Arizona republican., 1905-05-12
PHO FINK. ARIZONA, MAY 12, 1905.
Rational Education.

On a discussion Of eXamlnaIlOnS, grades and credits, as applied to edu- cational institutions. Professor McKeen Cattell of Columbia says some perti- nent things about the value of written tests. In his opinion it would be about as scientific to select a wife by written examination as to determine what stu dents are fitted for a college course by that method. Requiring all students to pass an examination in Latin com position and the like" he says, "is as out of place in a modern university as an ichthyosaurus on Broadway"
 He might have added that written examinations as a final and conclusive test of ability in any direction are usually inimical to originality and in dividuality; and the student who ex- cells in written tests is quite as apt to be limited in capacity for achievement as the boy who stumbles over the forms and nemonics which form so large a part of what its promoters are pleased to call systematic" education.
 The value of any test is in the se- lection of all those students who are fit to have an education and the elim- ination of the unfit. The Germans. who are Journalists above all else. are con- tent to let the recommendation of the school determine what students are qualified for advancement; we Ameri- cans insist upon examinations, except where some school is affiliated with the university and the preparatory school itself uses the written test. which is the basic form of the American system.
 The result is a cut and dried system which begins at the top and extends downward to the primary schools, de- moralizing teacher and pupil alike, compelling the public schools to at tempt impossibilities in order that the small percentage of pupils who look forward to the university may say they have done the work required for ad- mittance. The high school is loaded up with unnecessary and excessive studies to meet the university's demand; the grade school is saddled with useless matter and multiplied studies in order that grade pupils may enter a high school which can in turn fit them for a university; and so on down the line.
 Written tests are used to determine a pupils standing-not his alertness of mind, his originality of thought, his ples-and the result is mass of half baked intellects. crammed with half learned routine facts, much as a saus- age is run through a machine.
 The system is everything, the indi- vidual nothing under the plan existing. A teacher who should presume to de- part from the system" laid down by the authorities. and attempt to develop her students along individual lines, might earn the undying gratitude of their parents. but she could not hold her place through one term if an in spectOr caught her at her nefarious work
 Happily the pendulum is beginning to swing toward the other extreme. The method which subordinates thought to routine, the accomplishment of a set amount of work to the train dng of a mind, is so absurd that edu- cators are beginning to realize its futility. Within a decade. there will be a revolution, not only in the public school method, but in the requirements for admission to universities, which will classify students according to their brains and character, not according to the number of pages of certain text books they have gone over. There will be some attention to the cultivation of thinking power and less to the partic- ular set method by which this power is developed; and the day cannot come soon enough to satisfy those progress sive citizens who value results more than they do forms.