EXAMINATIONS
Prelude.—When the vitalized school has finally been achieved there will result a radical departure from the present procedure in the matter of examinations. A teacher in the act of preparing a list of examination questions of the traditional type is not an edifying spectacle. He has a text-book open before him from which he extracts nuts for his pupils to crack. It is a purely mechanical process and only a mechanician could possibly debase intelligence and manhood to such unworthy uses. Were it not so pathetic it would excite laughter. But this teacher is the victim of tradition. He knows no other way. He made out examination questions in accordance with this plan fifteen years ago and the heavens didn’t fall; then why, pray, change the method? Besides, men and women who were thus examined when they were children in school have achieved distinction in the world’s affairs, and that, of itself, proves the validity of the method, according to his way of thinking.
Mental atrophy.—It seems never to occur to him that children have large powers of resistance and that some of his pupils may have won distinction in spite of his teaching and his methods of examination and not because of them. His trouble is mental and spiritual atrophy. He thinks and feels by rule of thumb, “without variableness or shadow of turning.” In the matter of new methods he is quite immune. He settled things to his complete satisfaction years ago, and what was good enough for his father, in school methods, is quite good enough for him. His self-satisfaction would approach sublimity, were it not so extremely ludicrous. He has a supercilious sneer for innovations. How he can bring himself to make concessions to modernity to the extent of riding in an automobile is one of the mysteries.
Self-complacency.—His complacency would excite profound admiration did it not betoken deadline inaction. He became becalmed on the sea of life years ago, but does not know it. When the procession of life moves past him he thinks he is the one who is in motion, and takes great unction to himself for his progressiveness—“and not a wave of trouble rolls across his peaceful breast.” So he proceeds to copy another question from the text-book, solemnly writing it on a bit of paper, and later copying on the blackboard with such a show of bravery and gusto as would indicate that some great truth had been revealed to him alone. In an orotund voice he declaims to his pupils the mighty revelations that he copied from the book. His examination régime is the old offer of a mess of pottage for a birthright.
Remembering and knowing.—In our school practices we have become so inured to the question-and-answer method of the recitation that we have made the examination its counterpart. As teachers we are constantly admonishing our pupils to remember, as if that were the basic principle in the educational process. In reality we do not want them to remember—we want them to know; and the distinction is all-important. The child does not remember which is his right hand; he knows. He does not remember the face of his mother; he knows her. He does not remember which is the sun and which is the moon; he knows. He does not remember snow, and rain, and ice, and mud; he knows.
Questions and answers.—But, none the less, we proceed upon the agreeable assumption that education is the process of memorizing, and so reduce our pupils to the plane of parrots; for a parrot has a prodigious memory. Hence, it comes to pass that, in the so-called preparation of their lessons, the pupils con the words of the book, again and again, and when they can repeat the words of the book we smile approval and give a perfect grade. It matters not at all that they display no intelligent understanding of the subject so long as they can repeat the statements of the book. It never seems to occur to the teacher that the pupil of the third grade might give the words of the binomial theorem without the slightest apprehension of its meaning. We grade for the repetition of words, not for intelligence.
Court procedure.—In our school practices we seem to take our cue from court procedure and make each pupil who recites feel that he is on the witness stand experiencing all its attendant discomforts, instead of being a coöperating agent in an agreeable enterprise. We suspend the sword of Damocles above his head and demand from him such answers as will fill the measure of our preconceived notions. He may know more of the subject, in reality, than the teacher, but this will not avail. In fact, this may militate against him. She demands to know what the book says, with small concern for his own knowledge of the subject. We proclaim loudly that we must encourage the open mind, and then by our witness-stand ordeal forestall the possibility of open-mindedness.
Rational methods.—When we have learned wisdom enough, and humanity enough, and pedagogy enough to dispense with the quasi-inquisition type of recitation, the transition to a more rational method of examination will be well-nigh automatic. Let it not be inferred that to inveigh against the question-and-answer type of recitation is to advocate any abatement of thoroughness. On the contrary, the thought is to insure greater thoroughness, and to make evident the patent truth that thoroughness and agreeableness are not incompatible. Experience ought to teach us that we find it no hardship to work with supreme intensity at any task that lures us; and, in that respect, we are but grown-up children. We have only to generate a white-heat of interest in order to have our pupils work with intensity. But this sort of interest does not thrive under compulsion.
Analysis and synthesis.—The question-and-answer method evermore implies analysis. But children are inclined to synthesis, which shows at once that the analytic method runs counter to their natural bent. They like to make things, to put things together, to experiment along the lines of synthesis. Hence the industrial arts appeal to them. But constructing problems satisfies their inclination to synthesis quite as well as constructing coat-hangers or culinary compounds, if only the incitement is rational. The writers of our text-books are coming to recognize this fact, and it does them credit. In time, we may hope to have books that will take into account the child’s natural inclinations, and the schools will be the beneficiaries.
Thinking.—In the process of synthesis the pupil is free to draw upon the entire stock of his accumulated resources, whereas in the question-and-answer method he is circumscribed. In the question-and-answer plan he is encouraged to remember; in the other he is encouraged to think. In our theories we exalt thinking to the highest pinnacle, but in our practice we repress thinking and exalt memory. We admonish our pupils to think, sometimes with a degree of emphasis that weakens our admonition, and then bestow our laurel wreaths upon those who think little but remember much. Our inconsistency in this respect would be amusing if the child’s interests could be ignored. But seeing that the child pays the penalty, our inconsistency is inexcusable.
Penalizing.—The question-and-answer régime, in its full application, is not wholly unlike a punitive expedition, in that the teacher asks the question and sits with pencil poised in air ready to blacklist the unfortunate pupil whose memory fails him for the moment. The child is embarrassed, if not panic-stricken, and the teacher seems more like an avenging nemesis than a friend and helper. Just when he needs help he receives epithets and a condemning zero. He sinks into himself, disgusted and outraged, and becomes wholly indifferent to the subsequent phases of the lesson. He feels that he has been trapped and betrayed, and days are required for his redemption from discouragement.
Traditional method.—In the school where this method is in vogue the examination takes on the color and character of the recitation. At the close of the term, or semester, the teacher makes out the proverbial ten questions which very often reflect her own bias, or predilections, and in these ten questions are the issues of life and death. A hundred questions might be asked upon the subjects upon which the pupils are to be tested, but these ten are the only ones offered—with no options. Then the grading of the papers ensues, and, in this ordeal, the teacher thinks herself another Atlas carrying the world upon her shoulders. The boy who receives sixty-seven and the one who receives twenty-seven are both banished into outer darkness without recourse. The teacher may know that the former boy is able to do the work of the next grade, but the marks she has made on the paper are sacred things, and he has fallen below the requisite seventy. Hence, he is banished to the limbo of the lost, for she is the supreme arbiter of his fate.
No allowance is made for nervousness, illness, or temperamental conditions, but the same measuring-rod is applied to all with no discrimination, and she has the marks on the papers to prove her infallibility. If a pupil should dare to question the correctness of her grades, he would be punished or penalized for impertinence. Her grades are oracular, inviolable, and therefore not subject to review. She may have been quite able to grade the pupils justly without any such ordeal, but the school has the examination habit, and all the sacred rites must be observed. In that school there is but one way of salvation, and that way is not subject either to repeal or amendment. It is via sacra and must not be profaned. Time and long usage have set the seal of their approval upon it and woe betide the vandal who would dare tamper with it.
Testing for intelligence.—This emphatic, albeit true, representation of the type of examinations that still obtains in some schools has been set out thus in some detail that we may have a basis of comparison with the other type of examinations that tests for intelligence rather than for memory. For children, not unlike their elders, are glad to have people proceed upon the assumption that they are endowed with a modicum of intelligence. They will strive earnestly to meet the expectations of their parents and teachers. Many wise mothers and teachers have incited children to their best efforts by giving them to know that much is expected of them. It is always far better to expect rather than to demand. Coercion may be necessary at times, but coercion frowns while expectation smiles. Hence, in every school exercise the teacher does well to concede to the pupils a reasonable degree of intelligence and then let her expectations be commensurate with their intelligence.
Concessions.—It is an affront to the intelligence of a child not to concede that he knows that the days are longer in the summer than in winter. We may fully expect such a degree of intelligence, and base our teaching upon this assumption. In our examinations we pay a delicate compliment to the child by giving him occasion for thinking. We may ask him why the days are longer in summer than in winter and thus give him the feeling that we respect his intelligence. Our examinations may always assume observed facts. Even if he has never noted the fact that his shadow is shorter in summer than in winter, if we assume such knowledge on his part and ask him why such is the case, we shall stimulate his powers of observation along with his thinking. If the teacher asks a boy when and by whom America was discovered, he resents the implication of crass ignorance; but if she asks how Columbus came to discover America in 1492, he feels that it is conceded that there are some things he knows.
Illustrations.—If we ask for the width of the zones, we are placing the emphasis upon memory; but, if we ask them to account for the width of the zones, we are assuming some knowledge and are testing for intelligent thinking. If we ask why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west we are, once again, assuming a knowledge of the facts and testing for intelligence. If we ask for the location of the Suez, Kiel, and Welland canals, we are testing for mere memory; but, if we ask what useful purpose these canals serve, we are testing for intelligence. When we ask pupils to give the rule for division of fractions, we are testing again for mere memory; but when we ask why we invert the terms of the divisor, we are treating our pupils as rational beings. Our pedagogical sins bulk large in geography when we continually ask pupils to locate places that have no interest for them. Such teaching is a travesty on pedagogy and a sin against childhood.
Intelligence of teacher.—If the teacher is consulting her own ease and comfort, then she will conduct the examination as a test for memory. It requires but little work and less thinking to formulate a set of examination questions on this basis. She has only to turn the pages of the text-book and make a check-mark here and there till she has accumulated ten questions, and the trick is done. But if she is testing for intelligence, the matter is not so simple. To test for intelligence requires intelligence and a careful thinking over the whole scope of the subject under consideration. To do this effectively the teacher must keep within the range of the pupil’s powers and still stimulate him to his best efforts.
Major and minor.—She must distinguish between major and minor, and this is no slight task. Her own bias may tend to elevate a minor into a major rank, and this disturbs the balance. Again, she must see things in their right relations and proportions, and this requires deliberate thinking. In “King Lear” she may regard the Fool as a negligible minor, but some pupil may have discovered that Shakespeare intended this character to serve a great dramatic purpose, and the teacher suffers humiliation before her class. If she were testing for memory, she would ask the class to name ten characters of the play and like hackneyed questions, so that her own intelligence would not be put to the test. Accurate scholarship and broad general intelligence may be combined in the same person and, certainly, we are striving to inculcate and foster these qualities in our pupils.
Books of questions and answers.—When the examinations for teachers shall become tests for intelligence and not for memory, we may fully expect to find the same principle filtering into our school practices. It is a sad travesty upon education that teachers, even in this enlightened age, still try to prepare for examinations by committing to memory questions and answers from some book or educational paper. But the fault lies not so much with the teachers themselves as with those who prepare the questions. The teachers have been led to believe that to be able to recall memorized facts is education. There are those, of course, who will commercialize this misconception of education by publishing books of questions and answers. Of course weak teachers will purchase these books, thinking them a passport into the promised land.
The reform must come at the source of the questions that constitute the examination. When examiners have grown broad enough in their conception of education to construct questions that will test for intelligence, we shall soon be rid of such an incubus upon educational progress as a book of questions and answers. The field is wide and alluring. History, literature, the sciences, and the languages are rich in material that can be used in testing for intelligence, and we need not resort to petty chit-chat in preparing for examinations.
The way of reform.—We must take this broader view of the whole subject of examinations before we can hope to emerge from our beclouded and restricted conceptions of education. And it can be done, as we know from the fact that it is being done. Here and there we find superintendents, principals, and teachers who are shuddering away from the question-and-answer method both in the recitation and in the examination. They have outgrown the swaddling-clothes and have risen to the estate of broad-minded, intelligent manhood and womanhood. They have enlarged their concept of education and have become too generous in their impulses to subject either teachers or pupils to an ordeal that is a drag upon their mental and spiritual freedom.