982 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 600. 



laboratory work. The remaining pupils copied 

 his notes and the whole class passed into col- 

 lege triumphantly as regards the subject 

 in question on the high quality of these 

 note-books. I have known somewhat similar 

 instances in the same subject in one of the 

 most celebrated public fitting schools in the 

 United States. I have known of a young man 

 getting a mark of 30 per cent, on his entrance 

 examination paper in advanced Latin which 

 he copied in the examination room and which 

 was pronounced by two experienced Latin 

 teachers to whom he submitted his duplicate 

 copy to be an admirable paper, worth 80 per 

 cent, or more. The same student in the same 

 entrance examinations, failed in his elemen- 

 taiy geometry and was credited as having 

 passed in a year's advanced mathematics and 

 a year's advanced Greek, neither of which 

 subjects had he ever studied, and in neither 

 of which was any paper presented. He also 

 received a higher mark in advanced French 

 than in elementary French. 



This, of course, was pure blundering on the 

 part of the college office, but such blunders 

 are neither unprecedented nor uncommon. 



As regards examinations in college, I have 

 known a boy to pass his examination on a 

 half-year laboratory course in botany on 

 twelve private lessons without laboratory work, 

 the boy having been rusticated during the 

 time when the course was carried on. In 

 another instance, in a course in the history 

 of Greek art, a student, whom we will call X, 

 had attended less than 5 per cent, of the lec- 

 tures and had read no test-book, did not even 

 know what the text-books were. After about 

 twenty hours' tutoring from a student friend, 

 the two young men took the examination and 

 X received a mark of 85 per cent. His friend 

 Y, who had tutored him, received a mark of 

 55 per cent. The instructor, on being ques- 

 tioned by the two students as to how their 

 marks could have been as reported, professed 

 himself perfectly unable to understand the 

 situation, but it appeared that the inferior 

 penmanship and rather prolix paper of T had 

 caused his paper to receive very scanty con- 

 sideration. At the mid-year examination T 



received a mark of 30 per cent., mainly be- 

 cause his paper contained a summary of all 

 the important facts that had been presented 

 by the instructor, and was, therefore, intoler- 

 ably long. 



The reasons why examinations fail to rate 

 students properly may be briefly summed up 

 as follows: 



1. It is extremely difiicult for any one but 

 the person who has taught a class to set a 

 paper which shall fairly test the work done 

 by the class. Every teacher can recall many 

 instances where his examinations have failed 

 to call out the knowledge which he knew the 

 class to possess. 



2. There is, as Professor Thorndike sug- 

 gests, an enormous factor of unknown value 

 to be attributed to the influence of coaching. 



3. There is a broad field for the perpetra- 

 tion of blunders which vitiate the whole record 

 of the results of the examinations. 



4. There is the constant allowance to be 

 made for actual dishonesty on the part of the 

 students examined, for it is a well-known fact 

 that examinations are regarded by the average 

 boy, and by the occasional girl, as game which 

 may be stalked and shot down by the aid of 

 any amount of trickery. Not infrequently 

 epidemics of cheating run through a large 

 school, and I well remember one which in- 

 fected a very important institution during the 

 entire school life of one set of pupils. 



The remedy for the evils due to unchecked 

 grading by examinations, in school or college, 

 must consist in a partial return to the old- 

 fashioned system of recording in some fashion 

 the instructor's impressions of the daily work, 

 in making examinations briefer and more fre- 

 quent, and giving them at wholly unexpected 

 times. College entrance examinations should 

 at any rate be balanced by the school's report 

 of the pupil's standing in his several subjects, 

 and the schools should be held to so strict an 

 account for their recommendations that such 

 a set of certified note-books as that above de- 

 scribed should be absolutely impossible. 



J. Y. Bergen. 



Cambridoe, Mass., 

 June 8, 1906. 



