Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/76

 into examinations, and by the fact that examinations are frequently sprung upon an unsuspecting and unprepared class without announcement.

"If he had only told us ahead of time that we were going to have the quiz," the boy protests, "it wouldn't have been so bad; but there we were absolutely unprepared. It wasn't fair."

Here again there is something to be said on the other side. It is the purpose of an examination just as much to discover what a boy does not know as it is to find out the facts he is acquainted with. It is very helpful to a teacher at times as well as to his students to stumble upon the weak places in his teaching and in their knowledge. The "catch question" often tests the alert mind. All through life a boy will find that there is likely to be some one lying in wait to catch him by a trick or a technicality. He might as well get used early in life to recognizing these situations and meeting them. If only the expected happened, the world would be a very much easier place in which to live than it now is. I try to figure out each morning as I go to my office what form of student irregularity I shall during the day have to adjust, but I am never successful. No two days are alike; every problem which is presented has something in it unforeseen and unlike anything else which I have ever met. If we knew when we were going to die we should be upset considerably, no doubt, but I am not at all sure that we should meet the grim destroyer with any more composure than we shall when he comes upon us