Evaluation

“ Such choice is effected through evaluation, which comes in last analysis to this: in every set of circumstances each man asks himself, 'to the satisfaction of which of my many wants do I attach the most immediate importance? ”

“ And finally the process of judgment and appraisal, of examination and revaluation. To judge for the sake of judging, to analyze and evaluate for the sake of the process hardly seems worth while. But if we supply the process with the new factors of increased life, physical, social, intelligent, we shall be compelled to new valuations. ”

“ What is the true motive of examinations? Real teaching leads to the systematic, all-sided up-building of a compact body of knowledge in the mind. In this up-building or instruction, every faculty of the mind is brought into action—perception, judgment, classification, reason, imagination, and memory. Examinations, then, should test the condition and progress of the mind in its development. Is the common standard of examinations a test of real teaching? If I am not mistaken, the examinations usually given simply test the pupil's power of memorizing disconnected facts. ”

“ No doubt, a great deal is to done by the careful selection of examiners, and by the copious introduction of practical work, to remove the evils inseparable from examination; but, under the best of circumstances, I believe that examination will remain but an imperfect test of knowledge, and a still more imperfect test of capacity, while it tells next to nothing about a man's power as an investigator. ”

“ The remedy for the evils attending the doctrine of formal discipline previously spoken of, is not to be found by substituting a doctrine of specialized disciplines, but by reforming the notion of mind and its training. Discovery of typical modes of activity, whether play or useful occupations, in which individuals are concerned, in whose outcome they recognize they have something at stake, and which cannot be carried through without reflection and use of judgment to select material of observation and recollection, is the remedy. ”

“ This survey indicates the present status of attempts to define and measure differences in original and human nature. A knowledge of individual differences is important in every field of social control. It is significant that these tests have been devised to meet problems of policies and of administration in medicine, in industry, in education, and in penal and reformatory institutions. Job analysis, personnel administration, ungraded rooms, classes for exceptional children, vocational guidance, indicate fields made possible by the development of tests for measuring individual differences. ”

“ Central in interest and promise stands the psychological test. In so far as psychology has laid bare the fundamental qualities upon which achievement depends, [Pg xiv] its application has developed a series of tests to determine how the individual compares with the others or with the average in respect to this, that, and the other constituent quality. Professor Hollingworth presents the results of such analysis, both in relation to the variety of human traits and in the grading of individuals by reference to the measure of the quality which each possesses. ”

“ Aside from the fact that we are only beginning to have a profession of education, many other factors have entered to delay the progress in the direction of standardizing our work by means of accurate measurement of the results achieved. One of the most comforting of the fallacies which are at times urged against the attempt to measure results is found in the popular statement that the only criterion by which the success of school work can be measured is found in the ultimate success of the individuals who are subjected to the process. ”

“ Observe, the evil lies in the competition, not in the examination. If the old axiom be true, that the mind can know nothing but what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put by the mind itself, it is relatively true that knowledge conveyed from without must needs be tested from without. Probably, work on a given syllabus tested by a final examination is the condition of definite knowledge and steady progress. All we contend for is that the examination shall not be competitive. ”

“ A convenient stimulus to the proper sort of review is found in the requirement that pupils prepare an abstract or topical outline of the ground which has been covered, and submit it, preferably from memory, for class criticism and discussion. If the teacher asks questions, she should be very careful to see that they are questions of large scope which demand organization, or still better the application of organized knowledge. This brings us to the problem of testing.
The only adequate test of school education, as of all other [103] education, is action. ”

“ If changes are brought about in the children [253] who are being educated, then there must be the possibility of measurement. These changes may take place in habit, in knowledge, in methods of work, in interests and ideals, and in power of appreciation. Probably no one would question the possibility of measuring the change which takes place in the formation of habits. We have quite commonly been willing to measure growth in knowledge by tests which demand that students not only remember facts, but that they show some ability to apply them. ”

“ The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view, as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom. ”

“ The result of all reasoning is judgment. And judgment is good as the materials of the reasoning process correspond to facts, or are in line with the most probable of the yet unknown. It is poor as the reasoning material fails to meet the facts, or is out of harmony with the most probable of the yet unproved.
It is of no avail, then, to attempt to improve our final judgments as such. We must examine the materials we reason with, then learn to group and compare them logically. And in the very separating of true premises from false, we use and train the judgment we would improve. ”

“ Whenever a class is given a series of review questions for the purpose of requiring a general review of a whole subject, the result of the exercise is to fix in the student’s mind certain larger elements of the study and to establish certain broad habits of selection. Written examinations may be, from this point of view, devices of training, not merely tests of results. The examination method as a training method has, accordingly, an important place. ”

“ Examinations, examinations by teachers who understand this very fine art, in which the student is obliged to restate, apply, and use the principles of his subject, are of the utmost value in keeping the mind active and not simply receptive. They are just as good and as vitally necessary as examination papers which merely demand definitions and lists and bald facts are bad. ”

“ But, if there be a test derived from external considerations and capable of being applied to particular cases by the ordinary processes of reasoning, then we may fairly expect that, as the opportunities of observation and experience increase, the test will be applied more widely and more accurately, and that the science of conduct will grow, like all other sciences, with the advance of knowledge and of general civilisation. ”

“ Since an examination is, in effect, a form of psychological test, it is natural that psychologists should have attempted to introduce some of the technique of psychological testing into the work of examining students, in the interest of economy of the student's time as well as that of the examiner. The teacher prepares blanks which the student can quickly fill out if he knows the subject, not otherwise. ”

“ Every step in scientific investigation, every proposition which relates to the interest and happiness of man, every statement and appeal involving a valuable consideration, must be submitted to the scrutiny and judgment of individual reason; for every person has the right to form his own conclusions, and justify them by experience. ”

“ Only occasional attempts have been made to determine the influence of practice on the correlation of abilities, and those that have been reported have been based on so few practice trials that no review of them need be given. In the present chapter I shall present the results of an experiment in which a group of observers were repeatedly tested until in each test a practice limit was approximated, a limit which, in most cases, one hundred further trials failed to improve. The results have a real interest for vocational psychology. ”

“ One of the best tests of a system of education is the preparation it gives for life in a liberal sense. When a child, leaving school behind, develops into a citizen, what tests are applied to him? The questions submitted to his judgment in his relations to the family and to society call for a quick and varied knowledge of men, insight into character, and for a large amount of practical information of natural science. ”

“ It is in this way that a formal examination reacts upon and intensifies the sinister tendencies of which it is at once a product and a symptom. The examination system is, as I have said, the keystone of the arch of Western education, crowning and completing the whole structure, and at the same time holding it together, and preventing it from falling, as it deserves to fall, into a ruinous heap. ”

“ The generalization test presents for interpretation situations which are closely paralleled in the everyday social experience of human beings. It tests the subject’s ability to understand motives underlying acts or attitudes. ”

“ The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. ”

“ It is a knowledge of things themselves as they are, a knowledge of the signs and tendencies of the times, a profound and accurate knowledge of the character and wants of the age. And all this requires time, long and laborious study, close, honest and independent investigation—an investigation carried on irrespective of the fear, or favor, or dogmas of men. ”

“ Examination—thorough, searching examination—is an indispensable accompaniment of teaching; but I am almost inclined to commit myself to the very heterodox proposition that it is a necessary evil. I am a very old examiner, having, for some twenty years past, been occupied with examinations on a considerable scale, of all sorts and conditions of men, and women too—from the boys and girls of elementary schools, to the candidates for honors and fellowships in the universities. ”

“ But when information is regarded as the equivalent of knowledge, the testing of the teacher's work becomes a simple matter, for it is quite easy to frame an examination which will ascertain, with some approach to accuracy, the amount of information that is floating on the surface of the child's mind ”

“ Constrained by every influence that is brought to bear upon him to judge according to the appearance of things, the teacher can ill afford [117] to judge righteous judgment,—can ill afford to regard what is outward and visible as the symbol of what is inward and spiritual, can ill afford to think of the work done by the child except as a thing to be weighed in an examiner's balance or measured by an examiner's rule. ”

“ In approaching this question, therefore, I have realized the importance of obtaining the opinions of experts who are alone qualified to express a well-balanced judgment upon a matter demanding knowledge and opportunities of observation of a very special nature. ”

“ Not only must the larger divisions of the course be carefully balanced and tested for value, but each lesson must justify its induction into it. It is at this point that the relation to the individual is the chief criterion. ”

“ Does society take the measure of his social standing, or estimate the quality of his moral character and training? Do his prospective patients seek evidence of his professional ability, his special acquirements, or his general scientific culture? ”

“ This is the class of tests that are designed to measure the degree in which an individual possesses such qualities as moral sense, form perception, the power to reason from cause to effect, poetic discrimination, ability to understand complicated instructions, judgment, sense of the right relationship of things and ideas. ”

“ The results are presented mainly by way of suggesting the type of investigation which [Pg 173] must be carried much further before we are in position to evaluate properly the self-analysis of an individual or the judgments of associates as presented in testimonials, interviews, or other indications based on general acquaintance. In the case of the psychological tests, a long program of selection, standardization, and accumulation of norms is laid out for those interested in the further advance of vocational psychology. ”

“ It appears, then, that we need experience to inform us, in what degree, and in what cases, or sorts of cases, experience is to be relied on. Experience must be consulted in order to learn from it under what circumstances arguments from it will be valid. We have no ulterior test to which we subject experience in general; but we make experience its own test. ”

“ It is, of course, not an intelligent method to attribute a value to each subject in accordance with the time devoted to the examination in that subject. What clue have we toward a better mode of determining the value which ought to be attributed to each of the numerous electives, when the young men cannot present all the permitted subjects, and hardly three fifths of them, indeed, if the range is adequately widened? ”