RESTRICTED EXAMINATIONS

In the current Atlantic Monthly, Dr. Claude Moore Fuess, English professor at Phillips Andover Academy, protests the over-standardization of present day education. The schoolmaster, according to Dr. Fuess, becomes too often an automation desperately cramming his proteges for examinations. Formerly the teacher held his class by his personality and humanity. Today he is submerged by the necessity for cut-and-dried drilling. Dr. Fuess believes that only an enthusiastic instructor can have an enthusiastic class; this, to be sure, is best proved by his own career as a teacher. His is the old idea of a scholar and a gentleman, a sort of Henry Ryecroft with an almost tender love and understanding of his books.

The cause for the prevalence of machine teaching lies largely in the Old Plan College Board Examination system. For certain types of schools and for transferring students there are many benefits in that system. Yet, when there are so many facts to be learned by heart, certain details to be harped on endlessly, teaching becomes as soulless as was the music at an old silent movie. For example, in the Old Plan Restrictive English Examination, grammatical rules. MacBeth, Silas Marner, Burke's Conciliation and few others are carefully memorized and then like trained animals the students perform them for the examination. For all the examiner could tell, these seven or eight books might be all the pupil had ever read.

The New Plan system saves the teacher from being whirled around endlessly on this Ixion wheel. Since the student is examined directly on only one year's work, and since he is given much leeway for his answers under the New Plan, the teacher has much more freedom in giving preparation for New Plan Examinations. Under this, the development of the student in the class is the paramount factor in obtaining entrance to college. The teacher does not have to be a vending machine of examination answers. Instead of kowtowing to an omnipotent Board, he may follow his star. To quote Dr. Fuess, "Our educational renaissance, when or if it comes, will not be fathered by a formula--In education, what is needed most is men."