structors. It is good for the student to learn that Mr. A looks at his paper from a different angle than Mr. B. The student grows in mental stature by realizing that there are varying standards of judgment in the world. He learns to test his thinking in the fierce currents of controversial opinion. This valuable process should not be sacrificed to a hollow conformity which makes his teachers puppets rather than personalities. The process of making a mere arithmetical or alphabetical symbol the end in any piece of intellectual endeavor is as vicious for the teacher as for the student. It transfers the emphasis from the classroom to the registrar's office, from the learning process to the satisfaction of an artificial efficiency complex. It robs teaching of its power. Only one teacher in a given English Department is really competent to judge fairly the merit of a Freshman theme. Only the teacher who has given the assignment, and who knows whether or not the student is making progress in learning to write, can form an intelligent judgment. All the others are guessing with only a part of the evidence before them; they are not considering the theme in its rightful relation to the assignment nor to the progress of instruction in the course. They are completely ignorant of the personality of the student writer. They cannot be sure that this one theme is a true measure of what he can do. Before the instructor sets down an irrevocable mark, he should know whether the theme is written by a twenty-five-year-old veteran of the world-war who has been out of high school six years,2 or by a clever modern flapper just turned sixteen. The personality of the author of a theme is vitally important. It can no more be ignored in forming an intelligent opinion of a Freshman's writing than it can in judging Charles Lamb or H. G. Wells.3 We all desire, if we are teachers by choice, to add something to the sum-total of intellectuality in America. We all thrill with the hope that through our efforts some student may be set forward toward high endeavor and accomplishment. The majority trend in America has declared publicly many times in the last few years that this high end can be attained only by carefully standardized procedure affecting both student and teacher. I have tried to present the minority viewpoint. I may be "old-fashioned," perhaps "radical," but for a time at least I am going on thinking that the essence of educational technique is in 'I have one in my Freshman English course this year. 'I cannot at all agree with Professor F. W. Clower, State College of Washington, whose article on "Anonymous Grading" in the October 23 issue of School and Society advocates concealing the identity of the student by having him put a number on his paper instead of his name. volved in a close intimacy between student and teacher. I have not yet lost faith in Mark Hopkins and his log. If the student believes his instructor a mere standardized piece of educational equipment with no power of individual judgment, that intimacy must be impaired. If the student feels that he, himself, is not being treated as an individual personality, that intimacy is well-nigh shattered. I plead only that we keep the personal equation. It is too precious to lose. MIAMI UNIVERSITY RALPH L. HENRY SOME THINGS THAT ARE NOT SO In the December, 1926 issue of the Journal, in an article on grammar dealing with subjects and objects (p. 776), there appears this astonishing statement: "The subject always does something to the object." Now of course the subject of a sentence, grammatically considered, is a word, and similarly the object is a word, and it is clearly impossible to think of the subject word doing anything to the object word in the sense literally implied in the quoted statement. This is one of the many cases where teachers and textbook writers confuse the word with the thing, the symbol with the fact symbolized. Other examples of this particular error are: "The subject of a sentence is that part about which the statement is made," and "The predicate is used to make an assertion about the subject." THE NORMAL SCHOOL LONDON, ONTARIO, CANADA A. STEVENSON THE 1927 COUNCIL The Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English, held in the Palmer House, November 24-26, 1927, was probably the most largely attended the Council has ever had, the program was excellent, and enthusiasm rose very high. Many of the old-timers went away saying, "This is the best meeting of the National Council I have ever attended." President Dudley Miles deserves credit not only for arranging the very satisfactory program but also for executing promptly and in dignified fashion so full a program as that of the National Council during these two days. The accommodations and service of the Palmer House added to the pleasure of the convention. Those who have been long acquainted with the Council know the decided change in the temper of its meetings and discussions. It has always been a sanely progressive body, quite ready to welcome the new, but always asking for evidence. It has kept quite abreast of the development and measurements and the growing use of scientific methods in educational investigation. A visitor this year could not fail to be struck by the fact that many of the papers were simply popular reports of scientific experiments with teaching procedures. There still were some accounts of individual experiences, as there will always need to be, because the blazers of new trails cannot be burdened with the impedimenta of measurement; but the extent to which speakers based their recommendations upon scientific data, and the willingness of the audience to listen to such papers, was really surprising. It must be added that these reports were not presented in a wooden fashion. We are learning how to be scientific without being tiresome. While there was nothing startling in the proceedings of the Board of Directors, the appointment of many new committees indicates a healthful growth in the Council's activities. This next year should be a very fruitful one in the materials produced for the actual use of classroom teaching. We shall have a period of consolidation of positions already won and very unostentatious beginnings in new fields. GENERAL SESSIONS The large and enthusiastic group that met Thanksgiving evening listened to three vigorous papers attacking the problem of "Objective Tests in Teaching Literature." Maurice W. Moe, of West Division High School, Milwaukee, opened the meeting with a discussion of "Objective Tests on High-School Classics." Many in the audience had used the materials he described. Brief summaries of two of the papers of this session follow: The examination should conform to the modern tendency to make the procedure of the classroom a real life-situation. It must therefore be of such a nature that it can be taken with books open and all helps easily accessible. This puts a premium on ability to cope with novel throught-situations rather than to hand out memorized fact. The good objective test will test comprehension of the larger relationships of a piece studied and of word and passage meanings, preferably with multiplechoice questions. It will further test the student's realization of characters, scenes, and the imaginative elements of the figures of speech. The last named is quite different from the old-fashioned labeling of similes, metaphors, and metonymies, as it involves power to visualize rather than classify imagery. And finally, the objective test will seek to obtain the student's emotional reactions to what he reads, or at least his recognition of the emotional currents that underlie a piece of prose or poetry. The use of tests of this type will clarify for both pupil and teacher the worth-while objectives of literature study and will in most cases serve as pointers as to how those objectives are to be obtained. Fourteen common high-school classics have already been provided with objective tests, and it is hoped that the co-operation of interested teachers may be obtained to work out similar tests on other classics frequently found in school curricula. At the close of the meeting many interested observers inspected the ingenious pictures made by his students to illustrate figures of speech. Each showed two images the figurative one to the ordinary view, and the actual one when held to the light. These will appear in his book now in preparation, The Door to Poetry. TESTING APPRECIATION HANNAH LOGASA University of Chicago High School Objective tests presume some constant. In appreciation there seems to be nothing but variables. The emotion aroused by reading a poem seems to differ with the reading, the time, and the circumstance. The Logasa-McCoy tests were built in an attempt to discover what teaching accomplishes in terms of pupil ability to react to literature, on the assumption that the elements of appreciation which can be taught can be tested. "Whatever exists must exist in some quantity." Conditions of knowledge, experienced, and standards of attitude influence literary taste and must serve as the basis for this testing. The principles upon which the Logasa-McCoy Tests have been built are: 1. That all the elements which go into the experience we call appreciation of literature cannot be tested objectively. 2. That certain elements in appreciation of literature which make for attitudes, intellectual enjoyment, and standards of taste can be taught in the classroom. 3. That certain elements in appreciation that can be taught can be tested by objective tests. 4. That the results of the tests would give diagnostic evidence of the teaching product in literature. 5. That the logical teaching procedure in using objective tests for improving instruction follows three steps: testing, teaching, and testing again. 6. That since appreciation is concerned with enjoyment as well as knowledge of literature, the testing should be carried on under conditions conducive to aesthetic pleasure. The evidence does not yet permit of any conclusive statement, although they have been given to 293 university students, 297 seniors in high school, and 480 juniors in high school. A study of perfect and zero scores would indicate, however, a logical progression in the reaction of students to the material in the tests. The number of perfect scores decreased and the zero score increased through the three levels. Nancy Coryell, of the Wadleigh High School, New York City, made an interesting study with the tests of 280 juniors grouped according to ability. There seems to be a high correlation between the intelligence quotients of the pupils and Test I. Test III, "Sensory Images," seems to show a tendency towards validity. Test IV, "Comparison," also seems valid, as does Test V, on "Rhythm." Test VI, "Trite and Fresh Expressions," was interesting because it clearly gave evidence of teaching procedure in literature appreciation. Test VII, "Standards of Taste in Poetry," was built upon the theory that pupils must be taught to exercise choice and that standards and attitudes must enter into choice. It was in some respects the most vital of the tests in the series. However, because there was so little correlation between this test and the others in the series, it was excluded from the last edition. Objective tests of appreciation of literature are valuable to the teacher because they give her evidence of the teaching product. They are valuable for the pupils because they make them aware of the elements which go into the art we call "literature." They are valuable to both teacher and pupil because they make the response to literature less vague and inarticulate. MEASUREMENTS IN TEACHING LITERATURE University of Iowa Testing has two functions: the measurement of scholastic performance and the motivation of the student. The criteria by which to judge either a school examination or a standard |