In the significant report on "The Teaching of English in England" prepared by Sir Henry Newbolt's Committee and sponsored by the British government, it is interesting to note how much emphasis is laid on the problem of devising examinations in English that shall serve adequately as tests of achievement and as educational stimuli. A rereading of those trenchant paragraphs and a survey of examining processes here in American schools have prompted the Commission to consider in some detail the educational value that examinations may have in secondary-school English curricula. In this section are recorded some of the results of this reflection as it has focused itself upon two major phases of the problem: (1) the question of attitudes; and (2) the principles that may govern the formulation of the examination paper in English.

Attitudes Toward the Examination

An investigator soon discovers that the prevalent attitudes toward the examination fall into three rather clearly defined classes. Some educators--relatively few, to be sure--would abandon all examinations. They hold that examinations, especially those set and graded by an out-side agency, make it well-nigh impossible for them to do their best teaching.

A second group is composed of those who have accepted the examination system as a established convention, but have accepted it somewhat grimly. Hostile or unreasoning authority has, they assert, arbitrarily set up artificial barriers, and these barriers must somehow be scaled. As victims of this authority tutors and pupils must necessarily develop the cunning and the manoeuvre that will luckily get them past the entrenchments. These tutors admit that it is only a temporary and superficial advantage which they covet for their clientele.

A third group attempts to understand the potential educational worth of the examination and tries to discover how the entire curriculum in English can be systematically strengthened by intelligent use of intelligently constructed examinations--school tests and longer papers of the essay type--given at suitable intervals.

As the teachers within this third group seriously attempt to make the examination serve an important developing function in an educational program, they recognize as of primary importance the question of attitudes--attitudes of teachers and pupils alike. They realize that school tradition has too frequently conceived the examination as a barrier to be scaled, a hurdle to be strategically vaulted. Rarely does the school boy or the school girl or the college student, indeed--stop to inquire how examinations in English, or in any other subject, may serve as sequent means whereby added power either in communication or interpretation may be systematically and permanently acquired. Teachers who have recognized this potency of a program in recurrent examinations may wisely question how the defence attitude which many classes have unconsciously set up may be effectively broken down. Teachers who discern the true function of education will stress the training that develops power to place ideas in their true perspective. When a passage is being read, the pupils will be taught to determine the central idea, to recognize the major supports of that central idea, to rate at their proper value all the varied factors in its development. Pupils who have followed the method of evaluation in a methodical way will not be indifferent to opportunities which allow them to exercise and reveal their powers, whether those opportunities be offered in the recitation hour or in the examination period. The examination, viewed in the light, is for the pupils a friendly and silent insurance against unrecognized merit--as well as a warning against scant daily preparation