orts or themes on various phases of the history as the work
progresses. This plan is particularly valuable for the students in the
first two years of high school history, for the reason that their
library requirements are less exacting and their need of fluency greater
during that time than later in their course. The objects of theme work
in history courses are usually to arouse the pupil's powers of
observation, description, and narration, and to provide means of drill
in the exercise of these powers. These should not be the sole purposes
of theme work, however. As the year advances, an increasing amount of
the written work should be on subjects requiring some generalization or
analysis of the facts brought out in the text or in the recitation. The
pupil who has written a theme describing the appearance of the Pyramids
has completed an exercise in history less valuable than that of the
student who writes a theme on the errors of the Athenian Democracy.

To summarize, reviews in history should consist of both oral and written
work; they should be rapid enough to insure quick thinking, alert
attention, and small expenditure of time; they should occur with
increasing frequency as the year advances; they should stock the memory,
fix in the student's mind the order of events, stimulate fluency, insure
a permanent acquaintance with the personnel of history, and give to the
student a better view of the subject as a whole and in its various
phases.

VII

EXAMINATIONS AS TESTS OF PROGRESS

_The examination should determine how much the student has progressed_

The time is coming, if it is not already here, when the public will cry out
against the nervous fear and sleepless nights with which their children
approach the semi-annual torture of our inquisitorial examinations. That
reasonable examinations are essential and beneficial is hardly open to
question. That a student should be expected correctly to answer a fair
percentage of reasonable questions on work which has been properly
taught is not a cause of complaint from anyone. But that children should
be frightened into a state of nervous terror by the bugaboo of an
impending examination, and then be forced to attempt a series of
conundrums propounded by a teacher who takes pride in maintaining a high
percentage of failures, is indefensible. An examination should not be
conducted with the primary object of making it a thing to be feared.
However desirable such a