Mat 26, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



799 



with school teachers in regard to the preparation 

 of papers and the methods and standards of mark- 

 ing; and they confidently hope for the cooperation 

 of schools in working out a plan which they believe 

 will serve the common interests of both schools 

 and colleges. 



The scheme, as above outlined, aims to 

 determine by inquiry whether the boy's 

 school work shall be coiinted as a sufficient 

 preliminary education, and then to test by 

 a sufficient number of examinations, not 

 however, covering the whole school course, 

 what has been the result of the education 

 in the boy's power to do intellectual work. 

 Each of these methods seems apt to the end 

 desired, and careful provision has been 

 made for keeping these two inquiries dis- 

 tinct. 



The essence of the scheme is, in fact, that 

 the admission of boys to college is now en- 

 trusted to a committee which is expected to 

 use a large discretion under the limits laid 

 down in the regulations. This committee 

 will assemble a sufficient general knowl- 

 edge of the schools from which boys 

 come, such knowledge as can now be ob- 

 tained by various trustworthy methods, 

 even from distant parts of the country. 

 It is further provided, through the certi- 

 fied record of the boy presented by the 

 master of the school and through the re- 

 sults of the examinations, that adequate 

 information on the two points emphasized 

 above will be at the committee's disposal. 



The restriction upon the type of school 

 which will be allowed to send boys up to 

 become candidates for the bachelor's de- 

 gree is here made, not, as at present, 

 through the list of examination subjects 

 with their accurate ratings, but through 

 the statement of the course actually pur- 

 sued by each boy, with the grades attained. 

 The college does not intend to alter at all 

 its policy of requiring that the boj^'s edu- 

 cation shall have consisted mainly of sub- 

 stantial academic subjects. No school 



course will be accepted which includes any 

 large dilution of manual and technical 

 work. 



The examinations are to be of a some- 

 what different type from those hitherto 

 used, or, at any rate, the treatment of the 

 examinations by the readers and by the 

 committee is intended to be different from 

 that which has been given to examinations 

 in the past. The purpose of the examina- 

 tions is not to test the work of the several 

 courses of the school, but to sample the 

 boy, as a cargo of cotton might be sampled 

 from taking tests from different repre- 

 sentative bales. Further, the object of the 

 examination is not to see whether the boy 

 can get a pass-mark in any one, or in all, 

 of the subjects. It will rather be to bring: 

 out how much the boy knows. It is hoped 

 that for his free (fourth) subject he will 

 choose the field he can do best in, and sa 

 will be given a chance to exhibit himself 

 at his best. Likewise, it is hoped that the 

 schools will now be able to carry boys to 

 more advanced work in those subjects (as, 

 for example, classics or mathematics) in 

 which they are best equipped — for they 

 can do so with the confidence that the re- 

 sult of that special proficiency in certain 

 subjects will be manifest in the examina- 

 tion, and recognized by the admission 

 committee. The marking of the books 

 iinder the new system will require that in 

 every case a statement by the reader in 

 words shall give his opinion of the actual 

 ciuality of the boy as exhibited in that ex- 

 amination. There will be no mechanical 

 adding of grades. It will be impossible to 

 enter on a bare pass-mark in the several 

 subjects. Indeed, it is difficult to say under 

 the new system what would constitute 

 "passing" any one examination. The 

 only "passing" that is contemplated is the- 

 evidence, drawn from, the four examinor 

 tions taken together, that the boy has at- 



