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    Mr. Hewlett opposed the institution of tests on the admission
of officers for training upon the advice of a Selection Board.

    Mr. Quinlan submitted that the question of safeguards might
be left to the experience of Mr. Edwards, who had undertaken the
training of these officers at Muktesar.

    Mr. Edwards explained the main aspects of his experience
gained in training the officers selected for promotion during the past
year at Muktesar. He insisted that it was necessary to examine men
of the type selected for promotion carefully beforehand in order to
ascertain whether they could carry a superstructure of post-graduate
training involving an intelligent appreciation of modern know-
ledge regarding animal disease. It was his experience that logical
discussion on broad issues with ill-educated men merely conveyed
to them the impression that they were being imparted a theoretical
teaching, and such men were not capable of grappling with the
difficult propositions encountered by practical workers in disease
investigation. There appeared to be an all-round clamour among
officers occupying posts in the Indian Services, who had ceased
their training in Europe at a comparatively very early age, that
all that was necessary to attain full competence and efficiency in
their pursuit was to attend a so-called post-graduate course of train-
ing; whereas, in reality, competence could only be acquired by
hard work and study and long apprenticeship under a skilled master
of the calling. It seemed that the self-styled "practical" man
in the veterinary profession in every country was a man who never
read, or studied, and was too much obsessed with his innate abili-
ties to seek improvement from the experience of others. He had
found great difficulty in impressing upon the students whom he had
under training the need of submitting themselves to repeated testing
in order to gauge their progress; he could not undertake to train
men satisfactorily unless they were prepared to submit themselves
unconditionally to what he considered to be essential tests. It
had been represented to him by students that in post-graduate
courses elsewhere no system of tests was instituted. He had had
to point out to them that the ordinary post-graduate courses were
attended by men who generally paid for their instruction themselves
and attended the courses at considerable personal sacrifices in order
to improve their knowledge concerning matters in which they were
deeply interested. The men he had had for training were at first
under the impression, in common with many other individuals, that
training in practical work merely involved recognition of type
specimens at the class-room bench, and failed to realize that scienti-
fic investigation involved tedious and prolonged examination of
material which did not invariably conform with the type specimens