Part 17 (1/2)

It requires but little work and less thinking to formulate a set of exaes 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 ence requires intelligence and a careful thinking over the whole scope of the subject under consideration To do this effectively the teacher e of the pupil's powers and still stimulate him to his best efforts

=Major and uish between ht task Her own bias may tend to elevate a ain, she ht relations and proportions, and this requires deliberate thinking In ”King Lear” she ible minor, but some pupil may have discovered that Shakespeare intended this character to serve a great dramatic purpose, and the teacher suffers hu 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 scholarshi+p and broad general intelligence may be co to inculcate and foster these qualities in our pupils

=Books of questions and answers=--When the exaence and not for me into our school practices

It is a sad travesty upon education that teachers, even in this enlightened age, still try to prepare for exa 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, ill co 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 exah 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 ence, 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 exae from our beclouded and restricted conceptions of education And it can be done, as we know fro 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 exa-clothes and have risen to the estate of broad-ed their concept of education and have becoenerous 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

1 What purposes are actually achieved by examinations?

2 What evils necessarily accompany examinations? What evils usually accompany them?

3 Outline a plan by which these purposes may be achieved unaccompanied by the usual evils

4 Is est other tests by which the value of a pupil's knowledge ed

5 Experts so the same manuscript The sa the same manuscript at different tiht prove interesting

6 Do you and your pupils in actual practice regard exa evidence or as a final proof of coence?

8 Suggest uish ht relations

9 Is it more desirable to have the pupils develop these powers or to memorize facts? Why?

10 Why are ”question and answer” publications antagonistic to modern educational practice? Why harmful to students?

CHAPTER XXIV

WORLD-BUILDING

=An outline=--Education is the process of world-building Every hout life, to the world which he himself builds He cannot build for another, nor can another build for hie of worlds Moreover, the process of building continues to the end of life In building their respective worlds all men have access to the same materials, and the character of each man's world, then, is conditioned by his choice and use of these materials If one man elects to build a small world for himself, he will find, at hand, an abundant supply of petty materials that he is free to use in its construction But, if he elects to build a large world, the big things of life are his to use If he chooses to spend his life in an ugly world, he will find ample materials for his purpose If, however, he prefers a beautiful world, the , and he will have the joy and inspiration that coht with beauty

=Exement of fancy but a reality whose verification can be attested by a thousand examples We have only to look about us to see people who are living a in beautiful worlds had they elected to do so Others are spending their lives as that are trivial and inconsequential, apparently blind to the great and significant things that lie all about them Some build their worlds with the minor materials, while others select the rain Some build their worlds from the materials that others disdain and seem not to realize the inferiority of their worlds as compared with others Their supreliness or pettiness of their worlds seems to accentuate the conclusion that they have not been able to see, or else have not been able to use, the other materials that are available

=Flowers=--To the man ould live in a beautiful world floill be a necessity To such a man life would be robbed of some of its charm if his world should lack flowers But unless he has subjective flowers he cannot have objective ones He must have a sensory foundation that will react to flowers or there can be no flowers in his world There may be flowers upon his breakfast table, but unless he has a sensory foundation that will react to them they will be nonexistent to his, and potatoes, but not to the flowers, unless he has cultivated flowers in his spirit before co to the table

=Lily-of-the-valley civilization=--All the flowers that grow may adorn his world if he so elects He may be content with dandelions and sunflowers if he so wills, or he ht the entire gamut of roses from the Maryland to the Ae-bred descendant the pansy, the heliotrope, the gladiolus, the carnation, the primrose, the chrysanthemum, the sweet pea, the aster, and the orchid But, if he can reach the high plane of the lily-of-the-valley, in all its daintiness, delicacy, chastity, and fragrance, he will have achieved distinction