Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1881 — The Examination System in Education. [ARTICLE]

The Examination System in Education.

Education should be a training to promote insight, power of thought, and facility in acquiring knowledge. Perception, not memory, should be cultivated, and as the student can advance only by his own endeavors, he should be led through such a course of labor and original thought that he may come out an independent thinker as well as a thorough scholar ip such branches of education as he has inclination for.

To obtain such a training examinations should be means, not ends. For example, instead of the students in political economy, history, philosophy, or mathematics being obliged to work, as now, with an examination, it might consist in original essays in the first three subjects, and the performance of a paper in great severity in the last, all being done at the student's leisure and with such assistance as he can get from books. Here is a training similar to that in actual life: the best qualities in the mind are brought out, while recitations can furnish the students with practice In answering questions, and the instructor with opportunity of guiding the students and correcting their errors. The' same principle should be extended as far as possiole in all studies, and also in preparatory schools. It has recently been tried at Harvard with signal success in the examinations for second year honors in mathematics, while in political economy and history there is a tendency fn the same direction. The adoption, also, in the Harvard Law School of the “case system,” which to based on the principle of letting the student do his own thinking in law, has caused independent thought to be more necessary than research for success in recitations; has infused extraordinary vigor into the school, and made its recitation training unsurpassed. It may be objected that by such t syst m as I have proposed a prize would be placed on deception. Even if some obtain Illegitimate assistance, it is not pertinent to the real issue which is, What is the best method for those who wish to improve ? Natural shirkers will not receive much improvement by any method. Forcing a man to work does not improve him. as with the removal of the pressure he will return to his old condition. What we wqnt * is not to lift young men up to a height and hold them there, bqt to enable them to rise by their own exertions.