Exactness, like the voluntary control of attention, is a matter to which educational reformers perhaps tend to attach too little importance. Dr. Ballard (_op. cit._ Chap. XVI) states definitely that our elementary schools, in this respect, are not so good as they were, although in most respects they are vastly improved. He says: “There is in existence a large number of tests given to school-children in the annual examinations of the ’eighties and early ’nineties, and the results of those tests were scheduled for purposes of grant.[22] When those same tests are set to-day to children of the same age the results are palpably and consistently worse. Account for it as we may, there can be no doubt whatever about the fact. Taken as a whole, the work done in our schools--our primary schools at least--is less accurate than it was a quarter of a century ago.” Dr. Ballard’s whole discussion of this subject is so excellent that I have little to add to it. I will, however, quote his concluding words: “After all deductions have been made, it [accuracy] is still a noble and inspiring ideal. It is the morality of the intellect: it prescribes what it ought to strive for in the pursuit of its own proper ideal. For the extent to which we are accurate in our thoughts, words, and deeds is a rough measure of our fealty to truth.” The difficulty which is felt by the advocate of modern methods is that accuracy, as hitherto taught, involves boredom, and that it is an immense gain if education can be made interesting. Here, however, we must make a distinction. Boredom merely imposed by the teacher is wholly bad; boredom voluntarily endured by the pupil in order to satisfy some ambition is valuable if not overdone. It should be part of education to fire pupils with desires not easily gratified--to know the calculus, to read Homer, to perform well on the violin, or what not. Each of these involves its own kind of accuracy. Able boys and girls will go through endless tedium and submit willingly to severe discipline in order to acquire some coveted knowledge or skill. Those who have less native ability can often be fired by similar ambitions if they are inspiringly taught. The driving force in education should be the pupil’s wish to learn, not the master’s authority; but it does not follow that education should be soft and easy and pleasant at every stage. This applies, in particular, to the question of accuracy. The acquisition of exact knowledge is apt to be wearisome, but it is essential to every kind of excellence, and this fact can be made obvious to a child by suitable methods. In so far as modern methods fail in this respect, they are at fault. In this matter, as in many others, reaction against the old bad forms of discipline has tended to an undue laxity, which will have to give place to a new discipline, more internal and psychological than the old external authority. Of this new discipline, accuracy will be the intellectual expression.