Some Axioms of Corporate Education. 57 



making or any other trade into the school. Even if that were possible in 

 this colony it isn't desirable anywhere ; because it isn't the making of 

 Carpenters or Coppersmiths with which schools are concerned, but the 

 making of men and women, good and useful citizens. I would teach them 

 to use tools not to make their living with them, but because it is likely to 

 make them live better, and still more would teach them to use their 

 fingers without many tools in knotting, splicing, binding, netting, plaiting 

 every kind of every day material, — -cord, fibres, bushropes, grasses, in- 

 cluding bamboo and so forth which grow around their doors. 



In a sane scholastic system the three Rs. would find their natural 

 place, not as separate compartments but as incidents in mental growth- 

 Abstractions with a definite relation to concrete things, necessary to their 

 consideration and comparison. A greater burden would of course be 

 thrown upon the teacher, but then it would be taken off the pupil, whose 

 faculties would get a chance of developing themselves in a natural way, 

 instead of being cramped by an unnatural method of instruction. It 

 would also throw a greater burden on the Inspector. Docked of his tra- 

 ditional mechanical examination tests he would deserve and have our 

 sympathy. But though our aim is properly to make life and growth simpler 

 for the bulk of humanity the teacher and Inspector of Schools need not 

 be special objects of our solicitude, for after all as a distinguished medical 

 officer of the colony used to say ' ; Hospitals are not run for the benefit 

 of nurses but for the good of patients " and schools in like manner are 

 intended primarily not for the benefit of the teachers but for the good 

 of pupils. 



When we find Mr. Balfour in the House of Commons thus boldly 

 criticising present day methods : " Examinations are really most soul- 

 killing institutions. I believe they put the human mind absolutely in a 

 wrong position with regard to knowledge."' The cheers with which his 

 words were received should be a hint to the official pedagogue that it is 

 time he reviewed his methods and tests, even if it entail some hard 

 thinking. 



The lines on which examination in the future will run are probably 

 somewhat like those indicated by an experiment, conducted for the United 

 States Bureau of Education, by Professor Munsterberg, of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, on candidates for telephone and tramway services. He examined 

 the girls " for memory, attention, general intelligence, space perception, 

 rapidity of movement and association. His methods justified them- 

 selves in the result for those at the top of his list succeeded best 

 while those at the foot were in actual service found deficient and finally 

 left the service. 



An examination of this sort is a humanity test as distinguished 

 from the ordinary examination which at best shows only what a boy or 

 girl can remember, and gives no indication of what he or she can do. 

 Yet if schools are to be of any service it is surely in the preparation 



