The Alaska daily empire., 1921-06-07
Edison and Education.
(BOston News Bureau. ]

(BOstOn News Bureau
 MT. Edison has drafted list of job-examina- tion questions. Because all of them--as extracted out of his fact-fund-are easy for him. he continues that the average college graduate applicant should qualify them, instead of showing himself amazingly ignorant"
 But the furry of criticisms of his method, while many of them overdrawn in their resentment, make enough points against to indicate that he is far from being absolutely correct in his claims He may be wizard in testing materials that with rigid certainty is he truly scientific in judging men? definite answer of demarcation never be given as to just where truth lies between such uttaran standards he seeks and the usual academic views or the training of human intelligences. The human subject matter is too variable. Yet it clear that each set of extreme partisans are at least partially mistaken.
 There does not seem to be great deal of doubt that the college student, engrossed in the tasks and particularly in the pleasures of his own little segregated world, displays surprisingly slight interest in the fascinating phenomena that the big ger outside world is developing in these wonder mod ern times. In political and in ecoonmic realms many striking events happen which the merest skim mer of headlines should invountary absorb at least in part; yet they seem not to impinge the clois tered consciousness To that extent MT. Edison is right.
 Likewise, at least till very lately the colleges themselves did not seize the obvious rich chance link up their eurricula with the times Many of them still relatively medieval. As noted this week by Dean Donham of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration while the past three years have seen tremendous growth in business schools business euucatlOn Is inefficient compared with what 1t ought to be- because it is that we are only just learning how to teach business Insofar as colleges themselves deficient or are belated iE these respects, Mir Edison is right
 On the other hand, several gaping joints in MT Edison's own armor have been promptly pointed out Partly the trouble springs from Mr Edison's own remarkable makeup and habits Not everybody can read omnivorously he is currently described as doing,-at the price of greatly curailed sleep. The average brain has not the Edison faculty for attract inf facts, magnet would fngs-not to speak of the Edison background of training in the myriad facts Of the physical world. Palpably, also the Ed- son tests familiar their originator, cover only patch of that physical world-as Newton realized in his day-and somebody else might well draw up a schedule that would stump Edison.
 But the serious and significant quarrel is with the character of many of the tests and with the mental method that underlies them Not only the callow graduate, but without doubt many of the best minds of America in calibre and by training would be made to look foolish just because some of these questions silly A Webster, a Lincoln Morgan might fare very i'll. An intelligence with out much original power, if equipped with parrot memory and devoted only to browsing among unre- lated facts somewhere in print might pass brilliantly
 There was when sought be walk ing encyclopedias. But it is long past. There were Tn those medieval days, reference books As The Wal Street Journal observes, the intelligent and capable worker is he who knows what and where these tools of stored knowledge are, and how to use them Dependence memory, especially as to re- condte formulae and abstruse facts is like running a business by memory instead set of books
 President Lowell has just demolished again the old theory that students successful in college are usually unsuccessful afterwards. What he sees the age needing is large views. profound thoughts and sound opinions applied to the problems cviliza- tion It is to the academic world to dwell in a past civilization. however.
 MT Edison is reported greatly interested in the stir his tests have caused Education itself has cally-of late Any stir concerning it is wholesome