Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/73

 sort of thing. It was quite easy to see why he had failed. He was working under a new system, and he had not adjusted himself to it.

I have seldom seen a boy who was so smart in high school that he was excused from all his examinations who, without unusual effort, was able to do well in college. Such boys have a good many facts, possibly, in their possession, but when they want to use them, they don't know where they are. They have been mislaid or so jumbled up with other things that it is impossible to disentangle them. Knowledge is of little use to any one unless it is available. I have all sorts of tools about the house, but if when I want to drive a nail I discover that the hammer is gone, and I am forced to use a flat iron, of what service to me is the hammer? A boy may have innumerable items of information somewhere about his brain, but if when he finds a use for facts it is impossible for him to organize or to recall them, he is about as well off as if he did not have them at all.

The best possible use of an examination is that it necessitates an organization of knowledge. A boy must get his facts into some sort of order if he is to do his best in a limited time. He must have what he has learned laid out before his mental vision so that he can put his hands on it readily if it is called for. I am often an onlooker at surgical operations. Nothing in this sort of experience interests me more than the preparations