attitude, of high qualifications, and of experience in the
field of elementary education. The assistants should be carefully
selected by the board on the recommendation of the county
superintendent. Poor supervision is little better than none.

=The Schools Examined.=--The county superintendent and his assistants
should give, periodically, oral and written examinations in each school,
thus testing the work of both the teacher and the pupils. These
examinations should not conform in any perfunctory or red-tape manner to
a literally construed course of study. The course of study is a means
and not an end, and should be, at all points and times, elastic and
adaptable. To make pupils fit the course of study instead of making the
course of study fit the pupils is the old method of the Procrustean
bed--if the person is not long enough for it he is stretched; if too
long, a piece is cut off. Any examination or tests which would wake up
mind and stimulate education in the neighborhood may be resorted to; but
it should be remembered that examinations are likewise a means and not
an end.

Some years ago when I was a county superintendent I tried the plan of
giving such tests in any subject to classes that had completed a
definite portion of that subject and arrived at a good stopping place.
If, for example, the teacher announced that his class had acquired a
thorough knowledge of the multiplication table, I gave a searching test
upon that subject and issued a simple little certificate to the effect
that the pupil had completed it. These little certificates acted like
stakes put down along the way, to give incentive, direction, and
definiteness to the educative processes, and to stimulate a reasonable
class spirit or individual rivalry. I meet these pupils occasionally
now--they are to-day grown men and women--and they retain in their
possession these little colored certificates which they still highly
prize.

One portion of my county was populated almost entirely by Scandinavians,
and here a list of fifty to a hundred words was selected which
Scandinavian children always find it difficult to pronounce. At the
first trial many or most of the children mispronounced a large
percentage of them. I then announced that, the next time I visited the
school, I would test the pupils again on these words and others like
them, and issue "certificates of correct pronunciation" to all who were
entitled to them. I found, on the next visit, t