizontal circle at the end of a 0.50m string threaded through a frictionless tube held in his hand as shown in the figure [here there was an obsessively neat diagram to illustrate this crazed pedagogue whirling his mass]. If the mass is whirled at 40 rev.min (a) calculate the number of revolutions per second; (b) what is the angular velocity of the object Q [object Q appears to be a flying peppermint]; (c) what is the linear speed of object Q? and so on, all the way to (g) describe the direction of motion of object Q if string suddenly breaks.

How many did you get?

Nor did I ...

Moving on to Kiwi Web: Chemistry and New Zealand: What is a Mole? It is a small furry landscape engineer which burrows in the ground ...

Wrong! "The amount of pure substance containing the same number of chemical units as there are atoms in exactly 12 grams of carbon-12." That simply wasn't fair ...

With rising panic, I flee through cyberspace looking for an exam question - any question - to which I can provide the correct answer.

What is the capital of Venezuela? Quito? - no, not Quito ... Montevideo?

Who were Amadeo Avogadro, Henry Moseley and Dmitri Mendeleev? The first two sound like Formula 1 drivers. And didn't the Russian dude do genetic experiments on pea-plants?

Do eggs boil faster at high altitudes? I think so. No, wait ...

What is Rayleigh Scattering? What were the principle effects of the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713? Who said "Cogito, ergo sum"? True or false: Sloe gin is gin that has been aged for at least five years in oak barrels (that is, made in a slow manner).

Well, it said "Bar Exam Q&A"; I assumed it was a legal site.

But it served to remind me of my own guiding philosophy: there are very few questions in life which cannot be answered with the help of a big gin. So I went up the road to my local café, Andiamo, in search of one.

I used to know heaps about the Treaty of Utrecht. Didn't it have something to do with the 100 Years War? Or maybe it put William of Orange on the throne of England. And where the hell is Utrecht, anyway?

There was a time I could have answered all these questions, and parlayed the few skimpy facts at my disposal into a magnificent 1500-word essay.

Where's it all gone?

"The Treaty of Utrecht (1713)," I said casually to blonde Jude, Andiamo's owner, who's nearer school-age than I am. "Do you remember what that was all about?"

"God, no," she said, "I was useless at history. It put a stop to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), that's all I remember. We got Gibraltar, of course ...

"They recognised Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, as King of Sicily and Nice," said a man at the other end of the bar, "that I do know. Just a latte, thanks."

The internet's all very well, but I wonder if we shouldn't consider bringing back the cane? For people like me (ducking Object Q) it may be the only way ...

Links:

Lytton Strachey

Dr Keate

StudyBuddy

Kiwi Web: Chemistry

Bar Exam Q&A

Treaty of Utrecht