54 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I say the examinations emphasize scholarship; but do they? In 

 each subject they aim to cover a clearly defined requirement. As a 

 means of eliminating caprice this is excellent and effective; but too 

 literal insistence upon the most admirably defined requirement is fatal 

 to the scholarly, the vital quality. The larger interests, the vaguer 

 gropings, that in youth mark the mind with developmental possibilities 

 are distinctly discredited in favor of the nimble, lightly cumbered, 

 Athenian knack of the trained 'examinee.' Knack is the quality pro- 

 duced and honored by the examination test, hastily and externally ad- 

 ministered. Ability to guess the answer through the question, me- 

 chanical celerity in applying the formula to the problem — be the 

 problem historic, linguistic or mathematical — cleverness in seizing 

 and elaborating an idea frequently implied in the interrogatory, a 

 special trick of remembering odds and ends, phrases or comments — 

 in a word, breezy facility — such is the ideal equipment for the college 

 entrance test. The candidate will surely be overweighted by genuine 

 love of his subject, witnessed by large, though necessarily vague and 

 immature acquaintance with it. His chance of passing will be better 

 if he has not wandered beyond the 'assigned' and has that at his 

 finger tips. For the foreign examiner is not seeking evidence of 

 power, of energy liberated and directed to intelligent purpose. With 

 this — the real business of the real teacher — he has no concern. He 

 stands fast by the letter; he must have the special nuggets of knowl- 

 edge. The effort to satisfy such tests is thus not only fatal to a lofty 

 conception of the teacher 's office — it is equally fatal to genuine scholar- 

 ship, poor a substitute as is mere learning for that spontaneity of con- 

 sciousness at which culture and training should aim. Taste, capacity, 

 originality are thus heavily discounted by staking the issue on some- 

 thing that taste, capacity and originality soon learn to regard with 

 disgust. Hence, too often, those who have most successfully lent 

 themselves to the 'mill treatment' prescribed, are those whom the fuller 

 tests of scholarship, professional training and practical life reject as 

 lacking scope, pliability, and interest. 



I am sure that our collegiate 'lords and masters,' overwhelmingly 

 interested as they are in specialties rather than in boys, do not realize 

 the deadening and restrictive effect of this mechanical emphasis of 

 the letter. What shall it profit a student to develop a real love of 

 Shakespeare at the expense of a thorough and intimate knowledge of 

 the notes to Macbeth? What shall it profit him to extend his acquaint- 

 ance with Milton beyond the designated poems and books, if in the 

 process he forget why the 'Vision of the guarded Mount' looked 'to- 

 ward Nomancos and Bayona's hold'? Of course, no student retains 

 such lore beyond the day appointed for its display. The melancholy 

 truth is that it is retained so long only by means of mechanical reitera- 



