"... NOT IN KIND, BUT IN DEGREE"

The exceptions taken by the letter appearing in these columns yesterday to the CRIMSON's objections to the plan of the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature which sets the written divisional examination in Junior year do not, the CRIMSON believes, reproach the validity of the main objection. This was, briefly, that to set an examination which shall serve solely as a voucher of understanding sufficient to permit intensive specialization makes the examination only something to be got out of the way as easily as possible.

It is only candidates for honors, of course, who face this examination. But in this particular case, and probably in the case of a similar plan being adopted by other departments of instruction, there attaches to the examination the character of a qualifying test. Passage of this test admits one to the privilege of specialization, and implies a comprehension of a field of study so hastily covered that understanding deeper than that needed for a clever student to pass an examination is a doubtful quantity.

It is a platitude that examination wisdom is not true understanding of the subject. The fact that the Junior divisional examination taken by students in History and Literature is the same as that offered the Seniors indicates the compression into three years of knowledge ordinarily acquired in four; while this compression may bring examination wisdom, it will hardly bring, in most cases, more than that.

Candidates are encouraged further in their consideration of the Junior divisional examination only as an occasion by the absence of any records of the results. No marks are kept, so that a grade just above the passing line serves the purpose as well as a mark of distinction. Where this is the case, few will take the trouble to learn more than is necessary, and veterans of examinations have a way of knowing how much is necessary.

In effect, the Junior divisional test is a line drawn sharply between the realms of generalization and specialization. To pass the examination is to cross the equator dividing two aspects of study which have here become two separate entities.

This division may be a salutary one. But it seems that conducting specialized work along with the general would establish a more equable balance between the two. A student with three full years to absorb his entire subject for examination at the end of his course will have sufficient background by his Senior year to attempt a specialized job in the form of a thesis, while he is finishing his general work on his field. Each portion of his work should profit from association with the other. The final divisional examination then becomes a true test of general knowledge clarified and made more valuable by concentrated study of a portion of it.

Neither the theory of giving the honors candidate an examination in his Junior year, nor that of delaying it until his Senior year represents a distinct educational program. Each is a different side of the same coin. No question of individual freedom is involved; this is determined by release from tutorial and course restriction, and the opportunities are equally good under either plan. The difference is one of degree, rather than of kind; whether a course which dismisses half its subject after a hurried two years is wiser than one which carries general and specific along together, to the profit of both.