Two answers are to be made to this objection to the movement toward standardization. In the first place, the higher values of education are not secured by teachers who are negligent of the fundamental mechanical requirements. The teacher who successfully trains his pupil to study history will make of him a good reader also. In the second place, if it should prove to be desirable to give less time than is given at present to training in the mechanical aspects of school subjects, it will certainly be absolutely essential that the limits and restrictions be set up with discrimination. We shall never be able to deal intelligently with the mechanical aspects of education until we have studied them.
A third statement which can be ventured with assurance in the light of the recent history of this movement is that its limits cannot be set. Each year new aspects of school work are measured with exactness. It is certain that the ultimate conquests of measurement will push the opponents back into their own territory.
Standardization and the Science of Education
In short, standardization is nothing but a systematic effort to deal with educational problems explicitly and in the light of exact information. Whatever may be the limits of exact knowledge in educational matters, it is certain that we ought to secure as much knowledge of this type as possible.
EXERCISES AND READINGS
The exercise which will best serve to supplement this chapter is a series of tests performed on members of the class and worked out by them for purposes of comparison with other standard results. In the appendix of the volume of the Cleveland survey entitled “Measuring the Work of the Public Schools” a full set of standard tests will be found.
S. A. Courtis, 82 Eliot Street, Detroit, Michigan, furnishes tests in various subjects, especially arithmetic.
The following institutions furnish various tests:
College of Education, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City.