The Canada Educational Monthly And School Magazine Vol 5 Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from The Canada Educational Monthly and "School Magazine", Vol. 6: January to December, 1884 An essential element in modern school education is the annual torture of examinations. This is a pinchbeck form of the doctrine of the "survival of the fittest" applied to schools, for on the results of these examinations depends the question of promotion of the pupils and efficiency on the part of teachers. The percentages obtained in these examinations are taken as the indices of the pupil's intellectual growth, and of the power of the teacher to foster and promote such growth. The highest value is thus affixed to such educational agencies as are able to formulate their results completely at the end of a single term, and the same spirit and principle reach into each day's achievement, each recitation and each single effort on the part of pupil and teacher. The educational process thus becomes a wrestle with words and formulas that the memory may subject them to its uses for recitation and examination. The age is full of the spirit of reform, but educational reform will be an idle dream so long as reformers and critics laud the successes wrought out by pernicious methods, and, while declaiming against "cramming," adjust their eyeglasses with great complacency, and commend in the highest terms those types of perfection which can only be attained by the most persistent and deadly cramming. So long as the teacher's professional status with directors and parents depends on the number of pupils promoted and the value of their averages, i so long we may expect that young eyes, opening to a vision of the world and life's possibilities, will be blinded by the dust of words ; so long the vitality of the future will be sacrificed to this much of folly in the schoolroom. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.