Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/71

 when we got into the classroom, but these threats seldom got further than talk. Fred Waterman tried it once and flunked the course, whether because the old man read the paper and discovered Fred's trick, or because he had already scheduled Fred for defeat, we could never quite determine. As it was the majority of us went on boning up for the examination and sweating through it, fearful that after all that the instructor might read the papers. I always meant to ask him after I got out of college whether he did or not, but I could never quite get up my nerve. I can see now that whether he read them or not made very little difference. He was a good judge of human nature. He knew us well enough so as seldom to do us any especial intellectual injustice, and he kept—us guessing so that we had to make the review and the preparation that he wanted us to make.

The boy is right who says that the teacher generally knows pretty well beforehand what his students are worth and what they will know on an examination. The teacher is just as sure, however, if heis any judge of human nature, that it is the getting ready for the examination and the actually taking of it that makes the boy sure of what he knows. If he knew that he did not have to take an examination the boy would seldom make any special mental effort. Our old high school trainer used to know pretty well what Jim Whalen would do in the race for which he was practicing, though Jim seldom made any remarkable showing before the time of actual contest.