that the systematization of entrance examinations under the auspices of a board will be harmful to secondary education.[1] The German method, which has made some progress here, of leaving the decision to the school seems much better. If we can not accept the recommendation of the school, I should prefer to see the candidate passed upon by two psychological experts. If their independent judgment agreed, I should have more confidence in this than in the results of any written examination. In general, I should admit to college any students who were not pronounced unfit by expert opinion, dropping of course those who subsequently proved themselves unfit. Requiring all students to pass an examination in Latin composition and the like is as out of place in a modern university as an ichthyosaurus on Broadway[2].
Our college entrance requirements and examinations are a serious injury to secondary education, and they select very imperfectly the men who should have a college education. Of 262 students who entered Columbia College in 1900, only 50 completed the regular four-year course in the college. Civil service examinations often exclude the fit from the public service. In Great Britain the method is carried to an extreme, and the results depend as much on the coach as on the candidate. Almost anything is better than appointments for party service; but past performance, character, habits, heredity and physical health are much more important than the temporary information that can be but imperfectly tested by a written examination. I should not be willing to select a fellow or an assistant in psychology by such a method, and to select a professor would be nearly as absurd as to choose a wife as the result of a written examination on her duties. To devise and apply the best methods of determining fitness is the business of the psychological expert, who will probably represent at the close of this century as important a profession as medicine, law or the church.
I am at present working at the problem of assigning grades for moral, mental and physical traits[3], but shall here confine myself
- ↑ Since this was written Professor Thorndike has compiled statistics, not as yet published, which indicate that students who pass these examinations with the lowest grades are as likely to do well in college as those having much higher grades. Those rejected would probably do equally well.
- ↑ In the discussion now in progress at Cambridge concerning the requirement of Greek at entrance, Professor Jebb ridiculed New Zealand as a Greekless land, because one of its citizens is alleged to have called Andromache 'Andromach.' Professor Jebb in his speech called New Zealand a part of Australia; yet he does not regard himself as illiterate.
- ↑ Cf. articles in Science (N. S. 17: 561-570, 1903) and Am. Jour of Psychol. (14: 310-328, 1903).
