Collection

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.• December 14, 1925
A group of undergraduates came to me not long ago and expressed the opinion
that there was a difference in examinations which called only for facts which
th~ had learned and those which called for original thinking on their own account .
The point of view expressed by these men in an able one and sound, and I want to
say a few words on this this morning.
The purpose of , and the ambition of an intellectual person is to discipline
his powers of thought. Anyone who has them developed to any great degree feels
instinctively that he is doing more mature work when he is called upon to give an
opinion based upon analysis of reasoning about the problem than when he is simply
called upon to repeat infonnation which he has acquired. It seems that the most
distincti ve intellectual thing that we do and which we all take the most satis-faction
in doing is to solve the problems - that is ymat we all of us want out of
education, to solve the problems, not to acquire facts . The distinction is largely
the distinction of the one between school boy work and the work of a university
man. It is not true that the school boy solves problems - memory is easier i~
the school boy than it is in older people. Young students can learn things more
rapidly than you can. 'l'hat is why it is so important to learn languages in
secondary schools. You do it more rapidly then than you can later. I agree very
thoroughly with that point of view.
There are one or two caveats \rnich ought to be uttered in connection with it
however. There are a certain number of people \Vi th an intellectual flicni ty which
are given to generalizing about prolems without sufficient information to base
their conclusions . Such people are dangerous - there is nothing more important
than that th~ should be restrained and that their auditors should criticise them