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.
Questions and Exercises
- What purposes are actually achieved by examinations?
- What evils necessarily accompany examinations? What evils usually accompany them?
- Outline a plan by which these purposes may be achieved unaccompanied by the usual evils.
- Is memory of facts the best test of knowledge? Suggest other tests by which the value of a pupil’s knowledge may be judged.
- Experts sometimes vary more than 70 per cent in grading the same manuscript. The same person often varies 20 per cent or more in grading the same manuscript at different times. An experiment with your own grading might prove interesting.
- Do you and your pupils in actual practice regard examinations as an end or as a means to an end? As corroborating evidence or as a final proof of competence?
- How may examinations test intelligence?
- Suggest methods by which pupils may be led to distinguish major from minor and to see things in their right relations.
- Is it more desirable to have the pupils develop these powers or to memorize facts? Why?
- Why are “question and answer” publications antagonistic to modern educational practice? Why harmful to students?