Page:Carnegie Flexner Report.djvu/50

the same insufficient character. In Michigan they fairly well approximate high school value,—in consequence of which they are decidedly unpopular.^[1] In Illinois the written examination has been transformed into an informal after-dinner conversation between candidate and examiner, as we shall presently discover.

There remains still a third method of cutting below an actual high school standard,—the method indeed that provides much the most capacious loophole for the admission of unqualified students under the cloak of nominal compliance with the high school standard. The agent in the transactions about to be described is the medical examiner, appointed in some places by voluntary agreement between the schools, elsewhere delegated by the state board,^[2] or by the superintendent of public instruction acting in its behalf, for the purpose of dealing with students who present written evidence other than the diploma of an accredited high school. It is intended and expected that this official shall enforce a high school standard. In few states is this standard achieved. The education department in New York, the state boards in Minnesota and Michigan, maintain what may be fairly called a scholastically honest high school requirement; for they require a diploma representing an organically complete secondary school education, properly guaranteed, or, in default thereof, a written examination covering about the same ground: there is no other recourse.

Elsewhere the state board is legally powerless, as in Maryland, or unwilling to antagonize the schools, as in Illinois and Kentucky. The outside examiners, agreed on by the schools in the former case, designated by law in the latter, fall far short of enforcing a high school standard. The examiner, even where distinctly well intentioned, as in Kentucky, never gets sufficient control. The schools do not want the rule enforced, and the boards are either not strong enough or not conscientious enough to withstand them. Besides, the examiners lack time, machinery, and encouragement for the proper performance of their ostensible office. They are busy men: here, a county official; there, a school principal; elsewhere, a high school professor.^[3] A single individual, after his regular day's work is over, without assistance of any kind, is thus expected to perform a task much more complicated than that for which Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Michigan maintain costly establishments. There is

high school training at all. It is pointed out that by matriculating at once the student may escape any subsequent advance in entrance requirements.

1. In Ohio the examinations are fairly representative of high school values, as far as they go. But up to this time they have not covered a complete high school course and they have little influence on enrolment, as tutor-certificates are freely accepted in their stead.
2. In these cases, the requirement is really a practice, not an educational regulation. But the effect is the same.
3. Occasionally the school has an "arrangement" by which defective candidates are referred to a "coach," who is simultaneously "examiner;" he thus approves his own work. This is the practice of the George Washington University medical department. Again, the school refers defective candidates to the preparatory department of its own university, and shortly after admits them on an assurance of the "equivalent" from that source. This is the Creighton school (Omaha) plan; out of 56 members of its first-year class (1908–9), 3 were admitted on certificates (not diplomas) of this kind.