=Remembering and knowing.=—­In our school practices we have become so inured to the question-and-answer method of the recitation that we have made the examination its counterpart.  As teachers we are constantly admonishing our pupils to remember, as if that were the basic principle in the educational process.  In reality we do not want them to remember—­we want them to know; and the distinction is all-important.  The child does not remember which is his right hand; he knows.  He does not remember the face of his mother; he knows her.  He does not remember which is the sun and which is the moon; he knows.  He does not remember snow, and rain, and ice, and mud; he knows.

=Questions and answers.=—­But, none the less, we proceed upon the agreeable assumption that education is the process of memorizing, and so reduce our pupils to the plane of parrots; for a parrot has a prodigious memory.  Hence, it comes to pass that, in the so-called preparation of their lessons, the pupils con the words of the book, again and again, and when they can repeat the words of the book we smile approval and give a perfect grade.  It matters not at all that they display no intelligent understanding of the subject so long as they can repeat the statements of the book.  It never seems to occur to the teacher that the pupil of the third grade might give the words of the binomial theorem without the slightest apprehension of its meaning.  We grade for the repetition of words, not for intelligence.

=Court procedure.=—­In our school practices we seem to take our cue from court procedure and make each pupil who recites feel that he is on the witness stand experiencing all its attendant discomforts, instead of being a cooeperating agent in an agreeable enterprise.  We suspend the sword of Damocles above his head and demand from him such answers as will fill the measure of our preconceived notions.  He may know more of the subject, in reality, than the teacher, but this will not avail.  In fact, this may militate against him.  She demands to know what the book says, with small concern for his own knowledge of the subject.  We proclaim loudly that we must encourage the open mind, and then by our witness-stand ordeal forestall the possibility of open-mindedness.

=Rational methods.=—­When we have learned wisdom enough, and humanity enough, and pedagogy enough to dispense with the quasi-inquisition type of recitation, the transition to a more rational method of examination will be well-nigh automatic.  Let it not be inferred that to inveigh against the question-and-answer type of recitation is to advocate any abatement of thoroughness.  On the contrary, the thought is to insure greater thoroughness, and to make evident the patent truth that thoroughness and agreeableness are not incompatible.  Experience ought to teach us that we find it no hardship to work with supreme intensity at any task that lures us; and, in that respect, we are but grown-up children.  We have only to generate a white-heat of interest in order to have our pupils work with intensity.  But this sort of interest does not thrive under compulsion.