the student by knowing what he might have obtained from the course and did not. The answer to this is twofold. First, that the students have a keen appreciation of the kind of examination that will be given. They are told by their predecessors, even if they have not had experience at earlier examinations, and they look up previous papers in the course. Secondly, if they have not known what the nature of the examination in that course would be, they have learned what to expect in subsequent school or college years.

Such is the character that an examination may have when used as a recognized factor in the process of education, but in practice there is a distinct difficulty in combining this function with that of measuring the work of the students, ascertaining how far they have paid close attention to the lectures and done the reading required. Every instructor is confronted by the difficulty of setting a paper that will measure the diligence of the lower end of the class and at the same time give scope to the independent thought of the better scholars. In large classes experiments have been tried of alternative questions for honor men, some of them with much success, and a judicious use of options is one of the methods by which papers can be improved.

examinations as an educational agency. It lays too much stress on instruction as the imparting of knowledge, in contrast with the personal efforts of the student to express, and therefore to comprehend and make his own, what he has learned. Teaching and examination are complementary processes, and each should be given the attention and time that experience proves to be wise.

III

The third object of examinations is to set a standard for achievement, and it is the most important of all. This touches the gravamen of Mr. Barnes's criticism. He complains that they divert the teacher from the educational path he is following to a preparation for passing the papers of the College Entrance Board. He complains, in fact, that these papers set a standard to which he must conform, but a bad standard, or one not so good as his

own.

The question whether the standards of the Board, composed as it is of special committees on the different subjects forty per cent of whose members are school-teachers are bet

ter or worse than that of the best, the average, or the poorer schools may well be left to the experts. It is clear, however, that for teachers, a considerable part of whose students expect to take the examinations of the Board, they do, although not so intended, set a standard of some kind. Of course a standard may be good or bad. It may excite keen intellectual effort or promote a dulling type of cram, and hence may be beneficial or injurious. There have been examinations that required merely committing to memory masses of useless data, and made drudges of those preparing for them; but that does not mean that a potent force for good should be discarded because, if not

That a standard, known to the students, is as important in education as in every other form of training will hardly be denied. One would not train an athlete for a mile run without having him speed over the track, giving him the time he has made and the records for that distance. To be proficient in anything a man must have a standard and occasionally measure himself thereby. This is, indeed, most important for the capable men. They differ more among themselves than do the average or lower tier, and hence have more need of a standard of excellence. Now in education such a standard can be set by examination, and, in fact, whether so designed or not, examinations regularly taken at the close of a period of study inevitably do set a standard for the character and extent of the work done, both for the students and for the instructors. Moreover, experience proves that college students, and, no doubt, schoolboys also, will soon rise to any reasonable standard required of them. If low, a large part of them will be satisfied by attaining it; if high, they will put forth more effort. Observe the qualification that they will soon rise to the standard required. Although announcement has been made as thoroughly as possible, and has reached everyone concerned, a change of standard is not at once appreciated, and a number of students fall by the wayside for the first year or two; the proportion of failures then becoming

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normal again. For that reason changes should be made gradually, and not without abundant notice. Nor should the difficulty of the questions or the severity of the marking vary from year to year, a complaint made of the mathematical papers of the College Entrance Board, for such inequalities render the standard incomprehensible. A very large number of candidates are not likely to vary much from one year to the next in quality or preparation; so that, unless there is some obvious reason to believe them substantially better or worse, it is well to assume a larger or smaller per cent of failures due to a variation in the difficulty of the questions. A difficult paper should be marked leniently, and an easy one rigorously, with the result that the marks attained will not differ much from year to year.

Since an examination sets the standard for achievement one cannot insist too much on the need of its being a good standard-one that calls for strenuous effort in the exercise of the qualities most important to cultivate. In mature students, such as upper classmen in college and members of professional schools, these are the ability to analyze a complex body of facts, to disentangle the essential factors, to grasp their meaning and perceive their relations to one another; in short, to master a subject as a whole and deal with it intelligently. Now we have seen the difficulty of examinations for this purpose in single undergraduate courses, arising from the fact that they cover only part of a large subject, and must be used primarily to measure the work of the students in that particular course. A number of colleges have, therefore, begun to require a general or comprehensive examination on the subject to which the student has devoted his principal attention; in which he has majored or concentrated, to use

the technical term. Such an examination is conducted, not by the instructors in the courses, but by special committees appointed for the purpose. In some places it is required of all the students in a number of subjects, in others only of those intending to graduate with distinction. In some colleges their work is directed by a corps of tutors, who supplement the teaching in the courses, but, far from being assistants in those courses, deal chiefly with the parts of the subject not covered thereby, and treat the student as a man striving by all the means within his reach to master that subject. In other colleges the supervision is given less formally by members of the departments. But in all cases the object is the same: to set as a standard the mastery of the subject as a whole, attained in large part by the students' independent reading under guidance.

Mastery of a subject depends on ⚫ interest, but interest grows with mastery and with the personal exertion to acquire it, while both are aroused by the demand of the standard. No doubt the general examination in college, and in a medical school where it has been tried with success, is, and

must be, a measure of proficiency (otherwise it would not be taken seriously); it is also a direct means of education; but its greatest importance lies in setting a standard of attainment, and no institution that has adopted it long enough to bear fruit will question its value.

The conclusion to be drawn from the views here presented is that examinations properly used are a vital part of the educational process, but that the art of using them to produce the best results is highly complex and difficult. They should, therefore, be entrusted to the mature teachers who appreciate their value and have had experience in preparing them; there should be consultation among the examiners; and so far as possible the questions should be framed and the books read by the same men; or, if this cannot be wholly done, the readers should be under careful supervision, and their grading constantly scrutinized.

To make a good examination paper is far more difficult than is commonly supposed. To do so requires much time and thought; but upon no part of the educational process can time and thought be better spent.

ONE's desk is piled high nowadays with letters from folk who want things stopped. Everybody seems to want something stopped. Those who are timid want street noises of all kinds stopped; they want church bells stopped from ringing, or automobilehorns from honking; they want pedestrians stopped from crossing the street except at corners, or children stopped from playing on the streets. Those who are more venturesome want all exposed foods stopped, the litter in the public parks stopped, all questionable plays or 'movies' stopped. Then there are the really courageous souls who step right out and want all crime stopped, the sale of all firearms stopped, bootlegging stopped, war stopped, Sunday amusements stopped. And the hardy one, who would have you take your courage well in hand, wants Congress stopped from wasting time! We are told that even birth must be, if not altogether stopped, at least controlled. And now Mr. Henry Ford walks right into the midst of the stop clamor, and says the cow must be stopped from giving milk! All very worthy. All most commendable - except the cow! All possible, too, provided there were twentyfour hundred hours in a day instead of the contracted twenty-four. But one fact cannot escape the mind, as we read of all these stoppages that must be effected in our modern life the willingness of some folk that someone else should stop all these 'evils' in our

scheme of living. Mark you, too, that each one of these evils is 'the most crying evil' we have to-day. The church bells seem to cry as loudly to one as something that must be stopped as war does to another.

There is another obstinately apparent fact about all these crying evils - that before one is stopped another movement is started, or must be gotten under way, to stop something else. Everywhere are efforts begun; rarely is an effort carried through — except in the newspapers!

II

Now the matter is becoming even more serious. Having petitioned and memorialized to our hearts' content that all these evils in our American life shall be stopped, our restless eyes are beginning to snap across the ocean, and we are beginning to catalogue the evils in other nations that must be stopped. The fact that we have not stopped a single evil in our land deters us not. We must begin our works in other lands. The world is ours in which to stop things. It matters not where or what or when, so long as evils are stopped - by someone else!

So it has come about that the Netherlands is the latest nation to fall within this American zeal to stop things.

'We, the undersigned representative American women of our different communities, appeal to you,' and so forth.

So begins a document signed by some two hundred women, supposedly themselves of artistic perceptions or of an artistic appreciation borrowed from others.

Just what is meant by the designation 'representative' is not stated; one can only hope it is not intended as reflecting the intelligence of the communities indicated, since the percipiency displayed in the substance of the appeal is hardly of a high order.

Be that as it may, these dear, delightful ladies opine as 'a burning shame' the fact that the millers of the Netherlands are dismantling the windmills so picturesquely characteristic of the Land of the Dykes, and substituting machinery for the operation of their mills. Forthwith, there should be started in the United States 'a movement to stop this outrageous despoliation of the Dutch landscape,' and so forth, and so forth.

As in the case of many another memorial of similar sort, its signers had, so far as could be learned, contented themselves with the emotional side of the question. When I spoke to one of the signers nearest my home, she confessed that she had never been in the Netherlands: a windmill was an unknown sight to her eyes, but she could easily imagine from Dutch pictures how the picturesque landscape might be marred by the elimination of the windmill!

I approached next the enthusiastic instigator of this appeal, asking in which particular district in the Netherlands she had noticed the dismantling of the windmills that so sorely troubled her soul. Her reply was devastating: 'All over Holland it is the same.' Of course, the fact that windmills have never existed 'all over Holland'. and that, incidentally, there is no such country as 'Holland' did not trouble the lady.

In other words, it seemed that the memorial was what is classified by those who receive such appeals as 'general' — which, in more direct language, really means 'without facts.'

III

Now, what are the facts? That the Dutch windmill is disappearing admits of no argument. It is. But why? The answer is, of course, simple enough: the new is displacing the old. Electricity is more dependable for the work of the Dutch miller than is the wind to turn the blades of his windmill. He is thrifty, is your Dutch miller: he must produce his ware with the smallest overhead charge, and he can secure this reduction through the installation of machinery that he starts at will, whereas the mighty arms of his windmill respond only when there is a wind to propel them. The suggestion that the miller can retain his wind-blades and propel them by machinery at his will hardly holds, because these mighty blades, exposed to all conditions of weather, have a maintenance expense that naturally is lost upon the ardent soul who looks upon them on the landscape and sighs contentedly at their picturesqueness. The miller, unfortunately, cannot be a poet: his mill is there for business, and he must operate it in the most economical manner. He must also get his water for his family and cattle when he wants it and not when the wind will let him have it.

Everyone will concede that with the going of the windmill a lack will be felt in the Dutch landscape. But the quaint and the picturesque are disappearing everywhere in the march of modern invention. Nor must we forget that we are directly responsible for this change. We pride ourselves on this modern progress. We boast of it. We make a point, when traveling abroad, of telling