COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS. 55 



tion, much more likely to injure than to encourage good taste, and 

 patiently submitted to only by those who never read literature as 

 literature at all. 



If too precise insistence upon arbitrarily assigned tasks is thus 

 fatal to both vital teaching and scholarly interest, rigid limitation to 

 brief and uniform examination periods is equally fatal to thought. 

 We profess the desire to train students to coherent, logical ratiocination, 

 to supplant the capricious mental spurt with the steady stream of 

 thought. But the written examination, as now carried on, places at 

 a marked disadvantage the intellect that has learned to work with 

 deliberate discrimination. At a given moment the examination 

 athlete darts his eye swiftly through the question paper, searching for 

 some familiar sign, and at its sight dashes off the answer that is wait- 

 ing for that particular provocation. No adequate time for reflection, 

 no allowance for individual or accidental variations ! The mind that 

 refuses to operate in this reckless fashion is not 'ready'! The student 

 who has read widely rather than crammed recently, is not ' ready ' ! 

 Meanwhile, the sprinter equipped for just these spurts, without real 

 power of thought, observation or concentration, satisfied with super- 

 ficial compliance with requirement — or less — moves nimbly from topic 

 to topic, touches lightly here and there, and with a 'make-believe' 

 that the stranger can not penetrate, presents as the hammer falls a 

 smooth and more or less finished result. 



Such conditions are so far from promoting readiness of thought 

 that they simply negative all thinking. They substitute a lightning 

 reflex for the deliberate working of the higher thought centers. I 

 can not believe that top-speed has, even in practical life, the impor- 

 tance here attributed to it by implication; and if it be urged that only 

 'average' speed is desired, I answer that the supposed process of aver- 

 aging is an absurdity. The slower intellects refuse to be averaged with 

 the swifter. Each has the sacred right of individuality, and no edu- 

 cational effort can be considered sound that suffers one to waste part 

 of its natural superiority, while it endeavors to compel the other to be 

 something that it is not and, except in a limited way, can nevei 

 become. Doubtless speed will increase with the formation of a thorough 

 and logical mental habit. But the seriousness of the occasion, the 

 liability to temporary fluctuation, which the examiner can not distin- 

 guish from permanent characteristic, and the importance of ascer- 

 taining things of infinitely greater significance than the boy's ability 

 to work under pressure for a time, combine to render the present 

 method both unfair and unwise. 



I have referred to the ' Jack-be-nimble, Jack-be-quick,' type of 

 examination athlete; let me not overlook his heavy-laden brother — 

 the hoplite to whom the thing is as earnest and important as it pre- 



