TEACHERS AND THEIR PUPILS 493 
versity teachers, and that in consequence many of them have no method 
at all. 
This may be a matter of comparatively small importance to those 
who possess not only the necessary knowledge, but also the natural gift 
of personal influence and the power of inspiring those whom they teach. 
But for those who are not blessed with these powers it may be almost 
as difficult to fall into the ways of successful university instruction 
after the sudden transformation from student into teacher as it is for 
those who become teachers in schools. 
Granting, then, that there should be a radical difference between the 
ways of school and university teaching, and that there 1s at present an 
unfortunate overlapping between the two, let me next consider how the 
distinction between the intellectual interest of a child and the intellec- 
tual interest of a man may guide us in adjusting our methods of teach- 
ing when students pass from school to the university. 
A tenable, perhaps even a prevalent, view concerning a liberal school 
education is that its chief purpose is not so much to impart knowledge 
as to train the mind; indeed, some teachers, influenced, perhaps, in the 
first instance by the views of Plato, go so far as to think that no subject 
which is clearly of direct practical use should be taught as such at 
school. This view they would carry to the extent of excluding many 
obviously appropriate subjects from the school curriculum, whereas al- 
most any subject may be made an intellectual training; this being a 
question not of subject, but of the manner in which it is taught. In 
any event, if the scheme of intellectual training be adequately fulfilled, 
the period of mental discipline should come to an end with the close 
of school life, and the mind should then be able to enter upon new 
studies and to assimilate fresh knowledge without a prolonged continu- 
ation of preparatory courses. Indeed, the professed object of entrance 
examinations to the university is to exclude those whose minds are not 
prepared to benefit by a course of university study, and to admit only 
those who are sufficiently equipped by previous training to doso. An en- 
trance examination then should not be merely a test of whether a boy or 
girl has learned sufficient of certain subjects to continue those subjects 
in particular at the university; and yet it has unfortunately come to be 
regarded more and more as performing this function instead of being 
regarded as a test whether the student is generally fit to enter upon any 
university course. The result is that an entrance examination tends to 
become a test of knowledge rather than a test of general intelligence ; 
merely one in an organized series of examinations which endeavor to 
ascertain the advancing proficiency in a limited number of subjects, 
and therefore tend really to encourage specialization. Specialization is 
not to be prevented by insisting on a considerable number of subjects, 
but rather by teaching even one subject in a wide spirit. Another re- 
sult is that the entrance examination belongs properly neither to the 
