ns are the issues of life and death. A hundred
questions might be asked upon the subjects upon which the pupils are to
be tested, but these ten are the only ones offered--with no options.
Then the grading of the papers ensues, and, in this ordeal, the teacher
thinks herself another Atlas carrying the world upon her shoulders. The
boy who receives sixty-seven and the one who receives twenty-seven are
both banished into outer darkness without recourse. The teacher may know
that the former boy is able to do the work of the next grade, but the
marks she has made on the paper are sacred things, and he has fallen
below the requisite seventy. Hence, he is banished to the limbo of the
lost, for she is the supreme arbiter of his fate.

No allowance is made for nervousness, illness, or temperamental
conditions, but the same measuring-rod is applied to all with no
discrimination, and she has the marks on the papers to prove her
infallibility. If a pupil should dare to question the correctness of her
grades, he would be punished or penalized for impertinence. Her grades
are oracular, inviolable, and therefore not subject to review. She may
have been quite able to grade the pupils justly without any such ordeal,
but the school has the examination habit, and all the sacred rites must
be observed. In that school there is but one way of salvation, and that
way is not subject either to repeal or amendment. It is _via sacra_ and
must not be profaned. Time and long usage have set the seal of their
approval upon it and woe betide the vandal who would dare tamper with
it.

=Testing for intelligence.=--This emphatic, albeit true, representation
of the type of examinations that still obtains in some schools has been
set out thus in some detail that we may have a basis of comparison with
the other type of examinations that tests for intelligence rather than
for memory. For children, not unlike their elders, are glad to have
people proceed upon the assumption that they are endowed with a modicum
of intelligence. They will strive earnestly to meet the expectations of
their parents and teachers. Many wise mothers and teachers have incited
children to their best efforts by giving them to know that much is
expected of them. It is always far better to expect rather than to
demand. Coercion may be necessary at times, but coercion frowns while
expectation smiles. Hence, in every school exercise the teacher does
well to concede to the pupils a reasona