School Exams

Read about the school exams of 1858 here. What were the questions like? The expectation of large amounts of information learned by heart and the comment from the examiners that “… answers, even when accurate, showed a general uniformity of expression which seemed to imply that meager handbooks had been placed before the students to be ‘got up’ and that little attempt had been made by their instructors to excite the interest of their pupils by questionings or remarks of their own” indicate the methods of science instruction that were common. We will see later in the course as we learn more about Mason’s Method that it was this situation along with others in science education that Mason was hoping to correct as she crafted a curriculum and an examination that would provide for very different results.