Arizona silver belt., 1888-12-08
EprcArIONaL ABsURDlTIEs.

The County Board of Examiners held a quarterly teachers examination on last Monday and Tuesday. The examination questions, presumably prepared by the Territorial Board of Examiners, are about as futile test of the ability and educational knOwl- edge of a teacher m primary school as ceuId be propounded. The objects of these examlnations are to elicltsthe elementary knowledge of the teacher and determine his or her fitness fer teaching in the common schools of eur Territory. A studied attempt appears to have been made to get as far away from this idea as possible, and to re- quire a certain standard of smart ness" rather than practical ability In the applicant as essential to obtain teachers certificate.
 Both of the applicants who presen- ted themselves for examination are now engaged in teaching in Gila County, and none of their scholars are further advanced in arithmetic than fractions, but, according to the re- uuirements of the learned Superinten- dent of Public Instruction, Chas. NJ. Strauss, and the other intellectual gentlemen who compose the -Terrlto- rial Board of Examiners, these teach CTS are required to pass upon a set of arithmetlcal problems that would pug gle many expert mathematieians. The following are among the questions given:
 Separate 28O in two such numbers that three-seyenths of one is equal to the other.
 If either 5 oxen or 7 horses will eat up the grass of a field in 87 days, in what time will two exen and three horses eat up the same?
 If a country 630 miles long be rep resented on raised map by length of 5 feet; by what height ought mountain of Is, 750 feet be represented in the same map?
 In other studies the questions serve as equally poor means to enable the examiners to say "the applicant being competent should have a certificate, as the following show:
 What country, after the Revolution, was first to recognize the United States as a new nation. Give the date.
 What State in the Union was the first to establish permanent School Fund by the sale of its public lands, and in what manner was it accom- plished.
 What effect has alcohol on the kid neys?
 What effect has opium on digestion?
 Through what States and Territo- ries will straight line pass, drawn from Richmond, Va, to San Francesca, Cal.
 Who was Horace Mann, and what did he do in the cause of education?
 Who was Pestalezzr, and what re- terms IF teaching did he institute?
 Can anyone tell the reasen why it is required that teacher of children who are mastering the rudlments of common school education should be able to glve a biography of Horace Mann, or have knowledge of the first | State that established a permanent school fund by the sale of public lands? A person may be a successful educator of small children and still be densely ignorant of the pathological effects of opium in the stomach, and any system that requires such high educational standard will always prevent the suc- cessful operation of small country schools, for the reason that the teach CT who can attaln such standard will always command wages that the small school can never afford to give.
 It may be that the Territorial Board, aware that thelr official sxis tence is of short duration, determined | to make matters lively for the appli- cants at the December examination, and 50 spread themselves in formula ting the foregoing questions and oth- CTS of similar nature. If the same gentlemen are in office when the time rolls round fer the first teachers ex- animation in 1889 and they are of the opinion that, to be a successful prima ry teacher, one must be posted on "catch" questions, It IS in order that possible applicants read up upon prop esitions of the following character:
 1. Give the causes of the rings on a raccoens tall.
 9 If the Mississippi River lest in length by reason of changes in Its course 300 miles in the Eighteenth