EDITORIAL.
49
with trembling hand to answer ten questions, with five divisions each, in one short hour. Unfairness seems to be expected, as the professor puts the chairs far apart so that they can't look over one another's shoulders, and marches up and down to see if any notes are passed or the boys are consulting their shirt cuffs too diligently How effectual these precautions are let any of the students answer.
The girl leaves the room sighing, "thank gracious its over," and the boy remarks that he "don't want to look in that book again for six years," and tries to forget all with which he has burdened his mind during the last week. The professor goes home, and looking over the papers wonders how it is that the poorest has come in so finely on the last heat, while the one he thought so good has barely passed the quarter pole. Then he puts down the grades according to the dots and the crosses the pupils have made, with the thought that he would have made a great mistake had he given them what their class work seemed to indicate; or else he concludes that he knows pretty well what a person deserves after he has tested him for five months, and then puts down what he thinks right.
Does it pay? Whether the grades beat the merit or the merit the grades, does it pay? May not this explain why the successful men in life were the medium scholars in college? In life there is no cramming, no cheating. A long test and a fair representation are demanded by the world.
What better have we? is asked. That grades incite to study none denies (unless perhaps one obtain but 60, when the result is not very encouraging). Last year one of our professors announced to his classes that all who received above 90 per cent. in term work would not be required to take an examination. The work day after day showed that all were determined to get
above 90. The labor during the term was much harder, but it was not concentrated in the last week, nor did the students feel a desire for forgetting it as soon as it was over. There was no need for cramming or cheating, and yet the grades were there to offer an incentive and record their efforts. Such a plan, if adopted in every department, would, we believe, have the effect of raising University scholarship most materially. It would make better men and women.
The inaugural address of Chancellor Lippincott, which will early be published in pamphlet form, is an article worthy of careful perusal. Although the address was hastily written, as we have been told, the opinions presented show themselves to be the result of wide experience and careful thought. The ideal University, as portrayed by the chancellor, is what we hope and believe the University of Kansas will one day become.
Last spring the representative from Pottawatomie county told the legislature how the University boys parted their hair in the middle and wore tight pants. Now some of the state papers tell their readers that the University is turning out nihilists. Imagine the ideal student—a dude with hair parted in the middle and tight pants—standing on a stump with uplifted dagger, advocating nihilism and calling on the people to burn and slay.
Prof. Spring has begun work on the History of Kansas, to be published in the "Commonwealth Series" by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The professor is both an entertaining writer and an impartial judge of Kansas history; but considering the bitter feeling between the old partisans of Gov. Robinson and James Lane, he has a difficult task before him. He can hardly escape rough criticism from one side or the other perhaps both.