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Show 150 Appointees Fail Exam School authorities and parents of Louisiana are aroused by the statement of Representative F. F. Edward Hebert that in the four yea s he has been in Congress he has named 150 youths from his district to take qualifying examinations ex-aminations for Annapolis and West Point and that all failed. While the entrance examinations examina-tions for Annapolis and West Point are difficult, and many qualified on the basis of scholastic scholas-tic work, the report of Representative Represen-tative Hebert should cause renewed re-newed consideration of the work being done in the high schools, not only of Louisiana, but of all states. The educational machinery of the nation has been set up largely large-ly on the basis of the standards which apply tocourses of study and units completed. At best, it is a faulty method of evaluating the work done by different schools. Much depends upon the pressure exerted by teachers and the work they are supposed to do. A complaint, commonly leveled against institutional systems today, to-day, is that the schools scatter their fire too much. Tt is said that pupils come from high schools without adequate training train-ing in certain basic studies. The curriculum, we are advised, is tnrt paQv flnri sniHpnts rnmnlfiP the required units without exerting ex-erting themselves intellectually. . These criticisms may have some merit but there is another side to the question of education. The intelligence that one gets from books does not comprise the entire range of education. Consequently, Con-sequently, if a student acquires the ability to study and learns the technique of thinking, the process of education will take care of itself. Moreover, there is much to be said for the broadening broad-ening influence of some of the so-called "side-lines" that now appear in the courses of modern high schools. |