Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-01-22
THE COWNSMAN
Examinations

the quietude of regret for days and nights
misspent, the calm of despair--for the col
legian is not bird that likes to be plucked.
Now midnight oil is burned, or rather,
brightly glows the bulb, and books untold are
thumbed, reports huddled up with feverish
diligence and that Indifferent pose as to work
drops off like discarded cloak For the
laggard and he who puts off his effort until
the morrow is as patiently with us in the
schools as he is in the Senate, and he will
60 out into the world destined to one certain
deed, the perpetuation Of his easy, languid
species, precisely as his diligent and capable
brother will go on toeing the mark, facing
the music and bearing away the prizes of life
which are his by the divine right of his in
dustry. To the laggard, examinations are an
ordeal and his trouble is of his own making;
to him who bears his part in the school or in
the world the test of his efficiency is all in
the days work.
A STRANGE nntipathy appears to exist in
\ the minds of many against examinations
tests, questionnaires, Investigations. These
things are so much like the rendering of an
account, and few really like to pay; SO much
like settling with the piper when the dance
is over, is this taking of an inventory of what
one has furnished his mind withal. And this
attitude is not unnatural for there is a kind
of compulsion about an examination. Nobody
ever submitted to an inquisition of malice
prepense, and the going over thing which
you have already finished only to prove to
somebody, who already knows, that you have
finished it, is remarkably like working for
dead horse. The English have a happy
remedy for this difficulty. They transmute
every examination into a sporting event by
making it competitive. You win your way
at Eton or Oxford in competition with your
equals you become wrangler by wrangling
better than somebody else. There is COM
petition and prize; there is run for your
money. But somebody in our American
system of education once discovered that
contests for grade, standing, prizes and the
like are bad for something or other psyche
logically, although contests in athletics are
good for everybody, even those who only
pay dollars and sit on bleachers wherefore
American examinations, such as remain, have
no such zest in them as game of quoits or
marbles.
TNHE American educator-to digress mo-
l. ment-is the greatest discoverer that the
world has ever known. Columbus, Vespucci
and the rest who sailed uncharted seas are
nothing to him. He has discovered the need
lessness of the alphabet and the uselessness
of spelling. He has discovered the super
fluffy of grammar and the dangerousness of
mathematics He has found out that ex-
aminations shatter the nervous system and
that Greek is deadly to the optic nerve. He
long since ascertained that no child ought
ever to be punished by spanking or otherwise
for anything, and that any subject of study
or recreative contemplation is quite as good
or bad--as any other and some great
deal more-or less-so. In fact, to shift the
figure, the turkey of American education
has been successfully boned there is not SO
much as a coccyx, which - tie unlearned
reader means the last little bone which
goes over the fence-there is not SO much as
q coccyx left in that invertebrate fowl.
UCTUDY what you like, when you like and
~ how much you like, my child. And,
teacher, leave those outworn books; for the
proper study of mankind is not man, as that
misguided poet, one Pope, once put it. The
proper study OF mankind and spinsterkind is
child study And while you are studying
the child he grows up in the process of an
education of experimentation intermittently
pursued. 1t has been said about our Ameri
can young folk that they know little bit
about an extraordinary number of things,
and very few things at all thoroughly. They
are more sophisticated than the children Of
other countries of their year., and, though
not insubordinate, far less disciplined in
mind And Iluch of this comes of our emas-
culated educational system. with its pleasant
evasiveness of dligent work, its scattered
effort, its fiickering changeabeness from nov
city to novelty and the enormous stress which
it puts on practical utilities in place of the
things which develop mental power and
strengthen moral fiber.
pUT let us return to examinations. The
- disuse into which they have fallen is part
of this emasculated system; it is one with
the problem not worked out, "but you under
stand the principle; one with the expert
ment failure, "but the law, you see, re-
mains the same The disuse or slovenly
misuse of the examination the part of
teachers is the same sort of thing as lessons
perfunctorily recited and exercises swept
unread into the waste paper basket the
same as half performed tasks forgiven and
pleasant talk and generalization in place of
demonstrated truths and genuine informa-
tiOn. What, after all, is an examination but
the shutting of the book after it has been
read? Why leave it open, face downward on
the table? The examination is the tying of
the knot that the string may not slip; it is
essential to "a clean record and to a tidy as
opposed to a woolly state of mind There are
many things which ought to be learned ex
actly; there is something to be said-peace,
We new educators even for the efforts of
brute memory; for knowing about things is
not actually knowing them, and there are
cases in which the word itself is the meat of
the matter. 1t is little to the purpose that
imperfectly apprehended thoughts, imper-
fectly noted down, be imperfectly returned
to their source of imperfection. An exami-
nation which does not add to the students
comprehension of the subject by the necessity
| of review that goes beyond the notebook
| little helps to tidy up a head full of ideas in
disorderly disarrangement. But your
| Gownsman has fallen to the level of an edu-
Gator. Enough.