done with mechanical accuracy. One of our professors at Cambridge, they said, used to give minus marks, so that students with whose work he was specially displeased would get twenty-five or thirty per cent. less than nothing. After the answers are marked, before they are placed on file at the office, our examiners return them to the pupils who wrote them, and who now have opportunity, hearing the correct answers given, to see wherein they fell short, as well as to appeal from any error in the marking. With the marked answers, the examiner sends to each teacher a memorandum of observations made upon the answers of her class; and each of the older pupils is sometimes requested after seeing his mistakes to write a sort of confession. "I must not use so many ab. breviations," says one, "or divide a syllable at the end of the line." "I must make shorter sentences, and not omit small words," says another. "I must think better what is called for in questions which ask how or why," says a third. There is drudgery about a critical examination, but it seems business-like to the pupils to hand them back their papers carefully marked and later their report cards. It impresses upon them indelibly the lessons that form the subject-matter of the examination. The parents in the community respect the verdict which issues from what they consider a fair and square system of examinations.

There are many opponents of examinations actuated by all sorts of motives. One class, whom we may dismiss with a word as trimmers, fancy they will catch the favor of doting parents and superficial teachers by depreciating so laborious an institution as examinations confessedly are. Another class of honest objectors were formerly teachers, famous, perhaps, for their searching examinations. They remind me of the school commissioner who said that as a young man he considered corporal punishment inhuman, and resolved never to use it; that later as a teacher he often found it a salutary measure, but that now, being no longer a teacher, he considered it a relic of barbarism which ought never to be employed.

As to the objection that examinations cramp the teacher and check the delightful excursions he would make laterally by way of illustration, that depends upon the character of the examinations. They can be made as comprehensive as can good instruction. Any line of knowledge upon which clear inquiries cannot be framed and answers given sufficiently definite to be measured must be too intangible for the common schools.

The fear that examinations put too great a strain upon children is an effeminate notion which would exempt them from all tasks. An intelligent paper of questions, upon a whole subject thoroughly assimilated presents no terrors to children. Pupils who are unnerved by an exam. ination are, as a rule, unprepared to meet it. The traditional best scholar who always fails, through nervousness, to do himself justice at examination, is simply not the best scholar. His liability to nervous disturbance is an element of weakness which needs strengthening, as

would weak spelling or arithmetic. The best lesson he can learn is that of self-possession. The chief characteristic of the great men, living and dead, whom we ask children to imitate, is the nerve they have to face whatever comes. Washington passed creditable examinations at Braddock's defeat, at Trenton, at Valley Forge. Grant did not get nervous while working out the problems of Vicksburg and Richmond. Lincoln listened for three mortal days to the critical instrument in the next room ticking off the mighty scenes as they were enacted in the awful tragedy at Gettysburg.

As to the unusual effort exerted at examination time, to which various odious terms are applied by the critics, it is simply a process of calling up for ready use the knowledge gained, just what the lawyer does with his cases, the clergyman with his sermons, the statesman with his legislation. The sustained energy necessary for such trials constitutes one of the chief nourishers of mental vigor. As to the alleged strife for mere marks at examination time, if the pupil be prepared and the examination be conducted fairly, the marks are not "a low motive," but only an exponent like the figures on a dial. It is as natural to characterize good scholarship briefly at eighty per cent. as to style him a millionaire who owns certain lands, houses, and privileges. In either case the sig nificant thing is what the figures represent. Competitive examinations and prizes given to rank pupils and teachers one above another are vicious, for they foster the desire to win at all hazards, as much through the misfortunes of rivals as through one's own merit. But when we remember that in the contest of life it is the duty of every aspiring youth to win at least qualifying excellence, we should be careful not to fall in with the enfeebling fashion of the times to remove from the young all the common incentives to honorable emulation. "Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition," was the injunction of an insincere man, dis appointed, soured, and such an injunction it often is, when repeated in effect from various sources; for example, by those subtle politicians who say that the office should invariably seek the man, never the man the office. Let our boys and girls be brought up under the influence of no such hypocrisy. Teach them first to fit themselves well for whatever duties await them, and then, in the spirit of the golden rule, to grasp those duties boldly and firmly, ever proudly remembering, as the President of the United States said at the dedication of the Garfield monument here, ever proudly remembering, especially in the free schools of a free people, that to every American citizen the way is open to fame and station, even until he

Moving up from high to higher,

Becomes on fortune's crowning slope

The pillar of a people's hope,

The centre of a world's desire.

MR. PARR: It strikes me that this question could be more sensibly settled upon a basis of thought than upon a substratum of feeling. It

does seem that the moving principle upon what has been said on both sides is rather one of feeling than of thought. It is the conservative element against the following of the advance element. Any discussion of the question that leaves out of sight all the conditions, and which does not take into account a difference in the value of these things, must be personal. I do not recall now that any one has said what shall be the principal test. Some of the gentlemen are talking about modes of testing knowledge as a butter inspector would test a piece of butter. It seems to me that those gentlemen who are advocating the old question of dealing with what the pupil has acquired, are simply putting into practice the same mode of test the butter inspector uses. Now, to my mind, the chief test of the pupil's work has been what he has done from day to day in his school in the presence of the teacher. An examination may utterly fail to reach that, fail to test the pupil's power to organize, to apply his knowledge, and utterly ignore that large substratum of unconscious knowledge which the pupil possesses. Unconscious knowledge is worth more than all the conscious knowledge any one of us have. It makes no difference about the name, however. That unconscious knowledge which enables us to take facts and use them is the most powerful knowledge we can get. Therefore it seems to me that some fusion of these ideas, some reasonable, centrally connecting link between them, would come nearer to the truth than what has been uttered from the standpoint of feeling on both sides.

DR. WHITE: I have been interested very much in both of these papers. I think in the discussion of this question we shall simply argue and antagonize if we fail to make a discrimination between the examination and the use made of its results. I don't know any considerable number of teachers or any very eminent teacher that denies the value of the tests as an element of teaching. I think we all agree that the teacher must test, and test wisely, the results of his instruction. So that the examination is an essential element of teaching. The oral recitation, with its test, had a great power. And so the oral test runs through all our teachings; but the written test is more modern, exact, and can be used more efficiently. And so the paper I read this morning covers this truth and shows the examination is a valuable element in school administration. Now, as to the question of the use made of these results. Shall the pupil be permitted, shall the right of that pupil to undertake the work of the next year be determined by written examinations periodically given and the work of that pupil be described That is where we differ. So I think we must make very clearly a dis- crimination between the examination as a teaching process and the examination as to the majority of the pupils' right to be promoted in the grade. I will not enter into the discussion of this question, except to make this distinction. I wish, however, to say this, that I do not think it profitable to get up a controversy over this question. In my judgment, we will not settle this in this way. I think every superintendent, every

principal of a school, if he should be the head of it, in connection with those who work with him, must determine for himself what he shall do with the examinations. Much depends upon the condition. The longer I live and the more I see of school work, the more I am satisfied that it is unwise to throw out the conditions under which the school is administered. I threw out at Cincinnati two hundred written examinatious for promotion. It is now universally conceded to have been wise. But we were under peculiar conditions; we were in ruts thirty years deep; and every turn I made to improve the instruction of that city I ran right against that examination wall. It is grooving our teachers' work, making it ruttish, mechanical. "I must prepare my wares for the market; I can't answer the question whether I am teaching right or wrong; those who are over me must answer that. My business is to prepare my wares for the market; I will not ask myself whether this is right or wrong." Such was the language of one of the teachers who had the first school in that great city, and she taught right to the market, straight. I found that in Cincinnati and struck it down. We are going to work it out on that line. I am not sure I would have done so in a city where the examinations had independency. But we have just as many examinations in Cincinnati as we ever had, but no pupil is promoted on the results; they are to disclose to the teachers how well they are teaching and the pupils how well they are learning. It is solely a teaching appliance, and when the year closes, thirty thousand pupils are promoted, and the next year's work begins. The thirty thousand pupils promoted last June were promoted more wisely and justly than they were under any written test that could possibly have been given in that city; and the classification was better. When I entered the city of Cincinnati, the upper third of every class in that city was a year below the other class; and the lower third was drumming on the work until they reached the seventy per cent. required. We had very little scholarship. The standard has been changed with us.

Let us test our appliances by the result in good teaching, and in good scholarship, and in good character. If you can get good results in your way, I am not going to fight it; and if I can get good results in my way, let me alone, and let us work away with the single purpose of making the public school worth the money that is put into it, and making this country strong and pure.

MR. MAURY: Suppose you have written examinations in the high school, or normal school, or grammar school; may I ask Dr. White his opinion as to who shall prepare those questions for examination?

DR. WHITE: That depends altogether on the circumstances. In a city of ten thousand inhabitants, where the superintendent knows every teacher and parent, I presume that superintendent could prepare those questions more wisely than any one teacher could prepare them. His questions doubtless would be fairer than those prepared by a teacher. But, in a city like Cincinnati, you will find that a little more difficult,

and so in a city like New York you will find it very difficult to manage. In Cincinnati the principal prepares the questions for their tests; sometimes I prepare them. I send them out simply to see what results the teachers are securing. The principal wishes to see how well his teachers are improving in their work, and we have all varieties of questions during the year. When I was a teacher I always assumed the right to prepare written questions and test my own class, whether they were tested by anybody else or not. I always felt that was my right.

Question. Is it a very valuable test?

Answer. No; they show to the teachers, that they don't know as much as they supposed they knew. They are really teaching questions, and their value is in the influence they exert on the school.

MR. MAURY: Suppose a class is to be examined for promotion, and the topic be science, or mathematics, or any other subject; is it the province of the teacher of that school to examine, to ask questions; or does that lie as a matter of right in the superintendent to prepare the questions for examination, or does it lie with the school-board? I only wish to make this question practical, how to get at the result, not to ask the leading question but the question to be considered. Can any one else prepare questions for examination of a class so well as the teacher?

DR. WHITE: I think if I had charge of that school and the pupils were promoted on the result of this examination, I should assume the right to prepare all examinations. I have teachers in science, for instance, for whose classes I would not think of preparing questions. They are so much higher than I am in science and so much more com. petent than I am that I would not undertake the preparation of questions for their classes. I think that the teacher, in the final analysis, is the one factor to determine the right of the class to be promoted. If I had two science classes, of course I must prepare these examination questions or get somebody outside. I can't answer this question very wisely.

MR. MAURY: I had an object in bringing this question before this body of superintendents. There is a principle at stake, it seems to me, and that principle is, what are the respective duties of the teachers, principal in a high school, and the superintendents to the school board? I take it that the school board is largely legislative, that the superintendents possibly sometimes might be inclined to hold some reins in their hands that were better to be left in the hands of some others; and right here is a very important point-that of examinations. It seems to me that if Dr. White would answer that, it might well claim the attention of this company of superintendents. No one but the teacher can know what ground has been gone over, and therefore I think no accurate test can be given by questions prepared by outside parties. That is the thought that I have wanted to leave on the minds of this great body of educators.