EXAMINATION (Let. examinatio, from ex aminare, to examine, from examen, tongue of a balance, from exigere, to weigh, from ex, out + agere, to lead). The process of testing a student or a candidate from some scholastic, professional, or other position, with the purpose of discovering either the proficiency that has been attained in certain lines of study and of knowledge possessed or the capacity for doing certain lines of work in the future. Both of these purposes may enter into an examination and usually should, for it is the minimizing of the latter purpose that has caused so much criticism of the scholastic cus tom. The use of examinations as a test of fitness for civil service is discussed under the title CIVIL SERVICE. Aside from the Oriental, especially Chinese, civilization, which has had no educational influence on the West, the use of examinations as a scholastic test seems to have begun in the medixyal universities, where the conferring of the baccalaureate degree was conditioned upon the ability to define and explain terms before a company already possessed of the degree, and of the mastership or doctorate upon the ability to `dispute' or to defend a thesis before a group or a faculty. each member of which was possessed of the degree sought. Since then examinations have become a practice of every part of the mod ern educational system, both as a test of the com pletion of the component part of the system, and as a test of fitness for admission into more advanced parts of the general system or into specific institutions.
It is the confusion of the two purposes that has given rise to some of the most com plicated problems of modern education, chiefly because the test of a completed portion of work can become, even if not necessarily so, largely an exercise in memory, while the test of ability to undertake other and more advanced lines of work may have little relation to the excellence of the memorizing activities or to the possession of mere information. 'rile use of examinations in the
former sense may be extended so as to furnish a test of the standing or even of the financial sup port to be given to institutions. In this latter application it forms a feature of the public school system of the State of New York, and in a much more extended sense, though recently somewhat curtailed, of the elementary school system of Eng land. \\•en used as a test of knowledge, when sonic exterior end is sought. exami nations may lead to serious injury to educational work: the work of instruction becomes formal. the intellectual discipline is superficial. and the information acquired is soon forgotten. When the passing of examinations becomes a prominent motive, the higher purposes and aims in educa tion are lost sight of. These difficulties in con nection with the uses of examinations are met in different ways. In England the examination of schools by competent inspectors has been substi tuted to a large extent as a test of the amount of governmental support granted. In the element ary grade of the American public schools, the recommendation of the teacher, based upon all intimate knowledge of the work of the child. is a partial if not a complete substitute for the multitude of examinations formerly given. For the very burdensome college entrance examina tion, both certification by schools and a combina tion of secondary school finals and college en trance examinations through a general board are being widely substituted. See COLLEGES, AMERI CAN; OXFORD UNIVERSITY; CAM BRIDOE UNIVER SITY; NATIONAL EDUCATION, SYSTEMS OF.
Consult: Hadley, The Education of the Ameri can Citizen (New York, 1901) ; Lathan), The Action of Examinations (Boston, 1886) ; Herbert, The Sacrifice of Education to Examination (Lon don, 1889).