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Frederic E. Clements 
the interests of professor and subject secondary. Foremost of all 
are developing the student’s interests and providing him with the 
means of obtaining and testing his own facts and giving them 
meaning. Initiative and independence are indispensable to the 
teaching that places the student first, and they are far from un¬ 
desirable for the professor and the subject. The spirit of inquiry, 
developed with sympathy and directed with understanding, is in¬ 
comparably the greatest of all the results that can flow from teaching. 
Moreover, while it is clear why the humanities have failed to develop 
this spirit, it is incomprehensible that professors of science, them¬ 
selves investigators, should have so nearly succeeded in extinguishing 
it. The spirit of inquiry alone can lead to right thinking that is 
intrinsic, and the latter is the sole guide to the objectivity that is as 
imperative in human affairs as it is in science. Inquiry, thinking, 
and the application of knowledge are but reciprocally interlocking 
parts of the basic mental process, and teaching based upon them 
no longer need concern itself about the relative values of training 
and information. 
The objectives once determined, the next step is to discover 
whether they are being realised. To some teachers such scrutiny will 
appear as superfluous as it is undesirable. They possess the evidence 
furnished by examination paper and notebook, and questions as to 
the independence of the work and the permanence of the results are 
inconvenient. The student has drawn, even though he has not seen 
with his mind, what was shown him, and has written what was 
told him; the requirements are met and the credit granted. To the 
teacher with misgivings as to the student’s real accomplishment, 
the unannounced examination will reveal the actual situation, 
though it must be a complete surprise and not the “unannounced” 
kind that regularly appears at a certain point in the course. This 
method is always revealing even when given a few weeks after a 
subject is completed or but a week or two after a set examination 
has discharged the student’s responsibility. But it is most compelling 
a month or two after the course has closed, and conclusive at prac¬ 
tically any time during the next year or two, particularly after the 
student has left the field altogether. In the latter case, such tests 
are difficult to apply, but they can be made, and they will be by all 
teachers who are as much interested to know the truth about their 
teaching as in their special fields of research. In this connection 
certain teachers will insist that they do not expect students to 
retain the facts of the course, or even the principles necessarily, but 
