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PRESIDENT ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL,

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

N the presence of a distinguished body of educators, there would seem to be little reason for repeating the aphorism so well known, that education is the last of all sub-lunary things to follow the stream of human thought and progress. It is still mainly in the deductive stage. We talk freely about what effect certain methods may be expected to have, but we know little, sometimes almost nothing, of the effect they actually produce. Exact measurements have indeed begun, but they are still in their infancy, and as in all matters of a biological nature, it is much easier to speculate than it is to measure.

I think there is especial need for the determination of actual educational results in America for three reasons. In the first place, Americans are prone to theorize, and to rely on formulas, and this in most directions of public effort; whether it be our reliance on the Constitution, or whether it be a reliance on some more recently proposed device looking to popular vote, or direct primary. We are always expecting some machinery that will save the need of human intervention. We are always trying to set up machinery that will run itself. We are always confident that if we can get the right machinery at work, everything will go perfectly, without any man having put his own effort in it, seeing that it runs straight, and we do that no less in education than we do in everything else; that any man who touches a watchman's clock sixteen times has a good college education, no matter whether the dial is wrong or not; no matter what kind of a clock he touches. We do that in almost everything of an educational nature. It is always a constant shock to see how we ask whether a man has gone through certain forms or proceedings, without asking in the least whether he has profited seriously by them. At the present day, the medical schools of the country

(to give a single example) refuse to admit any man who has not had a course in chemistry. Whether he knows chemistry is absolutely unimportant. He may have learned a great deal of chemistry in his father's laboratory, but he cannot be admitted to a medical school; but if he has once taken a course in chemistry and got the minimum marking several years ago, where he got little or no profit, and the course may have been a worthless one in some college where it was taught, perhaps, by a man who himself never knew any chemistry, nevertheless, if he has taken the course and gotten the minimum passing mark, he will be admitted, although he never knew anything to speak of, and has forgotten all that. Really, I think it is true, and we ought to remember it, because it affects us as educators, strongly, that we are in the habit of relying on formulas.

In the second place, another reason why actual educational results in America are peculiarly needed is that while professing a stern faith in education, we are averse to severe discipline, and have an almost morbid dread of sacrificing bodily health to any possible mental training. This is a matter which it seems to me it is important to emphasize, because I notice that the last thing in education that is deemed of fundamental importance is the mental development of the student. The first thing is, particularly of children, that they shall not study too hard. I have said this to a gathering of medical men, and therefore I have a right to say it elsewhere. The medical profession all over the country is trying to prevent children beginning an education until the time has passed when the foundation of all education ought to be laid. In other words, they are always telling parents, "Do not have your child take anything too young." I remember one physician saying to me that it would be better if no child ever went to school, or was taught anything, until he was between the ages of ten and sixteen; that he would probably learn all that children now learn up to the age of ten. We all know that probably more is acquired by a child before he is ten than in all the years that ever follow. We are certainly in this country morbidly afraid of education. We are morbidly afraid of putting children or young people to any severe effort. The policy of the Old World is entirely different. The policy of the Old World is to set them all running, and shoot those that fall to the rear. That is true

in all their education. There is a continual lopping off, lopping off, and the man who cannot get to this point is denied entrance to the higher walks of life. They may carry it a great deal too far in other countries, but I think we carry it too far in the opposite direction. The result is there is a general tendency to ease up, ease up, and we see it in all directions. We see it in the boys that come up to college at nineteen years old for the education that they ought to have, perfectly easily, at sixteen. We see it all along the line. Therefore it is that we ought to be particularly careful in measuring our results and in seeing that the results we reach are really what they should be.

A third reason why we have special need in America for the determination of actual educational results is that, alone among all modern nations, our measurements of educational proficiency are made almost wholly by the same person who gives the instruction. You are all perfectly aware that in almost every foreign country the child, the young man, the college man or the schoolboy is examined by somebody else than the person who has taught him. His examination in Germany is not conducted by the schoolmaster; it is conducted by the university authorities; in France it is the same thing; it is conducted by persons outside the professor who gives the instruction in the course. You will say to me at once, "How about the Regents in New York?" That is an exception. The examination by the Board of Regents in New York is an exception, but as a rule the proficiency of the student is tested and examined only by the person who has taught him.

You will say to me, "We have entrance examinations to our colleges." Yes, we have, in a very few colleges. Over the most. of the country entrance examinations to colleges are disappearing; they are vanishing away. They are not vanishing here, and they will not vanish here, and in two or three other universities, but in the main the entrance examination to college has vanished, has disappeared.

Our experience with the statements received from teachers of schools as to the proficiency of their pupils has not been satisfactory. I am now referring particularly to schools which are not in the habit of sending us boys, and consequently do not know what our own tests and examinations are. We have found

the statements of the masters by no means wholly reliable. A boy comes with the statement that he has been an excellent scholar, and fails miserably in some subject. The statements we have not found to be as reliable as we would like to see them.

Moreover, our own extreme examinations are, of course, unsatisfactory. All examinations are more or less unsatisfactory, but when you have not an exact block of knowledge to examine on, being in different schools and so forth, it is very difficult to frame a fair test. There is a general impression in the community that our entrance examinations have become more difficult in the last generation or half generation, but persons who are very well acquainted with them, who have had to do with preparing boys, give us some evidence to the effect that on the whole they are easier, rather than harder, than they were twenty years ago. Yesterday I was comparing the papers in one subject of the present day with twenty years ago, and there is no question that the papers were more difficult to pass, or they were at least as difficult, and the candidates were given less time to pass twenty years ago than they are at the present day. That is simply parenthetical.

In a

I want to speak about the defects of examination conducted by the instructor in the course. The instructor who conducts his own examination in his own course, does his own teaching and does his own examining, has no standard outside of himself by which he can compare himself. He is in the position of the Biblical persons, who, comparing themselves among themselves, and measuring themselves by themselves, are not wise. school, the instructor knows little of the intensity of application of his pupil, but he does know the amount of time spent, at least in school hours, in study. In college the instructor does not even know that. A series of questions addressed by a committee ten years or more ago to instructors and students about the amount of time spent in study in the various courses revealed an amazing difference between the amount of work expected and that actually done. The student probably, on the average, did not very much underrate the amount of time that he spent on study in the courses, but the discrepancies between what he said he spent and what the instructor thought he was spending were two or three to one.

I take it that the development of intellectual capacity by training of the mind is a part, if you will, the highest part, of biological science, and as such it is subject to the biological laws of variation. In his inquiry into human faculty, Galton studied the variation in the marks of the wranglers at Cambridge university, and found that they all conformed to his general law of the probable curve.

If the biological principles apply to education, the biological laws of variation ought to be true, and hence, in any large bodies. of pupils, the curve of probability ought to be significant. If in two large courses the marking varies greatly, there must be some reason for it, and the most common reason is that one is easier than the other, or the standard of marking is more lenient. There may, of course, be other causes. The instruction may be superior, or some selective principle may be at work in the pupils that shows that curve. The curve of probability is not an absolute measure, but it is an indication. It ought to put one on one's guard. It is a danger signal; as the lawyers say, it gives notice.

The curve of probability is at best a test only of uniformity of standard; not directly of efficiency. A course may be hard without being effective even in imparting a knowledge of the subject taught, to say nothing of its general effect on the mental development of the pupil. For instance, to learn by heart the names of all the United States Senators for one hundred years would be very laborious, and it would teach nothing of American history that was worth knowing. That may seem an absurd illustration, but not quite so absurd as it seems. The student at Oxford was formerly obliged to learn at least so much of religious history as is contained in a list of the kings of Israel and Juda.

The simplest method of improving the measure of efficiency is the aid of other examiners besides the instructor himself. This tends to give prominence to matters generally deemed important, as compared with the particular habits of the particular instructor, and also it tends to lay stress on the grasp of vital principles, and, so far as experts can be obtained, it is to be encouraged, but it is by no means the only way to accomplish the result. The instructor himself can do it if he conducts his examination aright. The framing of examination papers so as to