Page:Carnegie Flexner Report.djvu/50

32 the same insufficient character. In Michigan they fairly well approximate high school value,—in consequence of which they are decidedly unpopular. In Illinois the written examination has been transformed into an informal after-dinner conversation between candidate and examiner, as we shall presently discover.

There remains still a third method of cutting below an actual high school standard,—the method indeed that provides much the most capacious loophole for the admission of unqualified students under the cloak of nominal compliance with the high school standard. The agent in the transactions about to be described is the medical examiner, appointed in some places by voluntary agreement between the schools, elsewhere delegated by the state board, or by the superintendent of public instruction acting in its behalf, for the purpose of dealing with students who present written evidence other than the diploma of an accredited high school. It is intended and expected that this official shall enforce a high school standard. In few states is this standard achieved. The education department in New York, the state boards in Minnesota and Michigan, maintain what may be fairly called a scholastically honest high school requirement; for they require a diploma representing an organically complete secondary school education, properly guaranteed, or, in default thereof, a written examination covering about the same ground: there is no other recourse.

Elsewhere the state board is legally powerless, as in Maryland, or unwilling to antagonize the schools, as in Illinois and Kentucky. The outside examiners, agreed on by the schools in the former case, designated by law in the latter, fall far short of enforcing a high school standard. The examiner, even where distinctly well intentioned, as in Kentucky, never gets sufficient control. The schools do not want the rule enforced, and the boards are either not strong enough or not conscientious enough to withstand them. Besides, the examiners lack time, machinery, and encouragement for the proper performance of their ostensible office. They are busy men: here, a county official; there, a school principal; elsewhere, a high school professor. A single individual, after his regular day's work is over, without assistance of any kind, is thus expected to perform a task much more complicated than that for which Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Michigan maintain costly establishments. There is