Part 17 (1/2)

It requires but little work and less thinking to formulate a set of examination questions on this basis. She has only to turn the pages of the text-book and make a check-mark here and there till she has acc.u.mulated ten questions, and the trick is done. But if she is testing for intelligence, the matter is not so simple. To test for intelligence requires intelligence and a careful thinking over the whole scope of the subject under consideration. To do this effectively the teacher must keep within the range of the pupil's powers and still stimulate him to his best efforts.

=Major and minor.=--She must distinguish between major and minor, and this is no slight task. Her own bias may tend to elevate a minor into a major rank, and this disturbs the balance. Again, she must see things in their right relations and proportions, and this requires deliberate thinking. In ”King Lear” she may regard the Fool as a negligible minor, but some pupil may have discovered that Shakespeare intended this character to serve a great dramatic purpose, and the teacher suffers humiliation before her cla.s.s. If she were testing for memory, she would ask the cla.s.s to name ten characters of the play and like hackneyed questions, so that her own intelligence would not be put to the test.

Accurate scholars.h.i.+p and broad general intelligence may be combined in the same person and, certainly, we are striving to inculcate and foster these qualities in our pupils.

=Books of questions and answers.=--When the examinations for teachers shall become tests for intelligence and not for memory, we may fully expect to find the same principle filtering into our school practices.

It is a sad travesty upon education that teachers, even in this enlightened age, still try to prepare for examinations by committing to memory questions and answers from some book or educational paper. But the fault lies not so much with the teachers themselves as with those who prepare the questions. The teachers have been led to believe that to be able to recall memorized facts is education. There are those, of course, who will commercialize this misconception of education by publis.h.i.+ng books of questions and answers. Of course weak teachers will purchase these books, thinking them a pa.s.sport into the promised land.

The reform must come at the source of the questions that const.i.tute the examination. When examiners have grown broad enough in their conception of education to construct questions that will test for intelligence, we shall soon be rid of such an incubus upon educational progress as a book of questions and answers. The field is wide and alluring. History, literature, the sciences, and the languages are rich in material that can be used in testing for intelligence, and we need not resort to petty chit-chat in preparing for examinations.

=The way of reform.=--We must take this broader view of the whole subject of examinations before we can hope to emerge from our beclouded and restricted conceptions of education. And it can be done, as we know from the fact that it is being done. Here and there we find superintendents, princ.i.p.als, and teachers who are shuddering away from the question-and-answer method both in the recitation and in the examination. They have outgrown the swaddling-clothes and have risen to the estate of broad-minded, intelligent manhood and womanhood. They have enlarged their concept of education and have become too generous in their impulses to subject either teachers or pupils to an ordeal that is a drag upon their mental and spiritual freedom.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What purposes are actually achieved by examinations?

2. What evils necessarily accompany examinations? What evils usually accompany them?

3. Outline a plan by which these purposes may be achieved unaccompanied by the usual evils.

4. Is memory of facts the best test of knowledge? Suggest other tests by which the value of a pupil's knowledge may be judged.

5. Experts sometimes vary more than 70 per cent in grading the same ma.n.u.script. The same person often varies 20 per cent or more in grading the same ma.n.u.script at different times. An experiment with your own grading might prove interesting.

6. Do you and your pupils in actual practice regard examinations as an end or as a means to an end? As corroborating evidence or as a final proof of competence?

7. How may examinations test intelligence?

8. Suggest methods by which pupils may be led to distinguish major from minor and to see things in their right relations.

9. Is it more desirable to have the pupils develop these powers or to memorize facts? Why?

10. Why are ”question and answer” publications antagonistic to modern educational practice? Why harmful to students?

CHAPTER XXIV

WORLD-BUILDING

=An outline.=--Education is the process of world-building. Every man builds his own world and is confined, throughout life, to the world which he himself builds. He cannot build for another, nor can another build for him. Neither can there be an exchange of worlds. Moreover, the process of building continues to the end of life. In building their respective worlds all men have access to the same materials, and the character of each man's world, then, is conditioned by his choice and use of these materials. If one man elects to build a small world for himself, he will find, at hand, an abundant supply of petty materials that he is free to use in its construction. But, if he elects to build a large world, the big things of life are his to use. If he chooses to spend his life in an ugly world, he will find ample materials for his purpose. If, however, he prefers a beautiful world, the materials will not be lacking, and he will have the joy and inspiration that come from spending a lifetime amid things that are fraught with beauty.

=Exemplifications.=--This conception of education is not a figment of fancy but a reality whose verification can be attested by a thousand examples. We have only to look about us to see people who are living among things that are unbeautiful and who might be living in beautiful worlds had they elected to do so. Others are spending their lives among things that are trivial and inconsequential, apparently blind to the great and significant things that lie all about them. Some build their worlds with the minor materials, while others select the majors. Some select the husks, while others choose the grain. Some build their worlds from the materials that others disdain and seem not to realize the inferiority of their worlds as compared with others. Their supreme complacency in the midst of the ugliness or pettiness of their worlds seems to accentuate the conclusion that they have not been able to see, or else have not been able to use, the other materials that are available.

=Flowers.=--To the man who would live in a beautiful world flowers will be a necessity. To such a man life would be robbed of some of its charm if his world should lack flowers. But unless he has subjective flowers he cannot have objective ones. He must have a sensory foundation that will react to flowers or there can be no flowers in his world. There may be flowers upon his breakfast table, but unless he has a sensory foundation that will react to them they will be nonexistent to him. He can react to the bacon, eggs, and potatoes, but not to the flowers, unless he has cultivated flowers in his spirit before coming to the table.

=Lily-of-the-valley civilization.=--All the flowers that grow may adorn his world if he so elects. He may be content with dandelions and sunflowers if he so wills, or he may reach forth and gather about him for his delight the entire gamut of roses from the Maryland to the American Beauty, the violet and its college-bred descendant the pansy, the heliotrope, the gladiolus, the carnation, the primrose, the chrysanthemum, the sweet pea, the aster, and the orchid. But, if he can reach the high plane of the lily-of-the-valley, in all its daintiness, delicacy, chast.i.ty, and fragrance, he will have achieved distinction.

When society shall have attained to the lily-of-the-valley plane, life will be fine, fragrant, and beautiful. Intemperance will be no more, and profanity, vulgarity, and coa.r.s.eness will disappear. Such things cannot thrive in a lily-of-the-valley world, but shrink away from the presence of beauty and purity.

=Music.=--Again, the man who is building such a world will elect to have music as one of the elements. But here, again, we find that he must have a sensory foundation or there will be no music for him. Moreover, the nature of this sensory foundation will determine the character of the music to be found in his world. He may be satisfied with ”Tipperary” or he may yearn for Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Melba, and Schumann-Heink. He may not be able to rise above the plane of ragtime, or he may attain to the sublime plane of ”The Dead March in Saul.” He has access to all the music from the discordant hand organ to the oratorio and grand opera. In his introduction of a concert company, the chairman said: ”Ladies and gentlemen, the artists who are to favor us this evening will render nothing but high-grade selections. If any of you are inclined to be critical and to say that their music is above your heads, I beg to remind you that it will not be above the place where your heads ought to be.” In substance he was saying that the nature of the music depended not so much upon the singers as upon the sensory foundation of the auditors.