The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1895-08-23
SCHOOL PROMOTIONS.

the programme just issued for the
Teachers Institute is the following:
SHOULD each teacher make out the
examination questions partly or en-
tirely for his school; and should the
present method of promotion be
changed?'
Perhaps no topic is of more interest
to teachers, patrons, pupils and all
friends of the public schools than the
one given above. An interesting fea-
ture of the discussion will be the re-
port of teachers from various section
of the county, who have during the
past year under the direction of the
County Superintendent, made prac-
tical test of promotion by recitation
marks, recommended list, and other
methods.
Promotion by examination only has
been in force in the schools of Har-
ford for number of years, and the
condition of the schools at the present
time does not warrant any sudden or
radical change without tangible proofs
that promotion on different basis
will bring better results. Neverthe-
less, the present system is open to SER
ious objections, which, in counties of
this and other states and in many
cities, have led to the modification or
abolition of promotion by examine
ton.
We do not at this time propose to
discuss the points for and against the
examination system. That it has it's
merits as we'll as its defects is obvious
to all who view its workings from the
inside as we'll as from the outside.
A sudden abandonment of examine
tions in the schools of this county I'M
der the present conditions would in
all probability be disastrous to the
grading of the schools. A combina-
ton of examinations with one of the
methods named above would be more
likely to give the best results.
Progress and promotion are two
terms that should be synonymous in
the grading of a school, and yet pa
irons too often urge the latter where
the former is lacking. No greater in
Justice can be done to a pupil than to
pass him to the next grade before he
has fairly mastered the work of the
previous grade. To patrons who de-
sire this, any system of promotion
that opposes their desire will be dis
tasteful.
The public schools are founded on
the broad principle of the greatest
good to the greatest NUMBER" and
no teacher has d right to promote,
and no patron has a right to ask that
pupil be promoted, to a grade where
that pupil will not be able to do salts
factory the work of the grade, and
where he will be intolerance and a
dead weight to the remainder of the
class.
No teacher desires to keep a pupil
in grade after he is qualified to en-
ter the next one. There is no incen-
tive whatever for such a desire. A
pupil who remains two or more years
in the same grade is an ever present
reminder of what might have been"
if the pupil would have had more
ambition, and would have done more
work, and, perchance, if the teacher
would have had the power of supply
ing gray matter for the cranial cavity.
1t is we'll for the schools of the coun-
ty that the patrons who desire pre-
mature promotions are IL small per
cent of the whole. There is as much
difference in the efficiency of graded
and ungraded schools, as there is in
the efficiency of the fire department of
Baltimore and that of Bel Air, and the
only way to keep graded schools from
becoming ungraded is to promote pu-
pills on their merits, on the actual
work they have accomplished, whether
this be aseertained by examination or
in some other way open to fewer OBJ
jections.