POST-MORTEM

The sowing of the Divisional Examinations is long o'erpassed but the dread harvest has just been issued. Statistics upon the harvest or upon any particular field are not officially published but one needs nothing except attentive cars to discover some curious facts. Students notoriously negligent of work have passed while students with at least mediocre records have failed; students who have flourished on the Dean's list for one, two and sometimes three years have received a mere "pass" while students who have done unimpressive work or in some cases have been more than once on probation have received a "pass with credit" and so are relieved of the obligation of taking final examinations.

It is of course absurd to expect that the results of the divisional examinations should be entirely consistent with previous course records, but when they prove not to be consistent in so many cases, it is not absurd at least to lift a skeptical eyebrow.

The greatest amount of inconsistency appears to have occurred in the Division of Modern Languages and the obvious answer is that this will be remedied by the coming introduction of the tutorial system into the Division. Yet that will not do everything. If the divisional examinations are fitted no better to what the tutorial system can supply than they were this year to what the Division without tutors supplied, the inconsistencies will still be rife. For instance this year's Bible examination was of such a nature that nobody who had not taken English 35 or who had not made the Bible a constant companion for a very long time could hope for more than a bare pass. If the Bible examination continues to be of that kind, then tutorial work in the Bible should be required or prospective candidates for a degree should be plentifully warned so that they may include English 35 somewhere in their schedules.

The English field examination certainly more closely approximated the ideal than ever before. To emphasize extended study in one period by requiring the examinee to write upon two questions in one of the major divisions; to emphasize concreteness rather than high-sounding generalities by making the questions general, and individual thought processes by increasing the number of broad and decreasing the number of small, fact questions all this is more as the examination should be. But--such changes should not be made without warning.

The divisional examination has so grown in importance and difficulty that it now completely usurps the senior's horizon. And this year seems to have proved conclusively that the senior horizon is not enough. The undergraduate must have his eye upon the coming test from his sophomore year onward. Therefore two things are imperative; first, the most painstaking care in helping the student to choose his field of concentration so that the field need not be changed in the junior year; and second, a fair advertising of the nature of the divisional examination and forceful impression of the need of picking courses with an eye to its terrors.