Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/62

58 selections must be used can be guessed from the fact that one paper before me requires the pupil to write in an hour and a quarter three original essays, 'correct in paragraph and sentence structure and general arrangement' on subjects selected from twelve, of which the following are samples: 'What are the essential characteristics of the life described by Addison and Goldsmith as contrasted with the life in Ivanhoe'? or 'Compare the Ancient Mariner and the Vision of Sir Launfal with regard to the representation of a moral idea in each'? In one and a quarter hours a boy is to read and choose three out of twelve such problems, get his ideas into shape and set them down 'correct,' without the chance to reconsider, readjust, rewrite or recopy, which the most practised writer demands, and which every good teacher tries to get the pupil to require of himself!

English B is worse. The specimens consisting of 'Lycidas,' Burke's speech, Macaulay's 'Milton,' etc., must be dissected and 'crammed' in minute detail. One question before me requires the student to enumerate Burke's 'six causes'; another, after quoting five lines from the body of the speech, gravely asks what part of the oration follows immediately after; while still another requires, on the basis of Macaulay's two essays, a comparison between 'the political element in the life of Milton with the same element in the life of Addison '!

It is useless to go further into details; but I must not omit to call attention to the close connection between the examination papers in Latin and Greek and the fraud that is generally practised in their study. It is well understood among boys that to pass in these subjects one must have at ready command the assigned portions of the classics— one must be able to pick up the thread of narrative or argument, wherever the caprice of the examiner may choose to cut into it. The most effective and expeditious way to prepare is through the persistent use of 'interlinears' and 'trots.' A smattering of syntax, a fair knowledge of the forms, such as class room drill alone may be relied on to give, and a glib translation, such as daily surreptitious use of the 'trot' will infallibly ensure—these may be safely counted on to satisfy the present form of examination. What successful preparation for such tests costs the candidate in honesty, love and capacity for work, interest in the subject itself, one need not pause to calculate. It is only another illustration of the way an external and 'impartial' examination makes shipwreck of sound educational practice. The pupil detaches a fragment of his power, devotes it to devious uses, and 'passes'— the rest of his nature remains an unweeded and untilled garden.

I contend, therefore, that however the examinations be modified, the system that relies upon them. solely is fundamentally unsound. For the closer the apparent articulation thus secured between secondary school and college, the more certain becomes the internal educational