Grade (education)

“ Questions relating to the training of leaders for democracy's service attain new significance in terms of the recent ability to measure and grade intelligence, as also do questions relating to grading, classification in school, choice of studies, rate of advancement, and the vocational guidance of children in school. ”

“ In the student body of every institution of learning we find the high-grade men, the moderate successes, from the standpoint of college education, and the rear guard. A question of no little importance, and one with which the present paper deals is this: Is the high-grade man of his college days high-grade still when put to the severer tests of active life? ”

“ This led to the systematizing of instruction and the grading of schools, so that in nearly all the towns of the United States the public schools have been divided into primaries for the younger pupils and grammar-schools for older pupils; while within twenty-five years a third grade has arisen known as the high-schools for the most advanced students. In each division there are sub-grades, and, wherever improvements in public-school education are attempted, the principle of gradation is fundamental. ”

“ The School of Education has been organized within the University for the specific purpose of preparing teachers for the high schools of the State. To graduate from the School of Education and thus receive the B.A. degree and the Bachelor's Diploma in teaching, which is accredited by law as a first-grade professional certificate, and also to be recommended for teaching specific subjects in the high-school, an applicant is required, first, to have specialized, academically, in the subject to be taught. ”

“ The Three Learned Professions.—When there were but three learned professions, law, medicine, and theology, and the man of action, soldier or ruler, thought lightly of them all in comparison with his own field of activity, the higher education could be limited to those of selected classes. Now the social need is for trained talent in a far broader area, and the consequence is that not only 273is the grade-school being made over but the professional goal of college and university is being extended beyond the dreams of old pedagogues. ”

“ The school grade represents an endeavor to get pupils together who are so near alike that they may be treated as an individual. The cry for extremely small classes, the exclusiveness of the small private school, the employment of tutors, all stand for efforts made toward the education of the individual for himself practically in a state of isolation. ”

“ The elective principle was broadened so as to bridge the gaps between preparatory school and college, and underclass and upperclass years, giving the student in his underclass years a broad general training in subjects deemed fundamental to real education, and in his upperclass years requiring him to follow continuous work in one of three divisions of studies, the literary-philosophical, the historical-economic, or the mathematical-scientific. ”

“ That they were necessary for a certificate of merit, or for a University degree, would be a satisfactory answer for teachers to give to that large class of parents who really know nothing about genuine education, but who feel that they must obtain for their children what other children have, and a reputation for knowledge at any rate, if not knowledge itself. ”

“ Every Grammar School has its own scholarships; the Universities have open scholarships and bursaries often of considerable value; and a free, or partially free, education is open to the majority of the youth of the upper middle class on one condition, that of brains. It is small wonder that every Grammar and Public School bases its curriculum upon these conditions, knows exactly what [86] standard of merit will secure the ‘Hastings,’ knows the boys who have a chance, and orders their very strenuous work towards the end in view. ”

“ Under the domination of the grading system, the school reverses or ignores most of the principles that control people in practical affairs. Under its operation, it compels the teacher to lay the greater emphasis upon the similarities among pupils, and to ignore differences, and it places a premium upon uniformity. The more closely the school grade approaches its ideal, the more strictly must each pupil work for himself; while the closer we approximate the grouping required by the social ideal, the more earnestly must the individual strive for the whole. ”

“ Some of these opponents have gone so far as to assert that the customary college degree, Bachelor of Arts, stands as definitely for Latin and Greek as the degree M.D. stands for the study of medicine. Now, inasmuch as the college is the school in which, according to the best authorities, our young people are expected to gain a higher degree of education than the lower schools, academies, and high-schools can give them, the question. What constitutes the basis of higher education? ”

“ The detailed regulations for the examinations for degrees should be framed with a due regard for all classes of the affiliated institutions ; and we will only observe upon this subject, that the standard for common degrees will require to be fixed with very great judgment. There are many persons who well deserve the distinction of an academical degree, as the recognition of a liberal education, who could not hope to obtain it, if the examination was as difficult as that for the senior Government scholarships ”

“ A boy of eight in an Elementary school may shew more intelligence and wider knowledge than a boy of fourteen in a Preparatory school, that is, if he have been taught on the principles I have in view, while the other boy has been instructed with a view to a given standard of scholarship. The Preparatory school boy does, however, reach that standard in Latin, if not in Greek also, and in Mathematics. ”

“ What, then, are the faculties which education is supposed to train? In my attempt to answer this question I will confine myself to the elementary school,—the only school which I can pretend to know well. A glance at the time-table of an ordinary elementary school might suggest to us that there were two chief groups of faculties to be trained—those which perceive and those which express, those which take in and those which give out. When such subjects as History, Geography, or Science are being taught, the child's perceptive faculties are being trained. ”

“ It is a widely prevalent doctrine, to which the customs of our best schools conform, that teachers of elementary schools should have a secondary or high school education, and that teachers of high schools should have a collegiate education. ”

“ There are too many academies calling themselves 'college' or even 'university,' with high grade curriculum and low grade requirements, with long lists of pupils in preparatory classes of one sort or another and very short lists of students in so-called college classes. ”

“ In many cases, the diploma that the student carries home with him at the conclusion of his course is nothing less than a gold brick. It has made him believe that he has gotten an education, when he has actually never had an opportunity to find out what an education is.
I have in mind a young man who came to us from one of those little colleges to which I have referred where he had studied Greek, Latin, German, astronomy, and, among other things, stenography. ”

“ The evils of arbitrary grading are not less marked in their effects upon the teacher. The notion that each grade must have its method is most persistent at the two extremes—the kindergarten and the high school. Those entering a course of training for the kindergarten are loath to trouble themselves with what lies beyond; and the would-be high-school teacher is apt to regard a suggestion that he look into the nature of elementary instruction as a reflection upon his intelligence. ”

“ It is quite possible that the assigning of grades to school children and college students as a kind of reward or punishment is useless or worse; its value could and should be determined. But when students are excluded from college because they do not secure a certain grade in a written examination, or when candidates for positions in the government service are selected as the result of a written examination, we assume a serious responsibility. The least we can do is to make a scientific study of our methods and results. ”

“ Keep pupils in school longer. Hundreds of pupils are kept in school and do good work because of their desire and their parents’ desire that they graduate. The desire for a diploma may not be the highest motive for an education, but so far all of our best institutions have found it necessary to hold to the custom. ”

“ This suggests the propriety of forming a fourth class which shall embrace the least advanced scholars, the instruction in which shall be confined to the elements of an English education, including Grammar, Geography, History, and Arithmetic, as the principal subjects ”

“ As a condition for admitting any students at all into the higher courses, the Society introduced a much-needed reform, in requiring that literary qualifications of a sufficiently high grade should precede matriculation. ”

“ I deprecate the tendency, seen in some quarters, of setting up as the symbol of the standard of qualification for the high school teacher, the doctor's degree. I do not want the boys and girls of our high schools taught, or rather directed in their upward development, by mere specialists—doctors of philosophy, who know everything about nothing, and nothing about everything. ”

“ It is a growing conviction that there must be laid, in the earlier grades, a strong foundation on which to build a practical education in the later grades whether directed toward industrial, commercial or professional life. ”

“ This same view which derives the principle determining the sequence of studies from the instruction-material itself, as though it had been unconditionally and finally settled that such and such things must be taught, asserts itself on a larger scale in requirements for admission to higher grades or schools. Children are to be able to read, write, and cipher well before being allowed to enter the grammar school; promotions to higher grades are to take place only when the goal set for the grade immediately preceding has been reached. ”

“ The lower degree is meant to mark a certain measure of proficiency in the studies of the faculty; the higher degree is meant to mark a higher [Pg 28] measure of proficiency, that measure which qualifies a man to become, if he thinks good, a teacher in that faculty. ”

“ Let a certain standard of scholarship be required in each, grade as a condition of entering the next higher, and let all who do not come up to this standard pass out to the factory, the workshop, the plow, the wheel, the lathe—to whatever, in fact, is to be their life's work. The requirements in the lower grades should not be too high, and every one should have an opportunity of learning to spell, read, and write, with something of the four cardinal rules of arithmetic ”

“ Instead of working out and teaching methods of connecting the school with life, thus making it a centre and a source of inspiration that might gradually transform the communities about them, these colleges have too frequently permitted their graduates to go out with the idea that their diploma was a sort of patent of nobility, and that the possessor of it was a superior being who was making a sacrifice in merely bestowing himself or herself as a teacher upon the communities to which he or she was called. ”

“ In several of our American cities the system has matured, during a period of some thirty-odd years, from the kindergarten to the university. These schools have produced whatever results the organism of the graded system is calculated to accomplish. The pupils have passed from the lowest grade, in regular order, in large classes, under similar programmes, in a uniform course, supervised by boards of trustees, and taught by instructors rising in literary attainments from grade to grade through the entire series. ”

“ The following are opinions that represent the majority or appear important as individual views: (1) The high-school graduate, when entering college, should possess a mind educated by methods that create interest and make power to think and generalize—power to do original work. (2) He should have an acquaintance with each field of knowledge, and should show a symmetrical development of his mental activities. (3) As tending to produce greater interest, knowledge, and power, he should have been trained in only a limited number of subjects in each field ”

“ The determination of the validity of the grades given to college students and their standardization appear to me to be important because I regard it as desirable that students should be credited for the work they do rather than for the number of hours that they attend courses. By our present method a student who fails gets no credit at all, while a student who is nearly as bad (and perhaps worse) gets as much credit towards his degree as the best student in the class. ”

“ To continue and complete the secondary schools were instituted the lyceums; here the instruction was to be Greek and Latin, rhetoric, logic, literature, moral philosophy, and the elements of the mathematical and physical sciences. The pupils were to be of four kinds: boursiers nationaux, scholars nominated to scholarships by the State; pupils from the secondary schools, admitted as free scholars by competition; paying boarders, and paying day-scholars." M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent, chapter 1. EDUCATION: France: A. D. 1833-1889. The present System of Public Instruction. ”