may be
lightened and its efficiency heightened by the introduction of a richer
content that shall provide a greater variety in the repetitions, insure
an adequate motive for effort, and relieve the dead monotony that
frequently rendered the older methods so futile. I look forward to the
time when to be an efficient drillmaster in this newer sense of the term
will be to have reached one of the pinnacles of professional skill.

III

But there is another side of teaching that must be supervised. Although
habit is responsible for nine tenths of conduct, the remaining tenth
must not be neglected. In situations where habit is not adequate to
adjustment, judgment and reflection must come to the rescue, or should
come to the rescue. This means that, instead of acting without thought,
as in the case of habit, one analyzes the situation and tries to solve
it by the application of some fact or principle that has been gained
either from one's own experience or from the experience of others. This
is the field in which knowledge comes to its own; and a very important
task of education is to fix in the pupils' minds a number of facts and
principles that will be available for application to the situations of
later life.

How, then, is the efficiency of instruction (as distinguished from
training or habit building) to be tested? Needless to say, an adequate
test is impossible from the very nature of the situation. The efficiency
of imparting knowledge can be tested only by the effect that this
knowledge has upon later conduct; and this, it will be agreed, cannot be
accurately determined until the pupil has left the school and is face to
face with the problems of real life.

In practice, however, we adopt a more or less effective substitute for
the real test--the substitute called the examination. We all know that
the ultimate purpose of instruction is not primarily to enable pupils
successfully to pass examinations. And yet as long as we teach as though
this were the main purpose we might as well believe it to be. Now the
examination may be made a very valuable test of the efficiency of
instruction if its limitations are fully recognized and if it does not
obscure the true purpose of instruction. And if we remember that the
true purpose is to impart facts in such a manner that they may not only
"stick" in the pupil's mind, but that they may also be amenable to
recall and practical application, and if we set our examination
questi