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THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
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 THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED 
 TORONTO 
 
 THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 LONDON 
 
 THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 
 TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI 
 
 THE COMMERCIAL PRESS, LIMITED 
 SHANGHAI 
 
The : 
 
 PRACTICE OF TEACHING © 
 IN THE 
 
 SECONDARY SCHOOL 
 
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 By - 
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 HENRY C. MORRISON 
 
 Professor of Education in the 
 University of Chicago 
 
 JAN 22 1929 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
CopyRIGHT 1926 By 
 Tue UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Published February 1926 
 Second Impression May 1926 
 Third Impression September 1926 
 Fourth Impression March 1927 
 
 Composed and Printed By 
 The University of Chicago Press 
 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 N undertaking the preparation of this volume I have been 
 i actuated by a conviction, born of many years’ devotion to 
 teaching and to the supervision of educational enterprises, 
 that genuinely effective education, whether it be for the service 
 of the individual or the service of society, must be founded upon 
 a coherent theory of the whole field of teaching, capable of being 
 organized into a practicable system; and further that such a sys- 
 tem must be one which at least makes possible much more thor- 
 ough and genuine learning by all than any which we have usual- 
 ly been able to secure. The book is therefore not at all an exhibit 
 of method—although it brings together a great many phases of 
 method which seem to have adequate foundation in fact and in 
 principle—but rather an analysis of teaching procedure in that 
 field of non-specialized education which begins with the end of 
 the primary school and is brought to a close when the youth is 
 ready to enter the university proper. 
 
 It is hoped that all teachers who work in the field which has 
 just been named and who conceive teaching itself to be an exact- 
 ing intellectual enterprise, quite apart from the materials of in- 
 struction, will find the book a useful guide in their methods of 
 pedagogical thinking. Nevertheless, the message is addressed 
 first of all to students of the general educative process and espe- 
 cially to the executive and staff officers of schools who realize 
 that teaching is by far the most important activity which they 
 have to administer. 
 
 The volume is the product of a study of teaching as it is 
 found in schools and in undergraduate colleges, and of the lit- 
 erature bearing upon the subject, extending over a period of 
 about twenty-five years. The study has been largely experimen- 
 tal: first, in the schools of a New England city; then at different 
 points under differing conditions and in varying fragmentary 
 forms in a state system of public schools; and finally, much 
 
 Vv 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 more systematically, for six years in the Laboratory Schools of 
 the University of Chicago. 
 
 If I were to mention all who have borne helpful and indeed 
 essential parts in a great variety of ways in the carrying out of 
 the whole undertaking, several pages would be required for the 
 mere lists of names. There would be included the teachers who 
 worked with me so long ago in Portsmouth in finding new ways 
 to teach; scores of teachers and supervisory officers in New 
 Hampshire; hundreds of my university students whose alert 
 criticism, significant queries, and contributions in the form of 
 graduate papers have been an important influence in giving the 
 work its final shape; and finally, the Faculties of the Laboratory 
 Schools. | | 
 
 I am under special obligation to the following colleagues: 
 
 1. To Mr. Robert Woellner and Dr. Peter Hagboldt, who 
 read critically the manuscript chapters on the “Practical Arts” 
 and “‘Foreign Languages,” respectively. 
 
 2. To Mr. Wilbur L. Beauchamp and Miss Edith Shepherd, 
 who submitted some of the more doubtful points to specific ex- 
 perimental verification. 
 
 3. Tomy associates in the administration of the Laboratory 
 Schools, Dr. William C. Reavis and Mr. Harry O. Gillet, with- 
 out whose loyalty, practical educational insight, and administra- 
 tive acumen the laboratory stages would have been impossible. 
 
 4. To Professor Charles H. Judd, who read all of Part I in 
 manuscript, and whose trenchant criticisms and generous per- 
 sonal advice have been essential in giving direction to the whole 
 enterprise. 
 
 5. To President Emeritus Harry Pratt Judson, whose com- 
 prehensive grasp of the foundations of American educational in- 
 stitutions not only made the later stages of experimentation pos- 
 sible but was likewise a source of illumination in the develop- 
 ment of my theory of institutional organization. 
 
 Henry C. Morrison 
 
 UNIVERSITY oF CHICAGO 
 February, 1926 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 PART I. FUNDAMENTALS IN THE TEACHING 
 
 PROCESS 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 Te UE SECONDARY SCHOO). Ua me uly Bil he nel ML FE 
 II. THe OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING . . . 18 
 II. Learnmc AND LESSON PERFORMANCE. 2. Aes 
 IV. THE Propucr or Lesson-LEARNING . . . . . 49 
 Ve grRRatsaT OR PUP PhoGresge 7) 0000) 20 ikl 6 66 
 VI. OUTLINES OF AN APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE . . . 79 
 
 PART Il. CONTROL TECHNIQUE 
 
 VII. ESTABLISHING THE LEARNING SITUATION . . . . 103 
 Vill sMrasprinc GROUP CONTROL) NOU Oe Bes 
 LES USTAINED APPLICATION iA. kN MUN Nil Ege 
 
 PART II. OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 
 
 X. INTRODUCTION TO OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE. . . . 153 
 
 XI. Tue Unrr mn Puysican anp Soctan SCIENCE... 171 
 
 ae oe) Hist ks MEEeRNV CLES LORS viii ts Hts Wie My kg ie Loe 
 XII. Toe Unit In MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR... .gsOIQQ 
 POV eee LMACHINGQOVORE Sth GUT is ep: 220 
 XV. EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION’. . 1 1 ss) 232 
 Py ere SIMLLATIONG AC ese Mian Nay chee lle tile’ elie a Hae 
 XVI. ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION . . « s +s (300 
 Peery LL aE APPRECTATIONVLYPE) 0.4) nce) a ee! eI QT 
 
 vii 
 
CEAPTER 
 
 XXVIII. 
 XXIX. 
 XXX. 
 XXXII. 
 XXXIT. 
 INDEX . 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 . TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE—FREE READING . 
 . CouRSES IN LITERATURE 
 
 . Rrcut ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 
 
 . THE PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION 
 . TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 
 
 . LANGUAGE ARTS 
 
 . TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE. 
 
 . TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION . 
 
 . PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 
 
 PART IV. ADMINISTRATIVE TECHNIQUE 
 
 THE INTEGRITY OF THE SCHOOL 
 Pupit ADMINISTRATION 
 
 CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 
 
 THE PROBLEM Pupit—CasE WoRK 
 
 ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 
 
 PAGE 
 
 335 
 352 
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 416 
 436 
 453 
 478 
 503 
 
 543 
 552 
 574 
 608 
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 PART I 
 
 FUNDAMENTALS IN THE TEACHING PROCESS 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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 aNd 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 
 
 S the title of this volume meets the eye of the reader, 
 
 A ecnntes his first query will be, What is the secondary 
 
 school? And the query will probably in most cases be 
 
 self-answered by the commonly associated term “high school.” 
 
 That is not at all the scope which we are led to assign to the sec- 
 
 ondary school in the treatment of teaching which we propose to 
 set forth. 
 
 The differentiation of our educational institutions into ele- 
 mentary, secondary, and higher, as we find it made concrete in 
 buildings, school organization, administration, and the like, 
 arises in part out of a series of historical accidents and in part 
 out of administrative convenience and tradition. 
 
 The three schools with which we are familiar have devel- 
 oped, not by differentiation from a common institutional origin 
 for the better service of a common purpose, but from three dis- 
 tinct schools, each of them founded to serve a rather definite 
 purpose and each of them in the beginning substantially unre- 
 lated to the others. The eight-grade elementary school, as we 
 know it, is the indigenous common school, modified by the ef- 
 forts of administrators in the second quarter of the nineteenth 
 century to adapt the Prussian theory of common-school organi- 
 zation and institutional purpose to American needs. The high 
 school, which is the most common form of the American secon- 
 dary school, comes down to us in direct descent from the acad- 
 emies which flourished in the northeastern states throughout the 
 first three quarters of the nineteenth century. The oldest of our 
 existing institutions is the college which early became essential- 
 ly a pre-professional school and in which vocational purposes 
 still largely persist. 
 
4 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Now each of the original schools had its own purpose and 
 its own separate existence. The old common school was not or- 
 dinarily set to prepare for the academy or later the free high 
 school, nor was it the main business of the early high school or 
 academy to prepare for college. Down until nearly the end of 
 the nineteenth century, comparatively few pupils passed on 
 from the common school to the high school, and cases were rare 
 in which graduates of the free public high schools went to col- 
 lege. The surpassing educational awakening which began to be 
 evident at about 1900 changed all that. Ordinary folks in ever 
 increasing numbers began to plan to send their children to col- 
 lege. The easy-going ways which had answered for a century 
 would no longer serve. The history of educational administra- 
 tion since 1890 is to a large extent a story of endless efforts to 
 make the elementary school, the high school, and the college pull 
 together for a common educational purpose. The record which 
 shows how the action of social, economic, educational, and even 
 pedagogical forces have been stimulating the process of adapta- 
 tion within each of the fundamental institutions and of each to 
 the others is an interesting and significant tale. The rise of the 
 junior high school, the junior college, the state university, and 
 the graduate school of the university are illustrations. 
 
 The persistence of these essentially separate institutions in 
 the performance of an educational task which in its nature is 
 not discontinuous has generated certain stereotypes in the think- 
 ing of both administrators and teachers. An elementary school, 
 a high school, and a college were found ready at hand when the 
 early students of school organization undertook their task. As 
 each new generation of school men came on the ground, it found 
 the old distinctions between schools in existence, albeit each 
 decade had seen the growth of working agreements touching di- 
 vision of labor between the several parts of the system. What 
 more natural than to suppose that there must be something in- 
 herent in human nature and the educative process which re- 
 
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 5 
 
 quires the kind of succession in stages for which the historic 
 institutions had come to stand? 
 
 The elementary school, probably by accident of the contact 
 of the early administrators with the Prussian system, had come 
 to be an institution to which eight years of school life had been 
 assigned as the normal allowance. Similarly, the high school and 
 college had each required by tradition four years of the stu- 
 dent’s life. Hence, the stereotype became firmly established that 
 education is primarily a matter of time to be spent, and further 
 that an 8-4-4 distribution of years between the institutions is 
 the one which is sanctioned by nature. When, in the course of 
 time, the process of transition from the elementary school to the 
 high school had come to require adjustment, administrators, still 
 faithful to their mental stereotype, could think of no other solu- 
 tion than the insertion of a new institution expressed in terms of 
 years, and so the junior high school came into existence. The 
 discussions which then took place almost always centered about 
 differences in views as to whether the new system should be a 
 6-3-3-4 plan or some other combination of years. Similarly, de- 
 bates touching the organization of colleges, graduate schools, 
 and professional schools have with few exceptions turned upon 
 the question, How many years shall be devoted to this and how 
 many to that? Seldom has the test of attainment quite inde- 
 pendent of time-to-be-spent been brought into the problem. The 
 influence of the stereotype in purely pedagogical administration 
 might be traced at great length, and indeed we shall have occa- 
 sion to recur frequently to this aspect of the situation. 
 
 The discontinuous character of the fundamental institutions 
 of course led to the construction of separate buildings, often re- 
 sulting in a great waste of money, and these very tangible and 
 concrete evidences of discontinuity have no doubt done much to 
 perpetuate the stereotype. To many it is unthinkable that any 
 study can properly be done within the four walls of a building 
 devoted to elementary-school purposes which tradition has as- 
 signed to the high school. To do college work within the high. 
 
6 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 school building is, in the minds of some people, to make an as- 
 sault on the very citadel of culture. Not infrequently, the plea 
 for admission to college of a student who is held to be qualified, 
 irrespective of the time he has spent in school, is met with the 
 verdict, “No, we must stand for a four-year high school founded 
 on an eight-year elementary school.” 
 
 Similarly, the stereotype has generated certain fundamental 
 assumptions touching the maturity of the individual and theo- 
 ries of teaching which have little or no basis in principle. The 
 traditional administrative assumption is that a pupil is mature 
 enough for high school when he has satisfactorily completed 
 eight years of pre-high-school study and mature enough for col- 
 lege when he has completed four more years of high school. 
 Education being defined as it is, in terms of years of experience 
 and successive institutional stages, it is extremely difficult to 
 convince the laity that the pupil is not unjustly treated when he 
 is required to spend more than one year in a grade. Theories of 
 teaching are not unnaturally based upon maturity assumptions. 
 Hence it has come to pass that it is often taken for granted that 
 the eight-year elementary school calls for one conception of 
 teaching, the four-year high school for another, and the college 
 for a third. And so books and college courses on teaching are apt 
 to bear such titles as Methods of Teaching in the High School, 
 The Elementary Teacher, College Teaching. The outcome of 
 the whole development of the fundamental institutions, so far as 
 it affects—as it does affect—a valid theory of teaching, brings us 
 into the heart of our present problem. We must therefore ask 
 the reader to consider the limits of the secondary school, in so 
 far as they affect the theory of the teaching process and the prac- 
 tical outcome thereof in a system of teaching technique, and why 
 there is of necessity a period of education which can properly 
 and accurately be termed ‘“‘secondary.” 
 
 The problem resolves itself in substance into a search for 
 that region in the process of formal education in the schools 
 within which there are no essential and critical differences in the 
 
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 7 
 
 nature of the process of learning under instruction. Or, to put 
 it in another way, we must seek for the region throughout which 
 there is some outstanding and controlling characteristic of teach- 
 ing which is not found and cannot be applied earlier and which 
 is not found, or ought not to be found, later. 
 
 Such a comprehensible test can, we think, be found in the 
 school procedure in which the pupil is capable of study but is 
 incapable of systematic intellectual growth, except under the 
 constant tutorial presence of the teacher. This region is the sec- 
 ondary school, at least so far as teaching is concerned. There is 
 an earlier period during which the pupil is incapable of study be- 
 cause he has not the essential tools, which are ability to read his 
 vernacular, ability to use the fundamental concepts of number, 
 and ability to use the fundamental system of expression which 
 we commonly call “handwriting.” The regions within which he 
 is learning the use of these tools and becoming socially adapted 
 to group existence under school conditions is the primary school. 
 There is a period beyond the secondary school during which the 
 student has become capable of pursuing self-dependent study 
 and in which he utilizes the instructor in the same sense in which 
 he utilizes the library, the laboratory, the occasional public lec- 
 turer, the office consultant. This region is the university. It 
 matters not for our present purpose whether the student resorts 
 to the university for research or for general culture; in either 
 case, the region in which he is studying is clearly marked off in 
 its essential procedure from the secondary school. If we apply 
 this test, which seems incontestably to be a valid one and to be 
 fundamental, a college in which it is still necessary for students 
 to meet their instructors by regular assignments for purposes of 
 instruction and constraint in the arduous pathway of learning is 
 still a secondary school. A professional or technical school in 
 which this process is still necessary is wholly or in part a school 
 at secondary level, earlier or later, depending upon the extent of 
 the student’s intellectual capital which is found needful for pur- 
 poses of instruction. The mere fact of having completed a given 
 
8 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 number of years of educational experience cannot in any rational 
 sense be taken as defining the pedagogical nature of the school 
 in which the student finds himself. The secondary school is thus 
 defined in terms of fundamental and characteristic aspects of the 
 pupil’s intellectual growth. 
 
 The reader has a right to a more concrete and perhaps fac- 
 tual description of the upper and lower limits of the secondary 
 school as it has thus been defined. 
 
 Reading in our terms means the ability to see through the 
 » symbolic complex of the printed page to the thought or scene or 
 action which is the subject of the discourse without constant fo- 
 cal consciousness of the discourse itself. To this ability let us 
 apply the term reading adaptation. Its essential utility seems 
 to be found in the principle that the person who has arrived at 
 that stage is able to reflect as he reads and consequently to as- 
 similate the subject matter. On the other hand, the person who 
 has not reached that stage but who can nevertheless put together 
 a mosaic of words, of each of which he is focally conscious, 
 cannot reflect as he reads, cannot assimilate as he reads, and 
 studies with difficulty if at all. Ability to assimilate material in 
 the form of discourse is then one of the primary conditions of 
 study. 
 
 Can children study as soon as they have reached the reading 
 adaptation? They can and do, in a primitive and unmethodical 
 sense it is true, but none the less the fundamental characteristic 
 of study is present. They can, by their own efforts, get knowl- 
 edge or information from books. Before reaching this stage, 
 they could not do so, but must depend upon the teacher or some 
 other person for that kind of enlightenment which in our time 
 is accessible, either directly or indirectly, on the printed page. 
 They could observe, make associations, and to some extent draw 
 conclusions, but they could not study in the sense in which that 
 term has to be used in the work of the school. This embryonic 
 study capacity, which arises as soon as the pupil has found his 
 book and can use it, must of course be developed into the sys- 
 
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 9 
 
 tematic methods of thinking which the educated man employs; 
 it must be trained by developing in the individual volitional 
 control and discretion; it must be refined by showing him how 
 to attack his problems in the most economical and effective man- 
 ner; it must be enriched through the acquisition of intellectual 
 content. Such development is the problem of the secondary 
 school, from the time at which it receives the pupil until he 
 leaves school, or until he is fully equipped with those powers and 
 interests which render him educationally self-dependent. 
 
 The pupil begins to be able to learn the systematic forms of 
 thinking in which most study is done when he has acquired the 
 elementary concepts of number and has become accustomed to 
 use them in their mathematical relationships. As soon as he can 
 count and, in common parlance, ‘‘put two and two together,” he 
 has become capable of learning how to study. Prior to the rise 
 of that capacity, even the most elementary truths of nature are 
 accessible to him only as information imparted by the teacher or 
 discovered through his newly found capacity for reading. Given 
 this modicum of arithmetical ability, he is on his way to quan- 
 titative thinking. Nor is it essential that he should wait until he 
 has acquired the whole range of the curriculum in arithmetic. 
 Putting pupils in possession of arithmetic, and mathematics in 
 general, is a vital part of the process of teaching pupils to study, 
 which is the peculiar province of the secondary school. 
 
 The pupil cannot begin to acquire the art of study, as an 
 implement of systematic adjustment to the world and the age in 
 which he finds himself, until he has acquired a tool with which to 
 record his learning and through which he can express his reac- 
 tions to teaching in a more abiding and a more deliberate form 
 than is possible through the agency of the spoken voice. The 
 only tool which we have yet found usable for this purpose in the 
 beginning is handwriting. Apart from the ability which hand- 
 writing implies, the individual can absorb information, he can 
 make more or less shrewd deduction from his experience, he can 
 eventually perhaps accumulate the naive stock of wisdom drawn 
 
10 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 from the immediate environment, which the illiterate often 
 evinces; but he cannot even begin to attack systematically the 
 accumulation of ordered experience which an advanced civiliza- 
 tion presents to him. Just as reading ability puts the pupil in 
 contact with the wider environment, so handwriting enables him 
 to react to the environment in intellectual forms and thus to 
 complete the learning cycle. Nor is it essential, before he can 
 begin to study, that he should have acquired the skill which pen- 
 manship implies. It may doubtless become desirable for him to 
 improve the quality and rate of his handwriting in order to make 
 more effective study possible, and it may later become profitable 
 to him to acquire the handwriting skills which a given vocation 
 employs. These are functions for which the secondary school 
 often finds it necessary to become responsible, but they are not 
 critical of the possibility of secondary teaching. As in the case of 
 reading, so in that of handwriting, the ability which is critical is 
 performance at that stage at which the pupil commits his 
 thoughts to paper without focal consciousness of the elements 
 of the discourse which he writes. If he can reflect as he writes, 
 he can learn to study effectively, other things being equal. Let 
 us designate this stage by the term handwriting adaptation. 
 When young children enter school, they are commonly at a 
 stage of extreme individualism much like that exhibited by sav- 
 age peoples. The condition which is normal in the first months 
 of school life is an incoherent mass of social atoms, each aggres- 
 sive or retiring, depending upon individual attitude and previous 
 experience. Modern kindergarten and first-grade teachers seek 
 to guide the process of social evolution, which is usually rapid. 
 The untrained first-grade teacher is apt to enforce outward har- 
 mony by compulsion—with results which later manifest them- 
 selves in untoward ways. Now, apart from the necessity of so- 
 cialization as one of the fundamental educational products, it is 
 to be observed that all the intellectual processes of the school 
 have to be carried out under social conditions. Study and teach- 
 ing are processes of the social group as it is found in the class- 
 
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL II 
 
 room. Much of the learning can be accomplished only in the 
 mental media which social psychology. describes. Further, it is 
 clearly impossible to organize effective study or to make an ef- 
 fective presentation, when the teacher’s attention must in the 
 main be directed to holding in check a personal feud between 
 pupils or to quelling the manifestations of primitive egoism as 
 this child or that endeavors to attract attention to himself. The 
 older disciplinarians tried it and they usually failed, both edu- 
 cationally and pedagogically. Occasionally, a child fails to re- 
 spond to the normal socializing process and he later turns up as 
 an out-and-out psychiatric case. The attitude in which the pu- 
 pil tends habitually to get on with his classmates and to co-oper- 
 ate in the intellectual processes of the school is then of sufficient 
 importance to be identified as one of the primary criteria of 
 ability to study. We may designate it for future reference as the 
 primary social adaptation. As in the cases of the other pri- 
 mary criteria, the process of socialization has to be carried far- 
 ther by the secondary school, both as a product in general edu- 
 cation and as a condition precedent to more effective study. 
 
 Now, all of these primary criteria can be identified in indi- 
 vidual children by tests, by symptoms, and by resort to other 
 evidential means, not it is true with absolute precision but with 
 confidence sufficient, in the great majority of cases, to warrant 
 placing individual children in the way of that growth which sys- 
 tematic study and teaching imply. 
 
 As the pupil grows onward toward mental maturity, he be- 
 comes capable of experiences which were before impossible. 
 This form of natural individual development is evidently critical 
 of what the pupil shall study, but it is not critical of how he shall 
 study and be taught, except in details of method and technique. 
 The latter is far more a question of intellectual development 
 than of mental development, of what the pupil has already ac- 
 quired than of how old he is. Doubtless mental, physical, social, 
 and intellectual maturity affect details of appropriate operative 
 and administrative technique. For instance, intellectual matur- 
 
12 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ing eventually brings about a situation in which departmental 
 teaching is desirable and feasible, whereas it was not earlier 
 feasible. Social, mental, and physical maturity make it desirable 
 that pupils of the same general level shall be brought together 
 under the same general physical and social conditions. In time, 
 it may happen that the first leap into volitional responsibility 
 must, in the cases of some individuals, be forced by sending the 
 pupil away from the dependent relation imposed by the home. 
 The requirements of this kind of flexibility may at times, and in 
 the cases of some individuals, make desirable separate institu- 
 tions similar to our existing high schools, private academies, and 
 colleges, but there is nothing in the teaching process as such 
 which calls for such separation. A high school does not become 
 peculiarly a secondary institution merely by becoming a sepa- 
 rate institution; its pupils have long been in a secondary school 
 before they seek its doors. Nor does a college cease to be a 
 secondary school merely because it is separately located and 
 organized. The individual and his needs, and the requirements 
 of the appropriate teaching, constitute the criteria and not insti- 
 tutional separability nor experience in terms of years. 
 
 Our inveterate graded-school thinking impels both writer 
 and reader to raise the question, With what grade should the 
 secondary school begin? The secondary school in the nature of 
 things must begin when the individual has attained the tested 
 primary adaptations. If a given child has perchance reached 
 that level in the third year of school life, his secondary school 
 begins then, and if he is delayed, arrested development in the 
 form of atrophied intellectual interests is likely to set in. If he 
 has reached the end of his primary development by the end of 
 the fourth or fifth year, his secondary period begins then. Expe- 
 rience seems to suggest that most children under effective pri- 
 mary teaching reach the point not far from the age of nine. If 
 the pupil has not attained the primary adaptations by the time 
 he is academically in high school, he is not yet a student at sec- 
 ondary level. There has been accumulated a substantial amount 
 
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 13 
 
 of evidence, published and unpublished, which tends to show 
 that high schools and even junior colleges have not infrequently 
 enrolled students who are in this condition with respect to one or 
 more of the four primary adaptations. Some have never learned 
 to read; many more have never acquired the number adapta- 
 tions; not a few are hopelessly handicapped because they can- 
 not work in class groups. For practical administrative purposes, 
 in a school system which is large enough to be subdivided at all, 
 the kindergarten and the first two, or possibly three, years in 
 terms of chronological age should be organized as a single un- 
 graded school, not necessarily in a single room, and when a 
 group of children have come to the primary adaptations they 
 should be sent into the secondary school, not necessarily in an- 
 other building. 
 
 The other end of the secondary school is quite as important. 
 It is not the twelfth grade nor the sixteenth, but rather the 
 point at which the evidence shows clearly that an individual has 
 found the sustaining intellectual interests and has attained the 
 sense of intellectual responsibility and has acquired the funda- 
 mental methods of thinking which make him a self-governing 
 intellectual and social unit. If he reaches that point at fifteen 
 years of age, he must have his higher opportunity either in his 
 present school or another. If denied and kept within the con- 
 straining influence of the secondary classroom, he is more than 
 likely to become intellectually sterile. If, on the other hand, the 
 graduate school finds itself with a student who has never at- 
 tained intellectual self-dependence, it must choose between let- 
 ting him go and carrying on for his benefit instruction of secon- 
 dary grade. The identification of the terminus of secondary edu- 
 cation in the individual is a matter of prime importance in the 
 administrative technique of the secondary school, and to this 
 point we shall have frequent occasion to recur. 
 
 The teaching of the secondary school is the field which this 
 volume attempts to analyze. All the chapters which follow are 
 based upon the thesis which this introductory chapter has set 
 
14 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 forth touching the nature of the secondary school itself. It re- 
 mains to survey briefly the scope of the teaching process. 
 
 Now teaching is not concerned primarily with guiding and 
 controlling the accumulation of knowledge. If it were, there 
 would be little occasion for schools beyond the primary. As long 
 as the individual could read, he could be guided by means of 
 printed matter to books written for very definite purposes, to 
 theaters, moving pictures, and the like. In the end, his store of 
 knowledge would probably be quite as respectable as is the case 
 when he has graduated from high school and college and has ac- 
 quired nothing else but a modicum of erudition. 
 
 The teaching process throughout the secondary period is 
 concerned with putting the pupil in adjustment with the world in 
 which he must live and with generating in him adaptability to a 
 constantly changing world. The effect of the secondary school 
 upon society should be to enable mankind to control its environ- 
 mental relations rather than to abide in an attitude of passive 
 acceptance of whatever environmental forces bring to pass. In 
 order to achieve this ultimate purpose, the school makes use of 
 the following teaching processes: 
 
 1. It utilizes the cultural capital of society to generate in the 
 pupil a complete horizon of intelligent attitudes toward his 
 world, of just standards of moral and aesthetic values, of the 
 special abilities required in his reactions to his physical and so- 
 cial surroundings. The secondary school does not teach science 
 and history and literature and language; it utilizes these ele- 
 ments of culture and others in educating the pupil. 
 
 2. It guides the individual into the discovery of a succes- 
 sion of intellectual interests, pursuits which he will follow, whol- 
 ly apart from the constraint of the school or the teacher. In so — 
 far as he has in the end experienced the broadest possible range 
 of such interests, to that degree is he in contact with his whole 
 world, to that degree has he acquired adaptability, and to that 
 degree has he developed intelligence.* 
 
 * Throughout this work we shall distinguish between the terms “mentality” 
 and “intelligence.” In our use, mentality is applied to the native reactive quality 
 
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 15 
 
 3. It develops in the pupil ability to study. Now ability to 
 study is no abstract, generalized, vaguely felt capacity but rath- 
 er a series of very definite powers. It implies chiefly: (a) the 
 acquisition of a hierarchy of skills in the use of handwriting and 
 in the conventions of the mother-tongue; (b) the development 
 of an optimum efficiency in reading the printed page, at the level 
 of the reading adaptation; (c) the use of the vernacular as an 
 instrument of clear, accurate, and cogent expression; (d) unless 
 the pupil’s vernacular is the only language in which civilization 
 expresses itself, the effective use of foreign languages; (e) the 
 methods of thinking found in mathematics, the physical, biolog- 
 ical, and social sciences, and in linguistics; (f) the capacity to 
 interpret truth as it is revealed in literature and the fine arts; 
 (g) the attainment of volitional control, such as, for instance, 
 sustained application in the presence of material which is not in 
 itself initially interesting. 
 
 4. It generates right attitudes toward conduct and sees to it 
 that they become incorporated into the personality of the pupil. 
 
 Does the secondary school thus defined, as one in which we 
 find employed a single characteristic type of teaching procedure, 
 necessarily imply that all pupils who are in the secondary period 
 of education must be housed in the same building and enrolled 
 within the same school organization? 
 
 Administrative needs often make it convenient to organize 
 schools for different groups of pupils who have much in com- 
 mon apart from the teaching procedure to which all are sub- 
 jected. Thus, it is often advantageous to bring together in one 
 
 of the individual, while intelligence implies the acquisition of individual powers 
 of adaptation associated with his learning. When we say that an individual is 
 “intelligent” about this or that, radio-telephony for instance, we mean that he has 
 acquired insight into a body of principles which enables him to rationalize the 
 situation in which he finds himself. When we speak of “intelligent teaching,” we 
 mean teaching which is carried on in conformity with certain principles, in con- 
 trast with a process which is blindly directed. The verdict of psychology seems 
 to be that mentality can be improved by training only to a limited extent. Intel- 
 ligence, on the other hand, is evidently one of the chief final products of educa- 
 tion. 
 
16 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 type of school the preadolescents; in another, the early adoles- 
 cents; and in a third, the late adolescents. We may thus find 
 good justification for elementary schools, junior high schools, 
 and senior high schools composed of what is now usually the sen- 
 ior high school and the junior college. There is, however, little 
 justification in principle for division points which correspond to 
 the end of the traditional first eight grades and the end of the 
 four-year high school. The secondary period begins early in the 
 elementary school, and the other schools above named are secon- 
 dary schools. The danger is that this rearrangement of school 
 organization, which is now well under way, will simply modify 
 without destroying the mental stereotypes under the rule of which 
 education is viewed as an affair of artificial stages completed, 
 and not as a matter of growth in the pupil. As long as we keep 
 distinct in mind not less than four aspects of the maturing proc- 
 ess—intellectual, mental, social, and physical—and remember 
 that the institutional divisions which we have above justified are 
 rightly founded upon social and physical maturity alone, we 
 shall do no violence to the right appraisal of pupil progress. But 
 we must be prepared to find, and provide for, pupils in the ele- 
 mentary school who in intellectual development are the peers of 
 many in the junior high school; others in the junior high school 
 who are intellectually as mature as many in the senior high 
 school; and sometimes others still in the latter school who are 
 capable of doing and should be doing work of university caliber. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the village and rural school, where the prob- 
 lem of administering large numbers is not present, there is no 
 good reason why the entire period of general education up to the 
 level of self-dependence should not be provided for within the 
 same school. The prepossessions attached to the graded system 
 must in that case be given up, but no more so than in any school 
 which proposes to organize in terms of pupil development rather 
 than in terms of artificial stages accomplished. The limitations 
 of education in the village and rural school—in the small school 
 generally—are not in principle attributable to small enrolments 
 
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 17 
 
 but to difficulty in securing teachers of adequate intellectual and 
 professional equipment and personality. 
 
 In the definition of the secondary school which has thus 
 been set up and argued, the reader will perhaps find suggestions 
 of the secondary schools of Continental Europe. If we take the 
 German Gymnasium as typical of European schools, there is in- 
 deed much resemblance. The latter were evolved to meet the 
 needs of people who were going on to the end of the period of 
 formal education. The common schools, the Volkschule for in- 
 stance, were designed to regiment the masses in that station in 
 life to which it had pleased God to call them. In America, every- 
 body is “going on,” and the process of regimenting the American 
 youth at all is apparently beyond our wisdom—let us hope, be- 
 yond our desires. Given what is much the same problem as that 
 of the German secondary school, a reasoned analysis of the 
 American school leads us to much the same conclusion touching 
 institutional organization as that which was earlier worked out 
 in practice by Europeans. Had the American reformers wiped 
 the slate clean of their preconceptions, and had they been able 
 to foresee the course which the evolution of democratic society 
 would take, it may well be that they would have developed the 
 old American district school into something very like the pri- 
 mary and secondary schools as we have defined them in this 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING 
 
 T the beginning of the modern period of systematic scru- 
 A tiny and revaluation of theprocess of education, in ad- 
 dition to the administrative stereotypes which had 
 grown up in the United States and which have been discussed in 
 the preceding chapter, the student was confronted with two tra- 
 ditional conceptions of the objectives of teaching both of which 
 have very obstinately held their ground and still give way but 
 slowly. 
 
 The first of these arose out of the prestige of scholarly learn- 
 ing. From time immemorial, that man whose mind was fullest 
 stored with the erudition of the ages had been conceived to be 
 the best educated, and so education and erudition were thought 
 to be one and the same. The curriculum was formulated with 
 that principle in mind, and teachers were held to be best pre- 
 pared who knew the most about the subjects which they pro- 
 posed to teach. 
 
 The second had its origin in the very human tendency to- 
 ward propagandism. Man is ever eager to make his fellows hold 
 the views which he cherishes, and the rising generation is always 
 a singularly fertile field. Hence the objectives of teaching often 
 tended to become simply the indoctrination of young people in 
 the habits of thinking peculiar to the ecclesiastical or political 
 organization which for the time happened to be in control of the 
 schools. Nor was that all. It matters little in educational princi- 
 ple whether propaganda are administered by a particularly well- 
 organized hierarchy, by the Hohenzollern state, or by dear old 
 Dr. Blank with his fierce ‘I believe in sound learning, sir.” In 
 any case, not the youth and his adjustment is in the foreground 
 but the world-plans of other people. 
 
 18 
 
OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING 19 
 
 But the world refuses to stand still. In time, organized 
 knowledge became so extensive that selections had to be made, 
 and that is a puzzling process if you still believe that knowledge 
 and education are synonymous. Propagandas became so numer- 
 ous that the school found it hard to settle upon any definite and 
 comprehensive program at all. Any sort of actual product of the 
 learning process was largely lost sight of. The school came to be 
 thought of as education, and the popular notion became widely 
 prevalent that wherever there is a school there education, what- 
 ever it is, must somehow be taking place. 
 
 And yet common sense and a modicum of knowledge will 
 give anybody a very obvious conception of what the products of 
 actual learning and teaching must be, and enable him to distin- 
 guish between what is learned and what is not learned. In gen- 
 eral, any actual learning is always expressed either as a change 
 in the attitude of the individual or as the acquisition of a special 
 ability or as the attainment of some form of skill in manipulat- 
 ing instrumentalities or materials. Let us illustrate. 
 
 The person who has genuinely acquired the conceptions 
 which make up the atomic theory, or the principle of natural se- 
 lection, has acquired a new attitude toward the world in which 
 he lives. He does not and cannot react to nature as he did before. 
 More than that, he cannot lose this new attitude, except as it is 
 - modified and refined through the attainment of other new atti- 
 tudes. He who has genuinely acquired a given conception or set 
 of conceptions in the field of social relationships—let us say the 
 notion of liberty under the law—has acquired a new attitude 
 toward his relationships with his fellow-men and toward the re- 
 lationships of these with one another. There is no question of 
 his losing this attitude or of forgetting it. He can no more lose 
 it than he can lose the native tendencies which he has inherited 
 from his progenitors. More than that, the new attitude inevita- 
 bly modifies his whole social behavior; he conceives new ends 
 and adopts new means. Once more, the individual who has gen- 
 uinely acquired a new notion of duty in the moral world isa 
 
20 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 changed person; his attitude toward his behavior in the moral 
 world is different from what it was before; his behavior itself 
 is inevitably different. 
 
 Turning to the acquisition of special abilities, let us use the 
 ability to read as an illustration. When the pupil has reached the 
 level which we have identified as the primary reading adapta- 
 tion, he has undergone a real change in his intellectual organ- 
 ization. There is nothing here which can be lost. Many of the 
 skills associated with reading may be lost, through disuse, and 
 this loss may amount to temporary atrophy of the adaptation it- 
 self; but the adaptation is quickly restored in a situation calling 
 for its use. Furthermore, with the adaptation actually estab- 
 lished, the pupil does read, in all the multitude of situations in 
 which reading is desired, for the purpose of gratifying curiosity 
 or seeking amusement. So it is with the reading of a foreign lan- 
 guage, or the performance of bodily exercises like swimming or 
 skating or dancing, or the use of a method of thinking such as, 
 for instance, the solution of the quadratic equation. 
 
 The third fundamental type of learning products is that for 
 which we shall use the term “‘skill.” Without attempting to set- 
 tle the question of the psychological and physiological nature of 
 skill or the appropriateness of the term itself, we shall ask the 
 reader to connect its use in this volume with the meaning to 
 which we apply it. Within our meaning, “skill” is nearly syn- 
 onymous with “facility.” When a pupil has attained a given 
 adaptation, with all that implies, he has frequently to go on and 
 acquire certain skills in the application of his new attitude or 
 ability to the situations which call for its use. In the case of the 
 reflective adaptations like those arising out of the concepts con- 
 nected with the atomic theory, or natural selection, or liberty 
 under the law, skill seems to consist largely in the facility with 
 which the individual identifies the elements of situations which 
 are subject to interpretation in terms of his new attitude. In 
 the case of special abilities, like the ability to read the printed 
 page, the associated skills are such matters as rate of reading, 
 
OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING 21 
 
 rate at which reading can be assimilated, and perhaps some 
 others. In the reading of a foreign language, the associated 
 skills which are built up on the basis of the reading adaptation 
 can in general be described as fluency. In the practical arts, the 
 skills are comprehended in the term “facility in execution.” 
 
 And so we can say that the learning products which consti- 
 tute that process of individual adjustment to the world which we 
 call “education,” and which are the objectives of teaching, are 
 always either attitudes or special abilities or skills. We shall 
 think of attitudes as being always either attitudes of under- 
 standing, where reflection and rationalization have been in- 
 volved—found typically in the field of the sciences; or attitudes 
 of appreciation, where the acceptance of values has taken place 
 —beauty, goodness, love of the truth. We find special abilities 
 in the use of language, in the performance of music, in walking, 
 swimming, skating, and a host of other activities of which these 
 will stand as illustrations. Skills we have already defined. 
 
 Now as soon as the educator comes to see the objectives of 
 teaching in these terms, the whole process takes on a different 
 aspect. He sees that the subject matter used.in the school is not 
 valuable in education for its own sake but only as it is service- 
 able in generating intelligent and useful inclinations, abilities, 
 and skills in the pupil. He has a new and more valid criterion of 
 curriculum material and of teaching procedure. He can distin- 
 guish more accurately between the region of general education 
 in which the adjustment of the pupil is the center of effort and 
 the region of the university where knowledge is in truth valuable 
 for its own sake. 
 
 The view thus set forth of the nature of the essential prod- 
 ucts of learning is one which has been evolving throughout the 
 modern period. The efforts of the Herbartians, the supervised 
 study movement, project teaching, the direct teaching of the 
 modern languages, improvement in primary methods, the educa- 
 tional measurement program, the contributions of educational 
 psychology—all have tended in the direction of identifying, de- 
 
22 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 scribing, and measuring actual products as contrasted with rou- 
 tine and formal products expressed in terms of time-to-be-spent, 
 methods-to-be-followed, ground-to-be-covered, or in terms of 
 erudition or information. 
 
 We have already picked up and used the term “adaptation.” 
 Perhaps it is time that we defined the term more explicitly, for 
 we shall need it as part of the terminology of our study through- 
 out the volume. 
 
 The biologist makes very large use of the term, and by it he 
 means both the process and the result of the modification of an 
 organ, or indeed of a whole organism, so that the plant or the 
 animal concerned is brought into a state of better adjustment to 
 the environmental conditions which it must meet. Thus, by a 
 long series of adaptations a creature has been evolved who walks 
 erect, and we call the creature “man.” Similarly, man owes his 
 vastly superior mentality to a long series of adaptations in the 
 physical organ which we call the “brain.”” In brief, organic evo- 
 lution is a story of manifold adaptation by which, on the whole, 
 higher forms of life have been produced and in the process have 
 been brought into better and more comprehensive adjustment to 
 the environment. 
 
 In much the same fashion, the individual human being goes 
 through a process of adjustment to the world in which he must 
 live; only this adjustment is largely ideational rather than phys- 
 ical. In other words, he learns how to live. The successive steps 
 in the process are adaptations in much the same sense as the in- 
 numerable steps in the evolution of the physical organism were 
 adaptations. 
 
 Now the essence of the adaptation is in the principle that it 
 represents a change in the organism itself. When the individual 
 pupil has come really to understand the principle of natural se- 
 lection, he has, as we have seen, taken on a new attitude; he has 
 made an adaptation. It is not that he no longer looks upon the 
 world as he did before; he cannot do so for he is a changed indi- 
 vidual. Thus the process of education or adjustment to life- 
 
OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING — 23 
 
 conditions is made up of adaptations, and the true learning prod- 
 ucts are for the most part true adaptations. 
 
 The single type of learning product to which we think this 
 analysis and the term “‘adaptation” do not imply is that compre- 
 hended in the category of skills. 
 
 The adaptation is a unitary thing, and the pupil has either 
 attained it or he has not. Individuals may differ greatly in the 
 length of time and the ease with which they take on the change 
 which a given adaptation implies, but, if two pupils have at- 
 tained a given adaptation, they cannot differ with respect to the 
 fact of their attainment. Skill, on the other hand, is essentially 
 a variable. Any individual can be at different points on the 
 curve of skill development at different times, and it can truth- 
 fully be said that at each point he has some skill. Two individ- 
 uals can differ widely in skill and yet each possess skill. It is 
 often critically important in pedagogical analysis to determine 
 whether we are dealing with an adaptation or a skill. 
 
 The ultimate test of a product of learning which has in- 
 volved a genuine adaptation is that it is never lost, otherwise 
 than through its transformation into new adaptations or through 
 the rise of pathological inhibitions. It is never lost by simply 
 fading out. The reason, probably, is that the act of genuine and 
 successful learning has resulted in permanent changes in the or- 
 ganization of the elements of central nervous structure. A posi- 
 tion so at variance with the common experience of school people 
 calls for some elaboration and for the presentation of some evi- 
 dence. / 
 
 The author has asked his classes of mature teachers to list 
 the products which they had acquired more than ten years ago, 
 which have been in disuse for at least ten years, and which can 
 be performed today substantially as well as ever. There always 
 results a list of learnings ranging from early attainments on the 
 farm, or in the household, to performance on some musical in- 
 strument. In many cases, the students have been interested 
 enough to verify the permanency of their original learning by 
 
24 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 experimental tests. It is significant to note that rarely does one 
 of these lists disclose a product which was learned in the school. 
 The person had learned to swim, and after the lapse of years of 
 disuse he can still swim. Another had learned to bake good 
 bread and can still do so. History and mathematics and science 
 and foreign language had presumably been learned, at least the 
 student had been tested and had been “passed,” but all this is 
 as the snows of ancient winters. Violin-playing had been learned 
 and the product abides; the translation of Latin had been “cred- 
 ited” and scarcely a fragment is left, not enough to render into 
 English a sense of the wording of the diploma which certifies the 
 student’s degree. And yet some typical school products are often 
 still as vigorous growths as ever, after the lapse of years of dis- 
 use. In nearly every such case, however, it is observed that the 
 product had at some time been used in a functional sense. In this 
 person, physics is left, but it is noted that he taught physics for 
 several years after leaving college. In this case, arithmetic is as 
 functional as it was when the student was preparing for exami- 
 nation, but he has had occasion to use arithmetic every day ina 
 brief business career. In few instances, where there is no record 
 of after-school functional use, is there any evidence of the per- 
 manency of learning. Any reader can readily test himself, and 
 with rare exceptions he will find that his own intellectual history 
 is in conformity with these histories which have been described. 
 
 Why does it happen that some learning persists and other 
 learning fades out? The answer is obvious: Some things were in 
 fact learned and others were not. Some had amounted to actual 
 adaptations; others had been mere memory content, good until 
 after examination and then lost. The revelation gives little en- 
 couragement to the complacency which holds that after all the 
 real educational product of schools is some vague thing which 
 can be described as the result of the “‘life at school.” Of a sure- 
 ty, the individual does carry out into the world many values 
 which have been learned outside of the classroom in the form of 
 attitudes which are permanent possessions. In truth, these are 
 
OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING 25 
 
 the things which he has learned and the classroom product has 
 not been learned. Often his whole makeup is a complex of real 
 products of this sort, some of which are good and some bad. The 
 educational intransigeant who holds to this view of the proper 
 nature of the school product should in logic advocate the aboli- 
 tion of the curricular activities and the transformation of his 
 school into a well-organized, properly supervised club for boys 
 and girls. 
 
 A systematic and analytical view of the real product of 
 learning thus suggests that there are many activities in the rou- 
 tine of the classroom and of instruction which never become real 
 products at all and which in the nature of the case should not 
 be viewed as such, even in prospect. In general, these activities 
 are for the most part those which contribute the assimilative ma- 
 terial out of which the real products arise. May we illustrate at 
 some length. 
 
 Let us assume, to use one of our former illustrations, that 
 the student has really learned the use of the quadratic equation. 
 The learning product here amounts to an actual modification in 
 his methods of thinking. In the process of attaining the adapta- 
 tion, he has been obliged to work through a great many illustra- 
 tions of the process itself and of applications to concrete situa- 
 tions. He has taken in, it may be, many explanations made by 
 the teacher. All of this experience is assimilative material out of 
 which the adaptation does or does not arise. In our illustration, 
 we assume that the adaptation does arise. Now, the factual and 
 experiential material which has thus been used does, and should, 
 very promptly fade out of memory. Some of it, as well as wholly 
 new material, might be used in testing for the presence of the 
 adaptation, but the material itself is never a learning product. 
 The pupil has learned from experience but he has not learned the 
 experience. 
 
 A unit in history may be, frequently is, the French Revolu- 
 tion. The objective here is an adaptation, a new attitude toward 
 the past, described perhaps as a conviction of the nature and in- 
 
26 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 evitable consequences of a long period of personal government. 
 In the process of acquiring the adaptation, the student listens 
 to lectures by the teacher and reads a great deal. He experiences 
 through his reading the arrogance and egotism of Louis XIV 
 and the excesses of the reign of Louis XV. He becomes ac- 
 quainted with Voltaire and Rousseau; with Mirabeau, Danton, 
 and Robespierre. He shudders at the horrors of the Reign of 
 Terror. Some of these experiences, like some of the experiences 
 of childhood, may become so firmly fixed in memory that they 
 never fade. But they are no more products in learning than are 
 the memorable experiences of the daily life. Out of them arises 
 or fails to arise the attitude which the teacher is striving to de- 
 velop. It is the attitude which becomes the real and serviceable 
 product of learning and not the experiences themselves; these 
 may fade out of memory but the conviction abides. Conversely, 
 there may long be retained mere memories of isolated facts, 
 without any modifications of attitude whatsoever. In this case 
 the individual has learned nothing, and, so far as the unit itself, 
 in this case the French Revolution, is concerned, he will remain 
 intellectually sterile. 
 
 Again, the teacher may be developing an appreciation of the 
 beauty of a lyric or the truth of a drama or a refined taste for 
 the short story. He is, or should be, aiming at a series of indi- 
 vidual adaptations. If the taste is actually developed, it is a con- 
 tradiction in terms to say that it is forgotten. If the beauty or 
 the truth is really seen and accepted, the statement itself means 
 that a new attitude is discovered. Now in the course of this learn- 
 ing, a great deal of reading is done and the teacher perhaps talks 
 a great deal as he endeavors to bring about the changed attitude 
 which he is seeking to effect. In other words, the pupil passes 
 through a body of assimilative experience. Assuming that the 
 new attitude has been acquired, it may very well be that the 
 greater part of the experience itself fades away. The adaptation 
 is revealed by the change which takes place in the character of 
 the reading which the pupil now selects. Erudition in the form 
 
OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING 27 
 
 of knowledge of some pieces of literature read, of their rhetor- 
 ical and linguistic structure, of the history of their production, 
 is in itself no evidence that beauty and truth have been felt and 
 accepted or that tastes have been formed. 
 
 So much for the adaptations which are in the form of under- 
 standing or appreciation. Let us now turn to those which are in 
 the form of acquired abilities. 
 
 The child, in learning to read his vernacular, practices for 
 one, two, or it may be three years, in the use of reading material. 
 In common parlance, we say that he learns to read by reading. 
 All along, he gets meaning from the printed page, and he may be 
 tested with positive results. Nevertheless, he does not read of 
 his own accord and ordinarily does not attempt to do so. He 
 eventually, however, attains the power to read and manifests 
 that power by seeking his own reading material and becoming 
 absorbed in the content. He has attained the adaptation at the 
 level of which he looks through the discourse and beholds the 
 scene beyond. Frequently his learning stops short of the reading 
 adaptation and then such power as he had is soon lost. A very 
 large proportion of the non-readers in society, such as those who 
 were revealed by the famous army tests, are very probably indi- 
 viduals who have passed through the routine of the reading 
 classes in the primary school but have never learned to read. 
 Now the period of practice prior to the adaptation is clearly a 
 period of assimilation. Performance which is merely an incident 
 of assimilation is not the true learning product sought. Even 
 with the recent devices for testing reading power, such as oral, 
 rate, and comprehension tests, it may well be that performance 
 may be taken for learning—with disastrous consequences. 
 
 Analysis of the learning of a foreign language shows the 
 same relation of the learning product to the assimilative process 
 and the same liability to mistake the latter for the former. Ii 
 we select the learning of French as an illustration, we may dis- 
 tinguish three kinds of learning products: First, there is the use 
 product, appearing as the ability to read or perhaps to speak, 
 
28 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 and here we have adaptations of precisely the same nature as 
 that found in the process of learning to read the vernacular, 
 namely, an acquired ability in the individual manifested in read- 
 ing or speaking the language without focal consciousness of the 
 discourse which he is using. Second, there are various related 
 skills which appear as greater or less fluency in the use of the 
 language at the level of the fundamental adaptation. Third, it 
 is often desirable to establish comprehension of the language 
 structure entirely apart from the use of the language. Confusion 
 between these learning-product objectives is very likely to result 
 in failure to attain any of them as a real product. 
 
 There is another set of ability adaptations which we must 
 bring into the picture, namely, those which are acquired apart 
 from any thought process whatever. Among the schoolroom arts, 
 spelling is the best illustration. Better illustrations are found in 
 that extensive list of pure neuro-muscular adaptations such as 
 walking, swimming, skating, and the like. Here the adaptation is 
 apparently in the form of a set in the co-ordination of a system 
 of neuro-muscular adjustments. The adaptation is attained 
 through a period of practice during which for a long time it is in 
 doubt. In the end, it is evidenced by reliable use apart from 
 guidance or constraint. Contemplate, for illustration, the small 
 boy learning to swim. He struggles aimlessly for some time. 
 Presently he can maintain himself in the water and progress for 
 some little distance. He proudly asserts that he can “‘take twen- 
 ty strokes.” The veteran knows that even though he can take 
 a hundred “strokes” he cannot yet swim. But one day to his as- 
 tonishment and delight he finds that he can maintain himself 
 indefinitely. The adaptation has taken place. The veteran’s ver- 
 dict is, “Yes, you can swim.” In a similar manner, children prac- 
 tice spelling for a long time. They are tested and make no mis- 
 takes. The teacher and the supervisor are satisfied. Neverthe- 
 less, on the next written paper several words, upon which the 
 pupil was impeccable in the test, appear as misspellings. Lesson 
 performance had been mistaken for the real product. Eventual- 
 
OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING — 29 
 
 ly, the pupil spells these words correctly, he always so uses them, 
 and he does so automatically. The ability adaptation has taken 
 place. 
 
 The test of a real product of learning is then: first, its per- 
 manency; and, second, its habitual use in the ordinary activities 
 of life. Indeed, so fundamental is the latter of the two tests that 
 any truly educated person can appraise the whole education of 
 his fellow in its terms. He can note, for instance, how the latter 
 forms his opinions. Does he accept the ordinary cant of the day 
 as his opinion? Most people do. Or does he critically examine 
 the facts, apply the principles which he is supposed to have 
 learned in school, and render an opinion in which all reasonable 
 educated persons must concur? Does he hold opinions on all 
 subjects under the sun, as the illiterate is prone to do, or does he 
 distinguish between those fields in which he is entitled to hold 
 opinions and those in which he can have no possible basis for 
 opinion? If he has been credited with certain courses in eco- 
 nomics in college, does he apply economic thinking to the inter- 
 pretation of commercial situations in which he finds himself, and 
 to the decision which he makes when he votes for a new tax, or 
 does he live the life of the economic opportunist? If he has been 
 credited with certain courses in English literature, are his at- 
 tainments reflected in his choice of cultural reading or does he 
 solace his leisure exclusively with the Sunday newspaper and the 
 ephemeral story of the day? In the course of Part III, we shall 
 have occasion to study in detail at various points the theory of 
 valid testing as applied to the various products of learning. 
 Suffice it here to state that, however tests may differ, we shall al- 
 ways find ultimate reliance in two forms—the assimilation test, 
 which seeks to determine whether or not a given adaptation has 
 taken place; and the behavior or functional test, which seeks to 
 verify the assimilation test through observation of the uncon- 
 strained behavior of the pupil. 
 
 An illustration of a successful behavior test is found in the 
 following incident. 
 
30 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 An observer was visiting a “Community Life” course at jun- 
 ior high school level. The unit which was being studied, and 
 which had been in the process of being studied for some time, 
 was “Myself and Others.” The teacher had not only been guid- 
 ing the class to an understanding of the principles involved but 
 had been endeavoring to make register the significant applica- 
 tion to the pupils’ attitude toward conduct. The teacher chanced 
 to step out of the room and was absent for a considerable inter- 
 val. Everything went on as it-had gone on during the presence of 
 the teacher. At the end of the period, the observer followed 
 eight of the class to a room in which there was great disorder. 
 The eight behaved precisely as they had in the room from which 
 they came. The behavior in the social-studies room was clearly 
 the result, not of conformity, but of a true adaptation. 
 
 It is evident that a valid content of the school program, that 
 is to say, the curriculum, must be expressed in terms of the atti- 
 tudes, abilities, and skills which it is desirable to establish. It is 
 further clear that it is the height of educational naiveté to ex- 
 press the curriculum as a series of courses to be covered. To say 
 that the pupil must spend five years in arithmetic and then three 
 in higher mathematics, that he must study United States history 
 and then modern history, that he must have three years of Eng- 
 lish after he has finished the eighth grade and three years of 
 some foreign language, and that he must have followed a course 
 lasting one year in some one science—all this is on the whole less 
 rational than it would be to prescribe two meals a day instead of 
 three for some unknown nutritional disorder. Nor in such cases 
 is the builder of the course of study wholly at fault. It may 
 doubtless be extremely indefinite to prescribe a course in United 
 States history to be taken in the eighth grade, but none the less 
 such a prescription is usually simply the administration’s way of 
 stating that the pupil should, by that time in his career, be learn- 
 ing something about the institutions of his own country. The 
 teacher is not precluded from organizing the course as a series 
 
OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING 31 
 
 of essential understandings to be developed in the place of a 
 body of information to be memorized—and forgotten. 
 
 Thus far in our illustrations we have dealt with learning 
 products which are associated with the specific adaptations im- 
 plied by the various courses commonly found in the school. It 
 remains to survey the more generalized adaptations which are 
 essential, not only as final products in the education of the indi- 
 vidual, but also as means in the development of the specific 
 adaptations. Perhaps the most obvious of these is that which 
 is implied in the expression “learning to think.” 
 
 The educational exhorter has indulged in a great deal of 
 vagueness in the use of this expression and, while teachers have 
 felt a conviction of need, they have been obliged to grope in a 
 great deal of confusion. 
 
 Thinking, as the psychologist views it, is simply a period of 
 mediation in the higher nerve centers between the reception of 
 an incoming impulse and its discharge in some form of re-estab- 
 lishment of neural equilibrium; or, viewed in mental terms, it is 
 a period of reflection intervening between stimulus and reaction. 
 It is human nature to think, contradictory as this statement may 
 seem to the facts of common experience. People no doubt differ 
 very greatly in their innate thinking capacity. Some cannot 
 think at all, and we set these aside as mental deficients. Some 
 think rapidly and others slowly, depending probably upon the 
 inherited quality of brain tissue. Adults have in genera! better 
 thinking powers than children, probably because the physical 
 organ upon which thinking depends is mature in one case and 
 immature in the other. On the whole, however, all normal people 
 think, or at least can think. Failure of children and adults to 
 give any concrete sign of the process is due rather to absence of 
 the conditions under which thinking takes place than to lack of 
 training in some abstract sense. We can say with a great deal of 
 confidence that, given: (a) material to think about; (0) a meth- 
 od of thinking; and (c) a motive for thinking, any normal indi- 
 vidual will think within the limitations which his native mental 
 
32 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 structure, or his mental age, determines. These are the condi- 
 tions under which thinking takes place. 
 
 The reader can amply verify the statement just made by 
 calling to the bar evidence which is within the experience of 
 nearly everybody. Illiterates, or near-illiterates, are not infre- 
 quently found who, within a field which is their own and in 
 which they are actuated by compelling motives, think as effec- 
 tively as the most highly trained can think in that particular 
 limited field. Contemplate, for instance, a transaction between 
 an untutored ancient horse-trader and, let us say, a university 
 professor. It would be a bigoted advocate of culture, indeed, 
 who would assert that the academician thinks out the situation 
 any more effectively than the salesman. The latter has material, 
 that is, he knows what he is talking about; he has a powerful 
 motive; and he has a crude method, sufficient for his purpose, 
 which he has built up out of his experience of the ways of the 
 buyer. Not infrequently absolute illiterates think so well in one 
 of these specialized situations that they build up for themselves 
 somewhat elaborate methods. 
 
 Nor is the verdict of science different from that of the com- 
 mon experience. Modern psychology finds little or no evidence 
 for supposing that education or any form of training improves 
 the native or inherent capacity to think. 
 
 What, then, is accountable for the superiority of the highly 
 educated in thinking capacity? In the first place, they have en- 
 joyed a vastly greater range of experience, both direct and vi- 
 carious, than have the untutored. They have more to think 
 about, and by consequence a greatly extended range of interests. 
 Hence the range of impelling motives is likewise greatly ex- 
 tended. But, more important than all else, they have come into 
 the possession of a variety of methods of thinking which are 
 sealed books to the uneducated. Mathematics, the various phys- 
 ical and biological sciences, mechanics, economics, politics, lin- 
 guistics, history—all are primarily methods of thinking and 
 only in a secondary sense bodies of informational content. In 
 
OBJECTIVES OF SYSTEMATIC TEACHING — 33 
 
 addition to these are the generalized methods of thinking which 
 grow out of inductive and deductive logic. Some or all of these 
 methods of thinking the educated man has acquired, and he thus 
 possesses a trained mind in the sense that he has the intellectual 
 instruments needed for the interpretation of a wide variety of 
 specialized situations. 
 
 Hence, the process of training pupils to think is nothing else 
 than furnishing them with an abundance of the vicarious expe- 
 rience made possible as soon as the reading adaptation has been 
 established, and establishing the adaptations which are implied 
 in the study of the sciences. The student who has actually ac- 
 quired the true products in the learning of physics has by the 
 very fact learned to think as the physicist thinks. He who has 
 really learned his history has acquired historical-mindedness, 
 and so on. 
 
 Finally, we come to the two major products of the secondary 
 school: (a) a wide range of interests and the discovery of some 
 dominating interest, and (0) the capacity for self-dependent in- 
 tellectual life. An intellectual interest may be defined as an intel- 
 lectual pursuit which the individual follows independently of 
 the constraint of the school; and educational self-dependence as 
 that stage at which the student has realized the meaning and 
 purpose of study, has acquired the self-control which self-de- 
 pendence implies, and has further acquired the range of methods 
 of thinking and of study which remove him from constant de- 
 pendence on the teacher. 
 
 Now, from a very early period in the secondary school, gen- 
 uine intellectual interests begin to manifest themselves, provided 
 the opportunity is afforded. The chief opportunity is exposure 
 to a wisely selected stock of books and other cultural experience. 
 Such interests are easily identified and recorded. Normally, a 
 child passes from one interest to another as experience broadens 
 and new experiences in the course of mental maturing become 
 possible. In time, there seems to be discovered to the pupil the 
 field in which his permanent interest lies. Though it is probably 
 
| RS THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 not true that this final discovery necessarily occurs in the sec- 
 ondary school, several cases have been noted in the laboratory 
 within the few years just past in which it is clear that approxi- 
 mate final discovery has taken place before the end of the elev- 
 enth grade. 
 
 Educational self-dependence before the end of the high- 
 school period probably occurs more often than is noted, and, on 
 the other hand, it is certain that it frequently fails to appear by 
 the end of the four-year college period. We are not concerned 
 here with the administrative technique which gives independ- 
 ence its opportunity and if need be forces it. That discussion 
 must be postponed to later chapters. We are concerned with call- 
 ing attention to the principle that it is one of the learning prod- 
 ucts of the school, and probably the essential product in a demo- 
 cratic society. As such it can be observed, noted, and tested like 
 any other true learning product. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 LEARNING AND LESSON PERFORMANCE 
 
 HEN a student has fully acquired a piece of learn- 
 
 WW ing, he has mastered it. Half-learning, or learning 
 rather well, or being on the way to learning are none 
 
 of them mastery. Mastery implies completeness; the thing is 
 done; the student has arrived, as far as that particular learning 
 is concerned. There is no question of how well the student has 
 mastered it; he has either mastered or he has not mastered. It 
 is as absurd to speak of degrees in mastery as to speak of de- 
 grees in the attainment of the second floor of a building or of de- 
 grees in being on the other side of the stream, or of degrees of 
 completeness of any sort whatever. The traveler may indeed be 
 part-way across the stream, he may be almost across, but he is 
 not across until he gets there. Once across, he may continue his 
 journey indefinitely, but he cannot continue his journey from 
 midstream. The pupil may have begun to learn, we can see that 
 he is making progress, he has almost learned; but he has not 
 mastered until he has completely learned. He may continue to 
 other masteries, and there will be all sorts of degrees in the num- 
 ber of masteries he attains. He may acquire skill in the applica- 
 tion of his learning, and there may be infinite degrees in his skill 
 as he improves from no skill at all to expertness. But in the unit 
 learning itself there are no degrees; he either has it or he has it 
 not. We may then apply the term in substance to the true learn- 
 ing products which we have studied in the preceding chapter, 
 and affirm that whenever the adaptation in the individual which 
 corresponds to a given product in learning has taken place, the 
 individual has arrived at the mastery level for that particular 
 product. Thus, the child who has reached the primary reading 
 adaptation and can actually read may be said to have reached a 
 
 35 
 
36 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 mastery level. The pupil who has actually acquired that view of 
 the material world which is implied in the atomic theory has at- 
 tained a mastery level. He who has caught a vision of truth or 
 beauty from a classic has attained a mastery. Similarly, the stu- 
 dent who has reached the level of intellectual responsibility is a 
 master at a vitally important stage in his intellectual and voli- 
 tional development. 
 
 Now the whole process of education, of adjustment to the 
 objective conditions of life, is made up of unit learnings each 
 of which must be mastered or else no adaptation is made. These 
 unit learnings cannot be measured but they can all of them be 
 evidenced by symptoms or signs revealed in the learner’s be- 
 havior. Some symptoms are plainly manifest if we observe 
 thoughtfully; others can be detected only by tests designed to 
 bring them out; others still can be observed only by the meth- 
 ods, and it may be only with the help of the instruments, of the 
 skilled psychologist. Whatever the test, its purpose is to throw 
 light on the question, Has the pupil learned or has he not? 
 
 It follows that the course material which we find in the cur- 
 riculum is valuable in education only as it is analyzed into sig- 
 nificant units of learning which generate adaptations in the pupil 
 and in that way contribute to his adjustment. It is meaningless 
 to prescribe a course in arithmetic or English or grammar or 
 French, and let it go at that. The issue is not learning any of 
 these but rather the mastery of certain significant units in arith- 
 metic or English or grammar or French. The most learned of 
 scholars would hesitate to say that he had mastered any of these 
 fields. But the child of nine years can indisputably learn to add 
 and to identify situations in which adding is the appropriate 
 process. When he has done so, he has mastered that unit and 
 will never know how to add arithmetically any more truly than 
 he does now, albeit he can improve almost indefinitely in the 
 skill and accuracy and acumen with which he applies the proc- 
 ess. Similarly, the boy in junior high school can indisputably 
 learn to read French, that is, he can learn how to use the 
 
LEARNING AND LESSON PERFORMANCE 37 
 
 printed page in the manner which has the characteristic symp- 
 toms of reading. He masters the unit of learning which we may 
 define as the reading adaptation in French. In brief, while it is 
 idle to speak of mastering a given field of knowledge, at least in 
 the secondary school, it is not only entirely possible to master 
 important units within that field, but no less attainment consti- 
 tutes learning in the educational sense at all. 
 
 This chapter would be uncalled for, were it not for the fact 
 that much traditional school practice ignores the mastery of the 
 true units of learning and in place thereof focuses its attention 
 on the pupil’s performance of assigned tasks. Common practice 
 is to treat either the content of a textbook, or the syllabus of a 
 course of study, as the learning product to be achieved. The 
 content is then broken up into a series of sections called “‘les- 
 sons,” each of which is conned by the pupil and in one way or 
 another is delivered to the teacher in the form of a recitation. 
 The process of instruction may be varied by class discussion of 
 the content, by the setting of problems, or by other practices 
 which tend to stimulate reflection, but in the end learning is sim- 
 ply a process of covering a given body of narrative, descriptive 
 or expository discourse, or of solving a given series of problems. 
 Within the textbook, especially in science and mathematics, 
 may appear the true learning products contemplated by the 
 course, in a more or less learnable form, but more often the con- 
 tent is merely assimilative material related or unrelated to the 
 essential learning products. The ground once covered, it is “‘re- 
 viewed” and the recitation form of testing the absorption of 
 material is summarized in another test, of the same sort and of 
 the same order, known as the “examination.” As the examina- 
 tion period approaches, the teacher and the supervisor alike 
 often exhibit the height of scientific ingenuousness by creating 
 a situation which is skilfully calculated to obscure the very 
 symptoms which they are presumably seeking to discover. The 
 performance stereotype is in full charge in the teacher’s mind. 
 Such being the case, it is perfectly logical to review and prepare 
 
38 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 for examination, in order that performance on examination may 
 be as satisfactory as is possible. Now, if any actual learning 
 has taken place, it is assuredly something which amounts to 
 transformation in the individual, to something which can be 
 tested entirely apart from any preparation for being tested. In 
 so far as the pupil knows that he is going to be examined and 
 prepares definitely for the examination, it should be evident to 
 the most casual reflection that what he has actually acquired 
 and made part of himself must be hidden under the mass of 
 memoriter material which he has made available and ready for 
 examination. He may know, but the examination affords no evi- 
 dence that he does know. He may have failed wholly to have ac- 
 quired any real product in learning, and yet success in recalling 
 content is taken as evidence of learning. What is true of the 
 examination is true of the daily test known as the “recitation.” 
 
 The element of mastery is not present simply because there 
 has been nothing to master. That individuals survive the proc- 
 ess and exhibit in the end evidence of scattered masteries means 
 simply that the driving force of native curiosity has brought 
 about that casual attainment of actual learning which is acquired 
 by any individual in any given round of experience. But such 
 casual and scattered masteries are as little to be taken as evi- 
 dence of the trained mind as are the ingenious, and perhaps use- 
 ful, productions of the clever inventor to be taken as evidence 
 that the latter is of the same order of thinker as a Kelvin or a 
 Pasteur. 
 
 THE FALLACY OF THE PASSING GRADE 
 
 The practice of keeping the mind fixed on lesson perform- 
 ance instead of upon clearly defined units of learning leads 
 logically and inevitably to a theory of appraisal and control of 
 pupil progress which is the opposite of mastery. Let us call it 
 the “theory of the passing grade.” 
 
 If we set up a given body of content to be absorbed, and fixed 
 time limits within which the absorption process is to take place 
 
LEARNING AND LESSON PERFORMANCE 39 
 
 —and that is what the graded-school system necessarily implies 
 —there can be but one outcome, human nature being what it is. 
 Some pupils will do well, some indifferently, and some will not 
 perform at all. Some will remember much, some little, and some 
 none at all. But at the end of a year or a half-year, pupils must 
 be moved onward to the next grade. Shall we move only those 
 who have remembered all? Manifestly not, for in that case we 
 shall move nobody. Shall we move everybody? Clearly the ab- 
 surdity would be too palpable. We must then move some and 
 not others, and it will not do to retain so large a proportion that 
 the process itself will come into disrepute. Experience long ago 
 settled the proportion to be moved in terms of popular pressure 
 in the community. [f we send on a majority, in a land in which 
 majorities have a peculiar sanctity, the public will believe that 
 the elements of eternal verity are in the school. If we send on an 
 overwhelming majority, the public will think we deal in “‘land- 
 slides,” and landslide is the last word in political certitude. 
 Eighty per cent is a safe majority here, 90 per cent there, and in 
 some communities we dare not trust anything less than 97 or 98 
 per cent. Hence in A we keep back 20 per cent, and in C we dare 
 not retain more than 2 or 3 per cent. Incidentally, A draws back 
 its skirts and looks askance at the “low standards” of C. X, 
 which is a high-grade private school, massacres 50 per cent and 
 and thereby establishes its reputation for “scholarly standards.”’ 
 
 Now, in the process of the daily routine, the teacher cannot 
 help observing that some pupils prepare their lessons well and 
 some poorly. Can we not grade this daily work and so surround 
 ourselves with the atmosphere of quantitative judgment? Yes, 
 we can let 100 per cent stand for a recitation in which we can 
 find no fault and o per cent for one which is nil. Between these 
 extremes, we can let the percentile series stand for all shades of 
 judgment of the quality of the recitation delivered. In a similar 
 manner can we grade the examination. When the day of judg- 
 ment arrives, we can draw the line at some convenient average 
 percentile grade and in that way distinguish between the just 
 
40 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 and the intellectually unrepentant and wretched. Where shall 
 the line be? Well, in A we have always been able to escape un- 
 due censure if we promote about 80 per cent, and experience 
 shows that about that percentage will usually be at or above 70 
 per cent on our percentile scale. Therefore let 70 be our “pass- 
 ing grade.” In B, however, we find it convenient to promote 90 
 per cent, and experience shows that 90 per cent of the pupils 
 commonly attain 60 per cent and better. So 60 becomes the 
 passing grade in B. 
 
 Thus arises the passing grade as the learning objective, as 
 the true product of learning. Of course, as we easily see upon 
 analysis of the situation, there is no question of any learning 
 product at all. The school is working for performance values 
 and not for learning values. Instead of definitely listing the 
 units to be learned, and guiding and constraining the pupil into 
 a genuine mastery of each as shown by tests focused upon each, 
 and then, if you will, counting the units mastered, the pupil has 
 been required to con and recite upon a certain number of pages, 
 solve a certain number of problems, and translate a certain num- 
 ber of exercises. 
 
 In the common parlance of the schoolroom, a pupil is said to 
 do “good work” or “poor work,” meaning that he prepares his 
 assignments efficiently and industriously or poorly and negli- 
 gently, as the case may be. The school is evidently thinking of 
 tasks accomplished and not at all of learning acquired. Indeed, 
 in the study of schoolroom ways, one very often comes upon 
 suggestions of factory psychology, of notions brought over from 
 the field of industry. In the daily lesson, textbook school with 
 its whole vocabulary of good work and poor work, acceptable 
 performance and unacceptable performance, passing grades, 
 credits for work done, or perhaps time done, it is hard to escape 
 the conclusion that the picture which is in the mind of teacher, 
 principal, and public is something like this. The textbook with 
 its content, its problems, and its exercises is the job (how that 
 word “‘job” is getting across the street from the factory and into 
 
LEARNING AND LESSON PERFORMANCE AI 
 
 the schoolroom!); the pupils are the hands; the teacher is the 
 room foreman; the principal is the mill superintendent; and so 
 on to board of directors and stockholders. Wages are in the 
 form of grade promotions or credits for work done at or above a 
 passing grade. 
 
 But, it may be objected, the pupil learns in proportion to the 
 tasks he accomplishes. We shall presently examine the assump- 
 tion with the help of factual material, but, before we do that, let 
 us reason together and see if it is at all likely. 
 
 TABLE I 
 Topic Pupil A Pupil B 
 
 Fee MILI OF SDECER! POU oe riled OIE SRT 81 Passed 72 Passed 
 
 2. Elements of the simple sentence............ 90 Passed 78 Passed 
 
 3. Adjective and adverbial modifiers.......... 50 Failed 71 Passed 
 
 Ae PV FASE ROGIDETSy wih teidaiele'< avs % x'o steely 74 Passed 73 Passed 
 
 GA EEMAOT Se 05s ace 5 Paaree's led, ole alec e Sa Ian, 85 Passed 70 Passed 
 
 PIMPIN TIA OT Gis UiuPalal sternite cintdtal sa 's's'o\s Wola erelaetatene & 82 Passed 79 Passed 
 
 ORO TRANIN Heike clio Wigeiala abies nei’ o\'e/c bu el atareil tamaite 94 Passed 76 Passed 
 
 PREC ASO MEN ST ra oe a cles die tree + ore aie a sla eoenra ss 89 Passed 75 Passed 
 
 PENSE Sites che uals Wai We Siurale siwiaree nie 4 Mi gtimate 75 Passed 70 Passed 
 
 ROMIGCIATIVE CAUSE Uy ci classe ui’ s «0.4 wale nities 63 Failed 71 Passed 
 Piss Compound sentence) W000 4/1 San 58 Failed 70 Passed 
 PRCA TUCO eel ie ei taiala via hits eis s: salsa hace Mae 77 Passed 71 Passed 
 BAM IMUTIELYVE venetian, GE eg sae die'ae ealatenla he 42 Failed 72 Passed 
 14. Transitive and intransitive verbs........... 56 Failed 70 Passed 
 PAI OT ASO Nay Wuyi oui Shela’ Rika id 73 Passed 73 Passed 
 
 Here are what easily might be the records of two pupils on 
 some fourteen topics in grammar, which might, by the way, have 
 been treated as learning units. The two recite for some days on 
 each topic, performance is scored and an average grade on the 
 series is made possible. The passing grade is 70. 
 
 In the first place, have we any evidence whatever of learn- 
 ing? No, we have evidence simply of the average performance 
 value which the teacher assigns to the pupils in each of the four- 
 teen topics. That means, in general, that Pupil A reacted wrong- 
 ly to nineteen out of one hundred opportunities on the first top- 
 ic; to ten on the second; to fifty on the third; and so on. What- 
 
42 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ever he may have learned, there is certainly no evidence of mas- 
 tery on any of the topics. We can assume that he had probably 
 made more or less progress on the road to mastery. 
 
 But granted that 70 per cent performance is equivalent to 
 acceptable learning, does the average grade of 73 mean that this 
 pupil has acceptably learned the field covered by the fourteen 
 topics? No, for this involves us in the assumption that by learn- 
 ing Topic 2 very well the pupil must thereby have accumulated 
 enough intellectual surplus to convert Topic 3 from non-learning 
 into learning, and so on down through the list. Patently absurd. 
 Pupil B, steady plodder that he is, performs very poorly on 
 every topic but he passes every one. Now the hypothesis of the 
 school is that a topic is learned when the pupil attains a passing 
 grade—7o in this case. So pupil B must have learned all the top- 
 ics in the series. His average grade is the same as that of Pupil 
 A. And yet the latter certainly failed to learn five of the four- 
 teen topics. On the school’s own theory, learning values are not 
 proportional to performance values. Indeed, there is nothing 
 more than a casual relationship. 
 
 Let us further examine the issue in the light of typical 
 school experience. 
 
 Perhaps the most important elementary product of learning 
 in mathematics is the variation relationship. The fourth-grade 
 child encounters it when he ascertains how many eggs can be 
 bought for ten dollars if eggs are seventy cents a dozen. He 
 works many problems of that sort, over a mathematical expe- 
 rience which usually lasts several years. Has he, in the end, gen- 
 eralized his experience and acquired an attitude to the world of 
 quantities such that he always recognizes the relationship when 
 it exists? In fact, he does acquire the true learning product only 
 casually and in exceptional instances. In the physical sciences, 
 in the practical arts, and in the concerns of everyday life, the 
 common experience is to find large numbers of mentally alert stu- 
 dents, who have survived to the latter years of high school and 
 
LEARNING AND LESSON PERFORMANCE 43 
 
 to college, who can utilize this method of thinking only if they 
 are taught anew its specific application to all new material which 
 they encounter. And it is reasonable to expect that when a pupil 
 has worked over innumerable instances of the application of 
 such a principle it is only by accident that the principle itself 
 will register, apart from identification of the unit learning and 
 direct teaching, and reteaching if need be, to the point of tested 
 adaptation. There is a vast difference, in the learning situation 
 described, between saying “This pupil has worked seven of 
 every ten exercises correctly” and being able to say “This pupil 
 has definitely caught the central idea.” 
 
 Another illustration of the same set of phenomena in another 
 field, that of foreign language, German for instance. Here the 
 pupil spends a year, or more commonly three years, in pursuit of 
 a long series of assignments in textbooks which discourse about 
 the language and present innumerable exercises in illustration of 
 the usages or grammatical principles which are treated. Now, if 
 the teacher were asked to sit down and list the real learning 
 products in view, he would probably enumerate: (1) ability to 
 read the language; (2) possibly ability to speak the language; 
 and (3) comprehension of the language structure. But are these 
 products all the while in the foreground of the teacher’s con- 
 sciousness? Not if the ground-to-be-covered theory is consis- 
 tently followed. Rather is the performance of the daily exercise 
 the important thing. Day in and day out the pupil satisfies the 
 teacher with his fidelity to the assignment and acquires a high 
 average grade. He succeeds on the examination in proportion as 
 he can recall the details of the immense mass of experience which 
 he has encountered. Improvement, in reading power let us say, 
 is seldom tested, and if tested corrective instruction is rarely 
 undertaken. In the end, have any acquired the learning products 
 for which the curriculum stands? Some have done so, but cas- 
 - ually and uneconomically at best. The majority can neither 
 read, speak, nor give any intelligible and illuminating account of 
 
44 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 language structure. Again, performance has been valued rather 
 than product; learning is conceived as barely acceptable per- 
 formance. 
 
 THE GET-BY ATTITUDE 
 
 What effect on the pupil’s conception of the nature of his 
 learning shall we expect when part-learning is systematically set 
 up as the acceptable standard? 
 
 Let us lay aside, for the moment, our objections to per- 
 formance of the daily task as evidence of learning and assume 
 that such performance is some sort of valid objective. We have 
 seen that the theory itself compels us to set up a passing grade 
 as a measure of acceptable performance; otherwise the theory 
 itself is impossible in practice. Seventy per cent is such a com- 
 monly accepted passing grade, though any other would serve 
 the purposes of our argument. If letters are used, either the sim- 
 ple alphabetical order from A to E, or descriptive initial letters, 
 the result is much the same, since always the test is acceptable 
 performance rather than perfect, or even adequate, perform- 
 ance. Nor can it be urged that 70 per cent stands for mastery 
 and that higher grades stand for additional masteries. The per- 
 centage does not represent a count; it is a symbol of the teach- 
 er’s judgment of the value of performance when too per cent 
 represents his valuation of a flawless performance. The average 
 grade represents no quantity but simply the average of the num- 
 bers which stand as symbols of the teacher’s judgment. 
 
 As the pupil goes on from grade to grade, from course to 
 course, from credit to credit, he seldom encounters any other at- 
 titude in his elders, whether parents or teachers, than that edu- 
 cation consists in the partial performance of tasks, in perform- 
 ance up to a level the attainment of which will relieve him from 
 laborious repetition of the servitude. There is no thought of full 
 performance; full performance is the achievement of individ- 
 uals who believe in works of supererogation. Education is 70 
 per cent performance; one goes to school to acquire education; 
 
LEARNING AND LESSON PERFORMANCE 45 
 
 why pursue the car after one has caught it? True, it is gratify- 
 ing to be rated among those who attain creditable grades, 80 per 
 cent to go per cent, let us say, but why be hag-ridden by a vain 
 ambition to surpass one’s fellows? Or, if one must, let us set to 
 it and surpass everybody, with an average grade of 97 per cent. 
 Let us note that even very superior performance as thus con- 
 ceived is not full performance. From the passing grade to the 
 highest grades awarded, partial performance is accepted and 
 sanctioned as valid performance. Now, even granted that per- 
 formance is translatable into learning, mastery can certainly not 
 arise out of partial performance. The whole theory, therefore, 
 of necessity eventuates in building up in the developing pupil 
 the conviction that performance is achievement, that very in- 
 ferior work is acceptable work, and that the most superior per- 
 formance is still less than full performance. 
 
 Study of problem cases, in the laboratory schools especially 
 but elsewhere as well, seems to show in many pupils a character- 
 istic well-defined volitional perversion which we have come to 
 call the “get-by attitude.” The pupil thus afflicted—and the vic- 
 tims are many—comes to see any task which he has to do, not as 
 a thing to be accomplished in a finished manner as a matter of 
 course, but rather as an undertaking upon which he will econo- 
 mize effort to the degree which experience has taught him will 
 be accepted. If we raise the standard by requiring a higher pass- 
 ing grade for certain purposes, we simply require greater exer- 
 tion without changing the attitude. As the pupil goes on into 
 high school and college, he often becomes very skilful in his 
 ability to just scrape through. What college teacher has not 
 met these people? They occasionally become solicitous about 
 grades and upon being assured that their work is acceptable, re- 
 ceiving B perhaps when the passing grade is C, they at once 
 relax. 
 
 Now, the teacher, and perhaps the parent, passes this all off 
 with a good-natured smile and the comfortable verdict “Just a 
 boy—he will come out all right.” Yes, it is just a boy—a nine- 
 
46 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 or ten-year old boy. The truth of the matter is that the attitude 
 when found in high school or college is a serious perversion and, 
 unless corrected, results in permanent volitional retardation. 
 The attitude carried over into adult life means irresponsibility, 
 low standards, and, whenever the social controls become relaxed, 
 lawlessness in a variety of social relations. Such an adult is in- 
 capable of becoming a citizen, in the social sense of that term, 
 albeit he may legally be capable of voting and holding office. 
 
 The educational determinist meets us with the rejoinder, 
 “This is the kind of persons such people are—they were born 
 that way and that is the whole of it.” Again not so. The per- 
 version being identified, the teacher can set up the appropriate 
 learning unit and teach the pupil out of his perversion in much 
 the same way in which he would teach a principle of economics 
 or a drama. Only the remedial work will be done in the presence _ 
 of heavy odds, if the school still insists on a theory of adminis- 
 trative technique which is as well calculated as possible to de- 
 velop continuously the perversion anew. 
 
 PERVERSION OF THE PUPIL’S ATTITUDE TOWARD HIS EDUCATION 
 
 It is far from true that all pupils in schools whose teaching 
 is founded on the belief that lesson performance is translatable 
 into learning are afflicted with the specific volitional perversion 
 which has thus been described. Under the stimulus of ambition 
 or emulation or because a chance interest has been wafted in 
 their direction, a great many, the majority we hope, do achieve a 
 genuinely good standard of performance. Many of them out of 
 performance acquire the true learnings intended. Nevertheless, 
 a great many do pass on into higher classes and other institu- 
 tions with a curious lack of sense of the reality of learning, at- 
 tributable without much reasonable doubt to the performance 
 conceptions to which they have all their lives been accustomed. 
 
 A student is called into conference by the author to discuss 
 the former’s shortcomings in the use of his mother-tongue in 
 
LEARNING AND LESSON PERFORMANCE 47 
 
 written papers. After the customary introductory remarks, con- 
 versation something like the following takes place: 
 
 “But, Professor, I have always had good marks in English 
 in high school and college.” 
 
 “Yes, but let us look at this sentence. Just what do you 
 mean?” 
 
 “Well, I suppose I mean—” 
 
 “Ts that what you say?” 
 
 “TI will get my English grades from the recorder’s office and 
 bring them to you.” 
 
 Happy thought; that will adjust the whole matter] 
 
 Now, the student is mentally capable and there is funda- 
 mentally no reason why he should not become a well-equipped 
 man, but just now he and [ are hardly talking the same language. 
 To him formal education is purely a matter of his precious 
 grades. He has not the remotest idea that they stand for valid 
 reality in terms of any intellectual activity of his own. In time 
 we get together and he comes to take a genuine pleasure in re- 
 cording his reasoning in respectable discourse. The picture is 
 composite; it is not an extreme case but typical. I have no doubt 
 that the experience in one form or another can be duplicated 
 over and over again by many if not most of my readers. It rep- 
 resents a fairly normal end result of performance schooling. 
 
 What of the multitudes of youngsters who stray from the 
 pathway of schooling long before they have reached university 
 level? Is it at all likely that they have taken on the adjustments 
 in attitude to the modern world which is education, unless they 
 have done so by chance? What of the alleged submerged intelli- 
 gence of the 80 per cent of our population? Is it nature alto- 
 gether or nurture in part? 
 
 And so we return to mastery of the true learning products. 
 In the list of grammar topics on page 41 we have a series of 
 possible unit learnings. The list evidently does not cover all the 
 learnings in this field which are needed in order that the struc- 
 ture of his discourse may be comprehensible to the graduate of 
 
48 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the secondary school; but even so it goes far. Such as it is, how- 
 ever, the list can be viewed strictly as one of identified, signifi- 
 cant units of learning. Teaching which is intent upon actual 
 learning will then present each unit in succession and persevere 
 in its effort until the pupil has indubitably caught the meaning 
 and sense of the unit and manifests his mastery through his reac- 
 tion to searching tests calculated to settle the issue whether he 
 has learned or has not learned. Such teaching is not satisfied to 
 grade the pupil 70 and pass on, for it realizes that three failures 
 out of ten on valid test items means that the pupil is only on his 
 way to mastery and has not yet arrived. 
 
 Thus the contrast between direct teaching and lesson learn- 
 ing. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 
 
 ROM time immemorial people have supported schools 
 = distrusted their product. The man of affairs distrusts 
 
 book-learning. The successful practitioner of a profes- 
 sion sometimes refers contemptuously to the textbooks of his 
 calling. Few people have full confidence in him whose life is a 
 lesson learned. Schools are caricatured and the schoolmaster 
 patronized. And yet schools are carried on and extended in a 
 manner which can leave little doubt of the conviction of modern 
 peoples that the school is one of the vital institutions of civilized 
 society. Why this appearance of puzzle-headedness, this appar- 
 ent faith in schools and distrust of their product? 
 
 Most professional students of the educative process in our 
 own time and in past ages have in effect recognized the anomaly 
 and have sought to divert the school’s attention from bookish- 
 ness to learning. In the measurable success of their efforts lies 
 most of the progress of the modern period. In large measure, the 
 school practices which we have discussed and criticized at some 
 length in the preceding chapters probably account for the dis- 
 crepancy between schooling and education. In the present chap- 
 ter, we shall study the concrete outcome of that teaching pro- 
 cedure which seems to be chiefly responsible. 
 
 The procedure referred to is the theory of teaching tech- 
 nique which we have perhaps sufficiently described as lesson- 
 learning and lesson-testing. We have discussed its relation to the 
 mastery idea. Probably none of its thoughtful practitioners 
 would admit that they are in principle unregardful of the real 
 learning which is assumed to be associated with lesson-learning. 
 They must, however, rest their case on the assumption that les- 
 son-learning automatically transfers to the real learning for 
 
 49 
 
50 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 which it stands. We shall present some evidence tending to show 
 that it does so in practice only casually and uncertainly. 
 
 In 1920, the author undertook to investigate the relation of 
 success in daily recitation to actual achievement in certain 
 courses. At that time, the technique of the teaching investigated 
 was far from being an extreme form of lesson-learning. The con- 
 tent of the daily lesson was illuminated by direct teaching in va- 
 rious ways. The classes were small, and the teacher had large 
 opportunity for corrective work with the individual pupil. Nev- 
 ertheless, the atmosphere was that which is always created by 
 the assignment of the daily task and evaluation of the student’s 
 - average performance rather than his attainment of the under- 
 standings, or appreciations, or abilities, presumably contem- 
 plated by the teaching. The results of the investigation were 
 originally presented in the School Review for January, 1921, 
 Volume X XIX, pages 19 ff. They are reprinted here, with some 
 additions, quite as much for the sake of suggesting a method of 
 investigating the problem and of testing pupils for real learning 
 as for the useful evidence which they contain. 
 
 The initial study was applied to four classes in Latin, and 
 it is the data of that study which are here presented. Similar 
 investigations referred to below were subsequently made in 
 other classroom subjects and in other schools. In the Latin 
 study, the real learning is ability to he ae the thought of the 
 printed Latin page. 
 
 The daily-lesson assumption is that if a pupil prepares his 
 lessons well he will correspondingly gain in power to interpret 
 the discourse. Accordingly, sight translations were selected 
 which were in character of discourse the same as the material 
 upon which the pupils had recently been practicing. That is to 
 say, Caesar was selected for the class which had been reading 
 Caesar; Cicero and Virgil for the classes which had been reading 
 the works of these authors. In the case of the beginners, sight 
 passages from the beginners’ book in use were used. The mate- 
 rial of the test was broken up into thought units and scored in 
 
THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 51 
 
 proportion to the number of units to the meaning of which the 
 pupil correctly reacted. No account was made of grammatically 
 correct rendering, or of any other qualitative differences, so long 
 as the pupil showed power to interpret rightly the thought units. 
 If he evidently got the meaning he was credited; otherwise, he 
 was not credited. No time limit was set. After the sight test had 
 been written, the pupils were told to take the test as the lesson 
 for the following day. The test was then again set and scored as 
 before. It should be noted that the investigation was compara- 
 tive in character, and hence the absolute value of the scores is of 
 minor account. The test was the same for the two days, the 
 teacher and pupils were the same, and the scorer was the same 
 person. 
 
 We of course expect that pupils will do better on the second 
 test than on the first since they have had opportunity to correct 
 errors and to prepare themselves. The meat of the matter is, 
 How important is this lesson preparation? If a given pupil does 
 nearly as well on the sight test as he does on the prepared work, 
 it is reasonable to suppose that his practice in translating for the 
 daily task is resulting in ability to interpret. If he does much 
 better on the prepared lesson, it is equally reasonable to con- 
 clude that good daily performance is not resulting satisfactorily 
 in the acquisition of ability. In this case, he can perform well 
 provided he can cram himself for performance. 
 
 Let us examine the results for Latin II, a course in Caesar’s 
 Gallic War. 
 
 We note that Pupils A and M do as well on the sight as on 
 the prepared. A is evidently gaining power at a high rate while 
 M is gaining power at a low rate, but none the less the latter’s 
 daily performance transfers to real learning such as it is. 
 
 The scores of none of the others are within a range of ten 
 points on the two tests; but those of B, C, and O are within a 
 range of fifteen points, and those of G are within a range of 
 twenty points. In these cases we can conclude that some consid- 
 erable transfer is taking place, but none of them shows the con- 
 
52 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 TABLE II 
 EXHIBIT OF ABILITY AND LESSON SCORES, 1920 
 
 LS 
 
 SIGHT 
 Pupil Score 
 Bi dint tha Saved chemeiwre esti 100 
 Bleich in baeronns ti 100 
 CUR CMU EED aimee tetehe 100 
 Fe eI ig tia 95 
 ory a) Duala gee eee leis 95 
 Oe MAC iee Cele etek eels 95 
 CPU Neen ete ils go 
 Us UAL OSD Die Sa ES go 
 Lea) Sars we Watelelerciaen sieve 90 
 Pete areichacs Went tae date ds 85 
 | USE eeu ee ORME er teaeR 81 
 17.5% slaniduwec vinnie’ 76 
 IVT ea tea ay ata eee eat 76 
 TNs Gin Seat ciate ee 71 
 Ste ee a etek 67 
 Pyoa he cae fg a'ala nade 96 
 | LIGA AES AAW ne Fl 87 
 Caen sata 87 
 Deora Re ewe ots 61 
 | OPERA 5 Uh PRR iy 52 
 eS we eadate ak chute mee 44 
 CSUR rie iorars whe ties 44 
 De gateratotene sie emenaee 44 
 Dune ia eG wrarnia ele whe 39 
 AtaitetaRieints eto ees hia 39 
 BOE ele ton acca gets Bag 39 
 1 RaW OO Deal EL Me ee bgt 35 
 U8 RR AR a al 35 
 EDP Lia tabs “aha abies gotobe’% mts 30 
 GDL iain ie prelie 9 graces 30 
 Road ania bce oe a's 26 
 PUL a etoe aie ee Sea's 22 
 | DLE ee Ney 17 
 Sarena parallpie ata ¢ 13 
 hig Chane Pag Nae fo Boe Q 
 
 PREPARED 
 Pupil Score 
 CORSON PN Gy oie: bis oat aes 100 
 1 eA a Pa 2 a 05 
 DSIRE ae weed hie 95 
 a See Ry eae ae He TP aS 95 
 | ed ger cee aes 05 
 MI ei a ia eae a aleuse a 95 
 Oaths 3's sc cpio ae 95 
 Meer tea'a'g cin wee tele 95 
 Dab eete Ais: wera eee takai 90 
 EI yy al olee e ng edie fate) 
 Re at a a eee 85 
 IVE Cesc s sales Vets ead 
 AP sR ae a ne PA 81 
 Don Mol hihe oe ee eet 81 
 Pee ws Phe UE ae A 76 
 any ees Pe e's ae 6 100 
 FRR i Sey ae 100 
 TRG Tee ce nie + seats s 100 
 PARROTT AYE, lita TY Gick 96 
 IAG Ee te eae EN 06 
 TD Gvlie ax hiv beset eee 96 
 BS Neiaivig «cas ae saan 06 
 } OE MICS A 87 
 ee Si ie Wye is): 78 
 LL ard te eee 74 
 Tes wale «3c 70 
 De 8 ee 70 
 Re ee ee eee 65 
 ED raw a al costae aa ee 65 
 Gea eG sis eee ee ee 61 
 Di aa ante 57 
 Oey he ec ee 52 
 Sunk eee ee ee 48 
 
THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 
 
 TABLE Il—Continued 
 
 SIGHT PREPARED 
 Pupil Score Pupil Score 
 Latin III 
 AR dba, bias aia poate 59 EL piste oule's)s evalu gate gr 
 a aie a nea sataals ss 59 12 oie ete ies gi a A cg QI 
 OR a Oreste ees 54 cde ae Nelle oe Papecelaks 82 
 Dita ie Bs hk lls ly s 50 IN aete G's 6 she'd 82 
 iy Sieg ng em te A 45 QE tev ukaaatde ies 82 
 LE i OP es a 40 Fett EN PRES CR SER, (a) 
 Ceo ee aes cane ues 4I Meee ty oe sls caters es 76 
 ae’ ease week Mah kes 36 Berne duis yatiet ei, 72 
 Ss pielehesate Ou ote le oes 36 SPUR oie alaca alates Y 72 
 A Fat cE Pe ete ge 32 ADA Unieiideles ah fog Wake) Wx 68 
 Ree aN EE Sse 32 Ls Yer pli nit 63 
 Da eur eis eave dice LO) 32 Wiis eee eA 50 
 IIB aie Pe cers 27 HES SPT ee ea taes 50 
 IN ee teats 8 hy gelato a 27 [OSE AUP RVAN A 50 
 CIS Pee ere etree oi eia 27 Eyl ee bees e Aa 
 Bi Pes Rees Bil ae 14 CIGAR RAB ae SPU OD ae 
 Latin IV 
 PRES ey ec aleiwie ks wits 92 US Ha oi ela eA ui 100 
 ee sa thos eke 81 DOCS ease cata 100 
 AGU ahey) Sire sbcuie isles 73 Po aivin death deletabn 100 
 Lee eno oes + fe Troe ae wens eeate 100 
 Ete shaeicisia se s'a,0 (sis ¢ 69 Deere seh ec ewesels are 06 
 1 ad is BN AOR Ar ee 65 Dieser Ne? 96 
 ERE A de 62 | Rs Pea ME 92 
 Flores Ce eee trate 58 Ee ier eas oe ate 02 
 Ce liikae terol ee 58 LO Rats hpiy eo ER rae: 
 JIA. ae ee 54 CO aS 85 
 Roisin cc see I 46 Ce isa bikin etei als 83 
 ita eRe ir nie eye 46 4 PicNeceuel suena aenulie head 81 
 DL yA wan cape os teenies 46 Dee ce en os a eatas 8r 
 DD GLAS iditenaterenes 35 OT ap atanie e 81 
 2. Ee, ar re ae 27 Wart Re adres dora 69 
 Doe er ce eetete ee 19 (Anbar iatih Rie 4 os Rag aah 65 
 
 53 
 
 vincing characteristics of A and M. Of course, as might be ex- 
 pected, the scores of the others show a gradation with respect to 
 the power being tested, but what of the scores of E, F, K, N, P, 
 
54 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 R,S, and T? Some of the latter, notably E, N, and K, are con- 
 spicuously good lesson-learners, and some are poor lesson-learn- 
 ers, especially R, S, and T; but in none of them is there evidence 
 of any considerable transfer. In the cases of two pupils, or 10 
 per cent of the class, we seem to get evidence that daily perform- 
 ance is resulting in real learning in a sense in which it is not 
 true of any others. In the cases of eight pupils, or 40 per cent 
 of the group, there is clearly little or no gain in power. 
 
 Turning to the scores for Latin III, which was a Cicero 
 course, we note at once that the absolute ability to interpret 
 Ciceronian discourse is nowhere as great as the ability shown by 
 A, B, and C in the previous case to manage the writing of Julius 
 Caesar. Nevertheless, we find that B, E, I, and K (Latin IIT), 
 or 25 per cent of the group, are within the five-point range in their 
 scores on the two tests while H, O, and P, or 19 per cent, are con- 
 spicuous lesson-learners who show ability to perform the daily 
 task out of all proportion to their actual learning. 
 
 In the scores for Latin IV, we find no such clear evidence of 
 superior learning from daily performance, but the scores of A, 
 B, and C plainly show a learning situation which is very differ- 
 ent from that which is shown by the scores of H, I, and O. 
 
 In the light of our discussion of the revelations of the scores 
 in Latin II, III, and IV, we discover a very different result in 
 Latin I (the beginners-book class). Here we find that the scores 
 of L (Latin I) are the only ones which suggest a considerable 
 development of the lesson-learning attitude, and we encounter 
 the curious phenomenon of three cases, those of A, B, and I, in 
 which the prepared lesson score is actually lower than the sight 
 test score. What was there in the circumstances which might 
 suggest an explanation of the marked difference in the bearing 
 between the results of Latin I and those of the other courses? 
 
 First of all, it is probably true that these pupils, being new 
 to the school, had not become good lesson-learners. In the 
 phraseology of the teacher, they had not “learned how to 
 study,” and there seems to be some reason to think that they 
 
THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 55 
 
 were happy in their ignorance. This may account for the sur- 
 prising circumstance of the relatively low scores on the prepared 
 lesson. 
 
 It is also true that they had experienced a much larger meas- 
 ure of direct teaching than had the other pupils. The technique 
 of the classroom in Latin was at that tirne in process of being 
 assimilated to the procedure which had been found effective in 
 French and which is described at length in our discussion of the 
 language-arts type of teaching. 
 
 Further, the whole routine of lesson-learning, for there was 
 still a great deal of this aspect of teaching to the fore, was very 
 specific in its purpose, and it was directed toward the units of 
 real learning contemplated by the course. That is to say, if the 
 use of the ablative absolute was to be learned, the textbook ma- 
 terial centered around the ablative absolute; if the purpose 
 clause with ut was to be learned, lesson-learning centered about 
 that usage, and so on. Accordingly, it was possible to center 
 teaching material much more closely upon the specific learning 
 which was supposed to be acquired. 
 
 Since the study which has thus been described was made, I 
 have been curious to find out in factual terms whether similar 
 effects could be found in other schools. With the help of my stu- 
 dents, I have been able to collect a considerable variety of simi- 
 lar material, in foreign language, mathematics, science, and 
 spelling in the elementary school. Sometimes the tests applied 
 have been of the type suggested here. Sometimes, in both science 
 and mathematics, the procedure has been to compare perform- 
 ance on exercise material with performance on the interpreta- 
 tion of simple situations to which the exercises were supposed to 
 apply. In a somewhat extended spelling study, comparison was 
 drawn between performance on spelling lessons and perform- 
 ance with the same words used in free written papers. Always 
 the same sort of result appears. In one study the number of pu- 
 pils showing high transfer from lesson-learning to the thing to 
 be learned was as high as so per cent of the group tested. In 
 
56 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 most studies the number of high transfer cases ran from perhaps 
 I5 per cent to 25 per cent of the groups. In every study, there 
 appeared some instances of very low scores on the learning test 
 united with very high scores on the lesson test. The differences 
 shown in the study touching the percentage of high transfer are 
 probably in the main due to differences in the teaching. Some 
 teaching had a large element of direct teaching of the unit learn- 
 ings themselves, while other teaching depended upon lesson- 
 hearing to a relatively greater degree. 
 
 We now turn to a type of evidence which approaches the 
 problem from a different angle. 
 
 In connection with the laboratory investigation before cited, 
 scores on an achievement reading test in French, of the same 
 type which was used in Latin, were compared with the semester 
 grades in the same course. The semester grades were the aver- 
 age of the teacher’s estimates of daily performance heavily 
 weighted and combined with performance on a semester exami- 
 nation. The comparison is exhibited in Table III. 
 
 Now the semester grades represented at that time the 
 school’s appraisal of the value of the pupils’ learning, while the 
 test scores are some index of the pupils’ achievement of the real 
 learning product. Let us examine the exhibit. 
 
 We see at once that the school was probably putting a 
 roughly correct appraisal on the learning of A, C, E, I, K, M, O, 
 and S, or 40 per cent of the class. On the other hand, it was put- 
 ting a grossly wrong interpretation on the learning of B, D, F, 
 G, P, R, and T, or 35 per cent. D and G, who exhibited accept- 
 able evidence of actual learning, were barely achieving the pass- 
 ing grade of 65. B, who showed evidence of a high grade of ac- 
 tual learning, was unable to satisfy the teacher that his perform- 
 ance was more than mediocre. T, P, and R, who were being 
 “honored” by the school, presented evidence of only the vaguest 
 sort of partial learning. 
 
 It may be objected that the comparison thus instituted ig- 
 nores the fact that there was much grammar represented in the 
 
THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 57 
 
 semester grades. Whether or not a test which would have com- 
 pared learning in grammar with lesson performance in grammar 
 would have shown essentially different results we leave to the 
 reader’s judgment. The issue, however, is immaterial. The true 
 
 TABLE III 
 
 COMPARISON OF ACHIEVEMENT TEST SCORES WITH 
 SEMESTER GRADES 
 
 
 
 Pupil | Sight Pupil | iene 
 French II 
 POW als sO ER vee els 100 Aa e areas ees 100 
 To eS Nau Saale aiecors 97 Pigeti given k tae bay, 97 
 Soe enateiels ele 8 es ain sats 97 fae OC aay ange ai 97 
 Ly ae ake eae 0 Ale go RUA Coe a a oa go 
 DOMOMS sae ts die ate se go Oar eae bb Nbr aly 90 
 TT eign cey bible crm go Bee Blas gee atia.s 90 
 OR cip Role sis vate ney go BOP TIG talats wi citar aa 90 
 he tees We efecto ees 83 Rea vtec ame as 83 
 Meade wis ete em cetera ess ik 79 Eta s ae ace ue hare 79 
 eet ad billy Siler erairais 76 1 UE Da ee Seo age 76 
 ete eS al slaiain visit dae ao 76 A sania t Weck lai ants 76 
 TEU sia, Wee Gelb ls atelo's 72 Diereik laiaihote Cistersie ale 72 
 11 Sons ea aap nae dbl 69 eee areata a aia ees 69 
 NigMimasakicitewy 2c 69 ME cei ce Seley tee 69 
 Ry Meret ake Seles vids) 69 Gc aulays Wel sick e cams Uke 69 
 BAY Ves been DEES 66 Pretec Mee esas 69 
 Des eecesatet brcters 66 ene aieiieaecais wie 3 66 
 SPE S AA Ot MP OTIS a 66 LD ae AU ert ae 66 
 Sis Joisveih Gintetelonmatece tea 62 Cee avahe oie eee 66 
 PSS dys Cee eee en ee 48 UN Are eae hae whey, ira 62 
 
 learning product here is ability to read French. If grammar 
 helps toward the attainment of that ability, well and good. We 
 are testing ability to read, not erudition which may or may not 
 have contributed to the learning. 
 
 We might go on and fill this volume with evidence of this 
 sort. We have gone far enough to show that our analysis of the 
 reasonable expectations of the outcome of the daily lesson, 
 ground-to-be-covered, time-to-be-spent theory, is borne out by a 
 
58 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 substantial body of fact. The author apprehends little doubt in 
 the mind of the reader that indefinite exploration of the results 
 of the teaching theory which is under criticism would lead to es- 
 sentially the same induction which comes out of the limited body 
 of factual material which we have exhibited. We can see the 
 principles which are at work. It is important to contemplate 
 now those principles from the point of view set up by this 
 chapter. 
 
 There seem to be three rather clearly differentiated pupil- 
 learning types revealed by the study, and the differentiation 
 which we here suggest seems to be borne out by our unreported 
 laboratory case studies. The practicing teacher will, we think, 
 have little difficulty in verifying the types. 
 
 The first of these is the type which does well on daily per- 
 formance, and in the process attains the real learning units. 
 These pupils seem to attain the mastery level from their lesson- 
 learning. Let us designate them the “transfer type.” As a class, 
 they are adaptable individuals who can conform to almost any 
 sort of constraint. They are conspicuously dutiful. They are 
 often successful in after-life, in spite of the popular tradition 
 that class leaders do not succeed in practical situations. They 
 are the individuals to whom the school points with pride, and 
 likely enough they are the chief justification of the determinist 
 writers who conclude that only a small percentage of humanity 
 is really educable. They are the ones who justify our frequent 
 statements that out of the formalistic practice of teaching only 
 a few individuals actually learn, and these only casually and un- 
 systematically. It should be observed that pupils who belong to 
 this type do not necessarily stand high either in performance or 
 in learning. They sometimes learn lessons poorly but what they 
 learn appears as some part of a true learning product. The 
 reader will have no difficulty in identifying illustrations of the 
 type in the tables which have been exhibited in the foregoing 
 pages. 
 
 The contrasting type is a group who attain a wholly negligi- 
 
THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 59 
 
 ble amount of real learning but are able to make a very credit- 
 able daily performance. Let us designate them the “lesson- 
 learner type.” They frequently show marked ability in perform- 
 ance and consequently are quite as likely to be among those who 
 receive the highest approbation of the school as are individuals 
 who belong to the transfer type. They are doubtless the ones 
 who have justified the tradition that class leaders do not succeed 
 in after-life, for the world’s demand is for the real learning prod- 
 ucts and not for lesson-learning. 
 
 The third group is composed of those who accomplish little 
 or nothing in the daily lesson performance but who sometimes 
 surprise us by their mastery of the real learning product. B, D, 
 and G in Table III are illustrations. We can only conjecture 
 what the learning situation is with these people. They are fre- 
 quently catalogued by the teacher as either mental defectives or 
 as ne’er-do-wells of some sort. They assuredly never belong to 
 the first category, for the definition of mental defect excludes 
 them. To the second? Very likely in some cases. But there are 
 others. We not infrequently encounter a pupil in school or an 
 adult in after-life of whom we say, ‘‘You cannot tell this person 
 anything; he has to learn from experience.” To some pupils the 
 daily lesson apparently means little or nothing. It is not only un- 
 intelligible but irksome. They can learn but they either cannot 
 or will not learn that way. Let us call them tentatively “direct 
 learners” to distinguish them from the other two types. Occa- 
 sionally an individual has the trait to such a degree that it has 
 the appearance of a veritable malady. Two extreme cases are 
 cited in illustration; others might be added. 
 
 A certain problem case has exhibited the most eccentric 
 combination of indubitably superior learning and of perform- 
 ance which sometimes seems like that of a moron. At times he 
 apparently cannot read at all, and at others he reads successfully 
 rather difficult scientific material. He has been measured, diag- 
 nosed, corrected, remedied—all with apparently little effect. 
 Asked to write a composition on a set subject, he turns in a mass 
 
60 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 of gibberish. At almost the same time, asked to describe in writ- 
 ing an occurrence which he has already graphically described in 
 words, he turns in a composition fully up to his grade level. The 
 I.Q. is somewhat above normal. The pupil is healthy and is nor- 
 mal in his social reactions. He is perhaps simply an extreme 
 type of the direct learner. He apparently lives so close to the 
 world of reality that he not only resents the artificial school ex- 
 ercise but can find no meaning in it whatsoever. The school 
 exercise probably means as little to the expert lesson-learner as to 
 him, but the lesson-learner can adjust himself with entire readi- 
 ness to this artificial thing—he requires no meaning—but our 
 problem cannot so adjust himself. In a school in which direct 
 teaching has become almost universal the latter has ceased to 
 be a problem. 
 
 The second case is that of a pedagogical problem which has 
 had time to come to full maturity and demonstrate success in 
 life. In the high school, this pupil was practically a non-learner 
 under the daily-lesson procedure. He came to be four years re- 
 tarded and left school. And yet he has lived a conspicuously suc- 
 cessful life in the very lines in which the high school was sup- 
 posed to contribute. An utter failure in the school sciences, he 
 became an inventor of mechanical devices of the highest order. 
 Hopelessly inept in the algebra and geometry of the schoolroom, 
 he came to spend his days in the realm of higher mathematics. 
 Like the first case, his was apparently an instance of the extreme 
 direct-learner type, so extreme that he could learn nothing at all 
 from lessons. The long list of eminent men who were once school 
 failures, cited by Swift in Mind in the Making, may, some of 
 them, very well have been of this type. 
 
 Can we doubt that the majority of pupils who learn only 
 vaguely and uncertainly from the daily lesson are instances of 
 the direct-learning type at various stages of adaptability? Can 
 we doubt that both the transfer-type pupils and the lesson- 
 learners are direct learners who are possessed of maximum 
 
THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 61 
 
 adaptability and who adapt themselves, in the one instance well 
 but uneconomically, and in the other perversely? 
 
 It is not unreasonable to suppose that the direct-learner 
 type is the chief contributor to those school failures who succeed 
 well in after-life and whose success is viewed by the public as a 
 reproach to the school. 
 
 Altogether, we may conclude that the normal product of 
 practice in lesson-learning is improvement in ability to get les- 
 sons, and that lesson performance transfers to learning in the 
 real units only casually and in a minority of instances. 
 
 What is to be done about it? In the main, this whole volume 
 is an attempt to answer the question in terms of the specific pro- 
 cedure called for. Let us generalize our answer in the precept, 
 abandon the lesson-learning and lesson-hearing theory of teach- 
 ing, with its implications of ground-to-be-covered and passing 
 grades, and substitute therefor the direct teaching of the real 
 learning products, with tests applied to the identification of 
 specific adaptations in the pupil and used primarily as bases of 
 correction in pedagogical treatment rather than as bases of cred- 
 iting the pupil with performance accomplished. An illustration 
 of the application of the answer and of the normal result of di- 
 rect teaching can be seen in the exhibit with which we bring the 
 argument to a close. 
 
 It will be recalled that the exhibit which we first studied was 
 that of a laboratory course in Latin II. The data were derived 
 from a series of tests run in the winter of 1920. Shortly after- 
 ward, the teaching procedure was modified, in general conform- 
 ity with the principles set forth later in our chapters on lan- 
 guage-arts teaching. Home assignments, and even out-of-class 
 assignments, were given up almost entirely. The classroom be- 
 came a place of study and no daily recitations whatever were 
 held. Study became purely practice in sight reading with such 
 comments on syntactical usage as were needful. Table IV ex- 
 hibits the results in terms of the same testing which was before 
 used. The data are from a test run January 6, 1922, and they 
 
62 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 may be found in the bound work reports of the laboratory on file 
 in the archives of the School of Education in the University of 
 Chicago. 
 
 TABLE IV 
 
 EXHIBIT OF ABILITY AND LESSON SCORES, 
 Latin II, 1922 
 
 
 
 Achieve- ; ten 
 
 Pupil | en Pupil Test, 
 
 Pua xtines Coe Shon 100 a err eer ee 100 
 Bia aaeaigen seni s 100 | eS pie ay Meal 100 
 Gee SHEL ERE A, 97 OR eh erg yay en es 100 
 Des ate Pat tones atte 93 | PER Oe ao" SRO 100 
 By sya sikie ate Bi. g heck 93 OS oie bic! Seametwca Scatpbonaye 97 
 Be so pre Sa etoile eetona 93 The sd int ia Roe este 97 
 Gy eee es go BA LO ob ae 93 
 | = Beep gee ee i go 1 OSU et er Ge: 93 
 Lies ke... pee ames 87 Wns, vids wa beeen 93 
 Joy Ses tet momineets 87 Cy ak RR PE ie godlesey 93 
 ) soe Arey Lay 2: 87 Oe old SAL eee 93 
 1 PIAA WGA dy 8 Hop 87 Ki cok ues tebe niue abcde 93 
 MGS aa ce ee ee 83 Siics Cyan ot teins oe 93 
 Nils he FS sv a Ps 80 Ly Ree aa wee re go 
 CCN etn ex oe creates 80 EE Wek Seem tas be ae go 
 | PPR GE Sif PRY 1) Sel 80 "JE AIR Spee 90 
 Ol tio wees ree alee 77 i ca k os «cs heen go 
 Rico eae ear: a 1 re a. 90 
 Siar Taare Ae 73 OR vais odeta vee 90 
 TD sine Sate ere ere 67 oh eee 4 dice 5 eee 80 
 [OS Say sek ae 63 Vin Ub thle ee eee 80 
 V. dite Goceatcce stein ees 63 Us Se se esis ae 73 
 Wiig cae hate 60 Wie ect nae 57 
 
 Comparing the results of this test with the results of the 
 same kind of test which was run in 1920 (see Table II), before 
 the adoption of a direct teaching technique, we note in the first 
 place that we have a range, in the achievement test of 1922, of 
 60-100, while in 1920 the range was 9-96. The median pupil of 
 1922 scored 87 and the median pupil of 1920 scored 39. It is of 
 course conceivable that the second class group was of better 
 
THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 63 
 
 ability than the first, or that the second teacher was a better 
 practical technician than the first. There are no precise stand- 
 ards by which we can settle the question. We know the pupils, 
 however, and we know that both classes were composed of the 
 typical constituency of the Latin curriculum in this particular 
 school. We know the teachers, and we know that as technicians 
 they were about on a par in terms of their ability to hold classes 
 as measured by group-attention scores (see Part II). Such dif- 
 ference as there was is in favor of the first teacher. The out- 
 standing and conspicuous variable was the technique theory ap- 
 plied. 
 
 On the first test, the scores of two pupils were within a range 
 of five points on achievement and lesson, respectively. On the 
 second, Pupils A, B, C, D, F, H, J, L, and W are within a range 
 of five points. On the first test, no pupil scores higher on aehieve- 
 ment than on the lesson; on the second test, D and W show this 
 characteristic. On the first test, two pupils or ro per cent show 
 that they are little if at all dependent on lesson-learning; on the 
 second test, nine pupils, or 39 per cent, show direct learning to 
 this extent. 
 
 On the first comparison, the two pupils whose scores are 
 within a range of five points are the only ones whose scores are 
 within a range of ten points. On the second comparison, in ad- 
 dition to the pupils just enumerated, the scores of E, G, I, K, M, 
 and U are within the ten-point range. On the first test, ro per 
 cent of the pupils are within this measure of non-dependability 
 on lessons; on the second, 65 per cent. 
 
 On the first test, 70 per cent of the pupils are outside the 
 range of twenty points’ difference. On the second test, none are 
 in that class. 
 
 Evidently the use of a technique calculated to develop di- 
 rect learning of the true learning product has gone far. The 
 process is not complete, but there are no cases left of extreme 
 dependability upon lessons. 
 
 The method which was thus used in the investigation of the 
 
64 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 problem of lesson-learning can evidently be used as a working 
 part of the teacher’s technical procedure. From time to time, 
 any teacher in any subject can devise tests of achievement, and, 
 by comparing the results with those obtained from the use of the 
 same test material as a lesson, can detect the lesson-learners and 
 apply corrective treatment. 
 
 The lesson-learning attitude once established in pupils be- 
 comes one of the most baffling of all the elements of problem 
 case work in later years. It is often so definite and characteristic 
 that if we nickname it the ‘“what-do-I-do-next attitude” or the 
 “that’s-what-it-says-in-the-book attitude,” we shall not go far 
 wrong. It appears in those who must work under directions 
 when the operator returns to his supervisor with the verdict, “TI 
 have done just what you told me and it does not work,” never 
 dreaming that directions or suggestions can seldom be anything 
 more than helps which enable a human personality to react suc- 
 cessfully upon his own task. Its prevalence in the world is indi- 
 cated by the highly profitable returns from “‘fool-proof” devices. 
 
 We cannot bring this chapter to a close without venturing a 
 suggestion of what lesson-learning may have meant to the social 
 controls. We see plainly that perhaps the majority have prob- 
 ably never acquired more than the vague beginnings of learning, 
 not enough to modify in any important way either their atti- 
 tudes toward the world or their behavior in society. A formid- 
 able proportion have acquired only the sheerest of pretensions. 
 It is only too obvious that multitudes about us pursue lives 
 which are tolerable only because social institutions hold them in 
 restraint. At times, economic revolutions, or catastrophes such 
 as the American Civil War or the world-war of 1914-18, re- 
 lax the social controls. Large numbers of people then revert to 
 the control of their actual instead of their spurious adaptations. 
 Orgies of corruption, license, and perhaps crime become serious 
 social phenomena. Writing of an older social life, a pagan poet 
 and the greatest of the apostles alike gave expression to a tragic 
 
THE PRODUCT OF LESSON-LEARNING 65 
 
 thought. We see the better course and acknowledge that it is 
 the better; we follow the worse. In other words, our vision of 
 truth is but a lesson learned. It is difficult to be too confident of 
 the regenerative power of education in the complex of human 
 affairs, if only the schoolmaster can learn to identify and impart 
 the true learning products, in the place of the daily routine of 
 lessons conned and performance scored. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 APPRAISAL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 
 
 have in the preceding chapters distinguished be- 
 WV tween the real learning products and the procedure 
 which is assumed to generate those products. We 
 have used the term “mastery” to define the actual acquisition of 
 the learning products by the pupil. We have surveyed, both on 
 theoretical and on factual grounds, the outcome of the lesson- 
 learning process in terms of real learning. We have seen that the 
 assumption that the educative process is a matter of graduated 
 stages, of ground-to-be-covered, and of performance to be meas- 
 ured leads logically and inevitably to methods of evaluating 
 pupil progress in which only casual account is taken of the legit- 
 imate products of learning, and in which education is and must 
 be constantly confused with procedure. We now invite the read- 
 er, first, to a further critical study of formalism in its relations 
 to the school’s appraisal of the pupil’s progress in his education- 
 al development and the pupil’s understanding of the nature of 
 his own education; and, second, to a constructive analysis of a 
 more valid appraisal in terms of real learning. 
 
 The whole body of administrative stereotypes which, as we 
 have seen in chapter i, had its origin chiefly in uncritical accep- 
 tation of the three historically fundamental schools, led by natu- 
 ral evolutionary process to the evaluation of pupil progress in 
 terms of the years which were assumed to belong to the three 
 schools after they had become adjusted to one another in a se- 
 rial relation—first elementary, then high school, then college. 
 
 The eight grades of the elementary school seem to have fur- 
 nished a convenient starting-point. A child is assumed to have 
 acquired an elementary education when he has succeeded in at- 
 
 66 
 
APPRAISAL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 67 
 
 taining a passing grade on performance for eight successive 
 years. 
 
 In the early nineties of the last century the need of defining 
 a high school became apparent. Hitherto, pretty much anything 
 had been a high school which chose to call itself such. The au- 
 thor has encountered schools which were denominated high 
 schools on the naive ground that they were domiciled in the sec- 
 ond stories of buildings. Conversely, he has been officially ad- 
 vised by a state’s chief law officer that no school could be recog- 
 nized as a high school within the meaning of ancient statutes, 
 still unrepealed, unless it taught Latin and Greek. Manifestly, 
 the need of definitions had become acute. Now reputable high 
 schools and academies had very generally required four years 
 of study prior to the award of the school’s diploma. Here would 
 seem to be a sufficient ground of reckoning. Why not have four 
 grades in the high school on top of the eight grades of the ele- 
 mentary school? The solution did not turn out to be so simple. 
 Apart from some sentimental reasons, there was the practical 
 administrative plague of the elective system. How can you de- 
 fine a school as consisting of four years and nothing more, if not 
 all pupils pursue the same pathway through the school? Mani- 
 festly some method of establishing equivalency of performance 
 requirements satisfied must be found, if you were going to ad- 
 here to the performance standard at all. Hence there was 
 evolved a system of units, a unit being defined to be a single sub- 
 ject pursued for a year. Largely by process of agreement in 
 conference, the high school was standardized at approximately 
 fifteen such units. Colleges then began to plan their admission 
 requirements in terms of such units, but not all colleges required 
 the same number. 
 
 The history. of this stage in our institutional evolution in it- 
 self furnishes considerable evidence that performance of tasks 
 was the central consideration and indeed that the whole process 
 of education was viewed as analogous to industrial production. 
 For instance, many colleges for a long time refused to evaluate 
 
68 . THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 all units as mutually equivalent. The logic of the situation was 
 performance and not learning. That being the case, it was evi- 
 dent that some pupils would pursue the path of dalliance through 
 a sequence of courses none of which required undue exertion, 
 while the dutiful and the ambitious would follow the more ardu- 
 ous pathways. In the end, the diploma would not mean the same 
 thing or even equivalent things for any two students. Hence, an 
 elaborate system of weights was set up. In substance, the appli- 
 cant for admission to college was told, “If you took this course 
 which is only half as ‘hard’ as that, then you must supplement 
 the course which you elected in high school with another or 
 others, in order that your total performance may be on a parity 
 with that of your fellow who took the ‘hard’ course.” In the end, 
 however, great associations of colleges and secondary schools 
 settled the matter by agreement, and fifteen units became our 
 most commonly accepted standard of high-school education, 
 whatever individual colleges might set up as admission require- 
 ments. 
 
 It is unnecessary to trace the process through the college. 
 It was in all essentials the same as that which took place in the 
 high school. There was nothing in the situation to prevent the 
 college using the units plan of appraisal just as the high school 
 was doing. Instead, however, a similar but more intricate ma- 
 chinery was set up and semester hours or student majors became 
 the numerical system employed. The college, with entire con- 
 sistency, blocked up as many easy pathways as it could, just as 
 many colleges had refused to accept fifteen high-school units at 
 face value. The student must perform acceptably if he were to 
 stay in college. He must perform at a higher degree of accepta- 
 bility if he were to receive the Bachelor’s degree. Hence course 
 sequences were worked out and grade points, of one sort or an- 
 other, were superimposed upon the course grades. In the end, a 
 student is entitled to the college degree when he has performed 
 acceptably to the extent of eight grades, plus fifteen units, plus 
 approximately one hundred and twenty semester hours or thir- 
 
APPRAISAL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 69 
 
 ty-six majors. Hence the educational currency dear to the heart 
 of the registrar. That the term “currency” is not inaptly chosen 
 can be seen by anybody who cares to sit down with the average 
 high-school or college student, as the day of liquidation ap- 
 proaches, and contemplate the process of balancing the books. 
 Now, assuming for the sake of argument that every one of 
 the thirty or more teachers whom the student must have en- 
 countered has been efficient and conscientious and vigilant—and 
 that is more than we have any right to expect under any form of 
 procedure—is there any likelihood that he will have acquired 
 mastery of the real learning products contemplated by his va- 
 rious courses? The preceding chapter is a sufficient answer to 
 the question. Is there any likelihood that he has been educated? 
 There is no evidence that any theory of education, valid or non- 
 valid, has been in control of the process. At the end, we have 
 evidence that he has performed the set tasks acceptably, but no 
 evidence whatsoever that the tasks have operated to modify in 
 definite and significant ways the individual’s adaptation to his 
 environment. We might expect that the student would leave 
 school or college possessed of the idea that ‘‘schooling”’ and “‘ed- 
 ucation” are synonymous terms and that he would carry with 
 him such a conception and contribute the same to the popular 
 understanding of the nature of education. There is ample evi- 
 dence to be found in any higher institution, whether high school | 
 or college, that such is indeed the view prevailingly held by that 
 portion of the student body which gives any thought at all to the 
 ultimate meaning of the school experience. The view is well il- 
 lustrated by the reaction of a certain student to a college course 
 in English literature. This young man had done his work in the 
 course very well indeed, and was congratulated by an older 
 friend, who expressed the expectation that the course in question 
 would shape the reading of a lifetime. ‘‘Well,” rejoined the 
 youth, “it is over with anyway. I have the credit, and, thank 
 Heaven, I shall never have it to do again!” Again and again, do 
 we have occasion to contemplate the following situation. A 
 
me THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 group of students is comparing notes with reference to their 
 progress in a course or through the institution. This one has re- 
 cently received a B, and he announces that he can now “rest 
 up” since the grade assigned assures him an average grade of 
 C and C is all he needs in order to receive “credit” for the 
 course. Another has a worried look over his B for that puts him 
 in jeopardy with reference to the “honors” which he covets. Sel- 
 dom is the student found who dreams of education as a process 
 of growth within himself, of which none can deprive him and for 
 which he needs no “honor grades.” 
 
 The actual educational situation is not infrequently reflected 
 in the student code of ethics. In spite of the impending ven- 
 geance of the authorities and in spite of the honor system, crib- 
 bing and similar unethical performances go on. The offense is at 
 the worst venial, malum prohibitum but not malum in se. Like 
 the rest of us, the student is a good citizen in so far as he is in- 
 wardly convinced of the sinful nature of certain acts. For other 
 acts, his citizenship is strictly in proportion to the vigilance and 
 efficiency of the police force. In the school, he is surrounded by 
 unreality. All these marks and grades and credits are devices by 
 which the faculty constrains him in a pathway which he travels 
 only for the sake of a valuable unreality, namely, a high-school 
 diploma or a college degree. If he can outwit the faculty, it 
 logically follows that-he is efficient. If he is caught, why, he will 
 “take his medicine” like the good sport he is. There is nothing 
 in it which affects his personality wherein honor resides. 
 
 So much for the theory of appraisal itself and its immediate 
 educational implications. The theory once accepted and fol- 
 lowed inevitably leads to certain conclusions touching the mat- 
 ter of the content of the individual pupil’s schooling. If we once 
 accept premises which of necessity imply evaluation in terms of 
 performance rather than in terms of adaptations attained, and 
 which imply appraisal of performance in terms of a count of 
 credits, we are led to minimize the importance of what a pupil 
 shall learn. If we add to this theory of appraisal the determina- 
 
APPRAISAL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 77 
 
 tion of curriculum policy by the political weight of the several 
 groups in the faculty and in the constituency, we arrive at a re- 
 sult which is perhaps as far as possible from a scientific adjust- 
 ment of the content of the schooling to the requirements of any 
 valid theory of education. In practice, accordingly, it often hap- 
 pens that the program of a given student during four years of 
 high school is a weird mixture, almost wholly unrelated to the 
 fundamental learning products which must form the ground- 
 work of any successful adjustment of the individual to the world 
 in which he must live. A common pupil program for four years 
 of high school is: four units of lesson-learning English; four 
 units of Latin; three units of mathematics; three units of one 
 modern foreign language and two of another. Such a program is 
 common but not typical. It is typical for students destined to a 
 certain influential kind of undergraduate college and originating 
 in families whose own educational tradition is of that sort. Even 
 for the transfer type of student whom we have identified in the 
 preceding chapter, there are at best not more than two or three 
 units of the fundamental learning products which stand for ad- 
 justment to environment and these are all English literature. 
 There are three units of abstract thinking, of little consequence 
 apart from application in the sciences. The remainder is made 
 up of tool subjects entirely. Admittedly, this is an extreme case, 
 amply to be verified, however, out of the catalogues of various 
 colleges. Probably the most typical program would be one which 
 substitutes for the four units of Latin and for one unit of Eng- 
 lish in the preceding, two units of science, two units of history, 
 and a single unit chosen from a field of possibilities—household 
 aris, mechanical drawing, mechanic arts, economics, civics, and 
 possibly some of the commercial subjects. So completely is the 
 vital matter of content overlooked, in adherence to a lesson-per- 
 formance theory of teaching and of education, that a student 
 may readily pass through high school and subsequently through 
 college with little or no training in those subjects which alone 
 can provide him with an intelligent outlook on life. If the press 
 
72 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 occasionally furnishes us with an outbreak in which the incred- 
 ibly ignorant spots in the intellectual equipment of the college 
 graduate are exhibited, need we wonder? 
 
 Out of premises in which graded learning and credit for per- 
 formance are accepted as criteria of the educational growth of 
 the pupil arises a third aspect of appraisal which has important 
 implications. It may be denominated ‘“‘rank-in-class.” The the- 
 ory that the passing grade is translatable into an acceptable 
 evaluation of learning leads us into difficulties, for we have in 
 that case no measure other than the teacher’s judgment of per- 
 formance. What is acceptable performance and therefore en- 
 titled to the passing grade? If we are judging mastery of a unit 
 of learning, we have an absolute standard and we can examine 
 evidence touching the issue whether the pupil has the unit or has 
 it not. We may be mistaken in our judgment, but we are at least 
 judging in terms of a fixed basis of comparison. Not so with per- 
 formance judging; our only basis there is comparison of one 
 pupil’s performance with that of another. It ceases to be a ques- 
 tion of whether John and James have both learned, but rather a 
 question of which of the twain has learned the better, or rather 
 which has performed the better. In the end, the pupil body is 
 thus distributed in terms of relative merit of performance; one 
 end of the scale is honored and the other is cast into the pit. The 
 principle is overlooked that we have not a shred of evidence that 
 either end of the class has learned at all. 
 
 Thus arises the stereotype of rank-in-class and the doctrine 
 that a pupil’s education is to be judged, not by his actual devel- 
 opment, but by comparison of his deeds with those of his fel- 
 lows. Thus arises, too, the self-glorification of fond parents over 
 the competitive qualities of their offspring and the bitter disap- 
 pointment of others, not in their son’s failure to grow, but in his 
 failure to surpass the neighbor’s son. Thus arises the popular 
 conception of the highly educated man as the victor in a cultural 
 jungle. 
 
 Now rank is a method of social appraisal which we had fond- 
 
 ns 
 
APPRAISAL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 73 
 
 ly hoped that America had sloughed off, along with various other 
 childish practices which feudalism bequeathed to Europe. 
 Among people of common sense and breeding, it long ago gave 
 rise to the term “snobbery.” To be sure, nothing is more certain 
 than that people differ greatly among themselves, that some are 
 good and some less good and some worthless, that some are able 
 and competent and some are inept and inefficient. The genuine 
 democrat of the progressive races in all ages and lands, however, 
 has always recognized the principle that while you can judge a 
 man for what he is and what he does you cannot judge him by 
 assigning him a place in a graduated social scheme. It is further 
 true that in the conduct of human enterprises, it is essential that 
 some shall lead and direct while others follow, but a functional 
 organization such as this is a widely different thing from a hier- 
 archy of social status based on no functional values whatever. 
 There must be, for instance, a superintendent of schools, and he 
 should have large powers as such, but as soon as the superin- 
 tendent and his wife begin to feel that his position gives the fam- 
 ily a certain superior social status, the elements of decay become 
 established. The compensatory mechanism is a commonplace of 
 modern social psychology, and social rank is one of its evident 
 manifestations. The individual who is not sure of himself seeks 
 peace by asserting his superiority to somebody else. They who 
 have not found themselves are unhappy until they have estab- 
 lished the outward symptoms of complete superiority in their 
 own social group or small town. Hence they build pretentious 
 houses, adorn themselves with costly garments, and buy one 
 more automobile than anybody else owns. Less-advanced socie- 
 ties achieve approximate equilibrium through tables of prece- 
 dence. The footman is better than the stable boy, the butler bet- 
 ter than the footman, the marquis better than the earl, the king 
 better than everybody else. It is to be noted in passing that most 
 such societies are degradations from an original legitimate func- 
 tional organization. The nobles were originally civil and mili- 
 
74 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tary officers. The end of the road is caste, and caste is the 
 ultimate expression of unreality and stagnation. 
 
 The meat of the matter for our purposes is that rank is a 
 crude method of appraising the individual’s social status. If an 
 educational institution awards and sanctions rank, no matter 
 how laudable its intentions may be, it simply creates the situa- 
 tion which is appropriate to rank. The student body rapidly 
 takes on the characteristics which can be measured in that way 
 alone. Educational products themselves are lost to view. The 
 evidence is illustrated by the following. 
 
 A very common occurrence in school is a colloquy between 
 a typical mark-getter and rank-chaser and a pupil who has ac- 
 quired a genuine intellectual interest. The first contemplates the 
 pursuits of the second with uncomprehending amazement. 
 “Why do you do it?” he asks. “Oh,” replies the second, “I am 
 just interested, that is all.” “But,” carefully explains the other, 
 “don’t you understand that you will get no credit for it, it will 
 get you nowhere?” The second has acquired a real educational 
 product, the first has acquired nothing but a facility in outstrip- 
 ping some of his fellows in a scheme which the school itself has 
 set up. | 
 
 Appraisal by rank in class is therefore badly calculated to 
 identify and to measure the real educational product. Worse 
 than that, it seems to have an essentially anti-educational ten- 
 dency. Most of the envy, hatred, and malice of life, and much 
 of the unhappiness, arise out of the primitive inclination of men 
 and women to compare one another in terms of social status. 
 And yet the appraisal by rank which the school often sets up in 
 its classrooms must, in the nature of things, furnish the very 
 seed ground for the growth of these fundamental social vices. 
 In the place of inward satisfaction in growth attained, of which 
 the individual can be certain, it substitutes the restless ambition 
 to surpass one’s fellows. If the pupil succeeds, he has acquired 
 only a false outlook on life. If he fails, and all but one must fail 
 of complete satisfaction, his dissatisfaction is only too apt to dis- 
 
APPRAISAL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 70 
 
 charge itself in envy, suspicion, and ungenerous hatred.. True, 
 we can possibly secure the semblance of contentment by setting 
 up as an ideal what may be called “educational sportsmanship.” 
 But we shall be likely to succeed only in establishing a sup- 
 pressed discontent which will break out later in antisocial atti- 
 tudes and very possibly in abnormal behavior. We cannot build 
 a democracy, not to say a Christian civilization, on such an edu- 
 cational foundation. | 
 A VALID METHOD 
 
 We now turn to the other aspect of our problem and seek to 
 analyze the foundations of a valid method of appraising the real 
 learning products. For the complete working out of a theory of 
 educational testing in details we must beg the reader’s indul- 
 gence. That will have to wait for our discussion of “Operative 
 Technique,” as applied to the different types of teaching, found 
 in Part III. 
 
 We revert to our discussion of the learning units and their 
 manifestation in the pupil as genuine adaptations, as elements 
 in his whole outlook on life and in his conduct as an individual. 
 Any appropriate method of appraising pupil progress, then, 
 must rest on a count of the true learning products which the pu- 
 pil has attained and in which his mastery has been verified by 
 the best evidential means at our command. 
 
 Such being clearly the case, there is undoubtedly implied an 
 analysis of the whole process of general education into the learn- 
 ing units which are of necessity its content. Such an analysis 
 would carry us far beyond the scope of this volume. After all, 
 our discussion herein is concerned with teaching and not with 
 the curriculum. Nor is such an undertaking essential in the pres- 
 ent connection, for every school, up to and including the college, 
 has its own curriculum made up of a content which the school 
 conceives to be best fitted to the achievement of its purpose. 
 The present problem is to effectuate that curriculum in the 
 teaching procedure which is employed. A curriculum is nothing 
 more than so much paper until it is taught. 
 
76 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 At the beginning of the secondary period, the issue is sim- 
 ply, has the pupil the four major primary adaptations, not a 
 matter of how many grades has he been promoted and not a 
 question of how well he has done. If the teaching technique of 
 the primary school, including proper corrective and remedial 
 teaching, has been systematically and effectively focused on its 
 own proper objectives, the pupil will have the primary adapta- 
 tions, and all of them, or else he will have been positively identi- 
 fied as a probable mental deficient. 
 
 From the beginning of the secondary period to the end there- 
 of, every curriculum subject can be analyzed into its essential 
 unit learnings. We shall often have occasion to recur to this 
 aspect of the matter in detail. Doubtless in any particular 
 school the process will sometimes result in more or less recon- 
 struction of its curriculum. Pupil progress becomes then a mat- 
 ter of mastering the several units within the field of each curric- 
 ulum subject studied. He does not study geography or United 
 States history or French or algebra or English literature—he 
 masters the learning units within each of these fields. In some 
 fields there will be many units and in others, for instance the 
 reading course in a foreign language, but one unit. The subject 
 fields themselves cease to have any critical administrative mean- 
 ing; they become simply convenient descriptive terms. Progress 
 is appraised, not by a system of credits for courses, or even for 
 units, but simply by recording the learning units mastered, bear- 
 ing in mind that each unit stands, not only for significant knowl- 
 edge which must be acquired, as for instance the notion of gravi- 
 tation, but also for the inward change in attitude in the pupil 
 which can be tested and verified. 
 
 Education in the secondary period is concerned, however, 
 not only with the adaptations which arise out of the use of book 
 material but with others as well. 
 
 It is concerned with the physical development of the pupil, 
 and here progress is not in terms of the number of gymnasium or 
 health courses which he has had but with actual growth both in 
 
 ill “ i et ee ie 
 
APPRAISAL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 77 
 
 normal physical development and in the health attitudes he has 
 taken on. Gymnasium exercises and health talks may be the 
 means by which growth is stimulated and controlled, but they 
 are clearly not the growth itself. Here, again, analysis of the 
 teaching objectives gives us the unit learnings to be mastered. 
 Appraisal of progress consists in recording the achievement of 
 unit learnings or steps in normal development. 
 
 We are vitally concerned with the development of right con- 
 duct in the pupil, that is to say, with his volitional and ethical 
 evolution. Now here, as in the cases of physical development 
 and the adaptations which are acquired from the book courses, 
 it is perfectly possible to map out, at least to useful approxima- 
 tions, the major units in which the normal volitional and ethical 
 development consists. They are patent in our collections of case 
 histories, and the principal units are exhibited and discussed in 
 chapter xxi. Each of these steps in development is as capable 
 of observation and verification on evidential grounds as are the 
 unit learnings in algebra, or the development of taste in litera- 
 ture, or the maintenance of the normal height-weight ratio in 
 physical growth. The mastery notion applies. The pupil has 
 either passed into the normal altruistic attitude of early adoles- 
 cence or he has not. He has either come to practice willing 
 obedience to constituted authority or he has not. Again, ap- 
 praisal of progress consists in recording the unit adaptations 
 which the pupil has made and for which we have evidential tok- 
 ens. The contrasting method is an exhibit of traits in which dif- 
 ferent teachers rate the pupil on a fivefold distribution. In the 
 former, we are dealing with evidence of adaptation; in the lat- 
 ter, with estimates of performance. In one, we are identifying 
 steps in the pupil’s growth, which can be trusted to control his 
 unconstrained behavior in the world; in the other, with only per- 
 sonal views of the present situation. 
 
 Thus we can at any point between the end of the primary 
 period and the end of the secondary describe the pupil’s prog- 
 ress but we cannot define the extent of his education. We can 
 
78 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 list on a card the unit learnings which the school curriculum 
 implies and record the unit masteries in the case of a given pupil 
 for which we think we have evidence. We can then present the 
 card to the inquiring person as a description of present status 
 for such interpretation as the latter may think warranted in the 
 premises. There is doubtless always the temptation, which as- 
 sails the administrator and it may be the student of education, 
 with special force, to set up convenient levels within the secon- 
 dary period and to attempt thus to define educational progress. 
 To do so is to deceive one’s self, and we presently begin to think 
 again in terms of administrative and investigational stereotypes 
 instead of in terms of educational reality. Indeed, the reader 
 must be warned that in reading the present volume he will fre- 
 quently encounter such expressions as “elementary-school lev- 
 el,” “high-school level,” “junior high school” or “senior high 
 school” or “junior college level.” Such terms are used only as 
 convenient descriptive phrases chiefly for the purpose of relat- 
 ing our discussion to institutional arrangements with which we 
 are all familiar. Elementary education, or high-school educa- 
 tion, or college education are all, on our principles, merely col- 
 loquial terms. Primary education and secondary education we 
 can define. 
 
 In the analysis of appraisal of pupil progress, we thus come 
 to the end of the secondary period and to the end of general edu- 
 cation in the technical, formal sense of the term “education.” 
 Beyond that lie the university and the professional school. 
 
 When the pupil has mastered the various units of learning 
 which the school conceives to be the appropriate content of gen- 
 eral education, and when the evidence shows that he has reached 
 the point at which he can and will study without constraint, can 
 and will use the adaptations which he has made in school in the 
 intelligent formation of his opinions and in the conduct of life, 
 then the pupil has reached educational maturity and the end of 
 the secondary period. The school has a clear right to define him 
 as an educated man, within the terms of its own understanding 
 of the content of education. 
 
 a Sn = 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 OUTLINES OF AN APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE 
 
 : HE primary consideration, then, in any teaching enter- 
 prise, whether it be a book course or the development of 
 
 conduct or the care of the pupil’s physical well-being, is 
 the identification of the learning units. As we have seen, these 
 are likely to be hidden in the mass of assimilative material or 
 school exercises out of which they are supposed to emerge. The 
 unit is both the objective principle or art or value and the cor- 
 responding subjective transformation in the pupil which results 
 in a new attitude or special ability or skill. 
 
 The units having been identified, the next problem is the 
 technique of pedagogical attack. Here we apply what we shall 
 call the “mastery formula”: Pre-test, teach, test the result, 
 adapt procedure, teach and test again to the point of actual 
 learning. It will be noted that this is precisely the procedure 
 adopted by other practitioners who work in the field of organic 
 adaptations. The physician, for instance, who undertakes the 
 cure of a patient, first makes his diagnosis, then formulates and 
 applies a treatment, then tests the results of his treatment, modi- 
 fies treatment in accordance with his test results, and so on to 
 success or failure. Even if he fails, the physician is eager to 
 know why he failed. He does not merely dismiss the case with 
 the verdict, ‘Failed to recover,” or, in performance terminology, 
 “Failed to pass.” Again, the agriculturist in handling a crop 
 first analyzes the market and the soil which he has available, 
 formulates a procedure, applies his cultivation, tests growth, ap- 
 plies correctives, and so on to the harvest. The scientific teacher 
 compares with the agriculturist, the lesson-hearer with the peas- 
 ant farmer. We refrain from drawing the parallel in the case of 
 the physician. The most important difference between the teach- 
 
 79 
 
80 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 er and these other practitioners is to be found in the fact that 
 the latter enjoy the resources of well-developed sciences, while 
 the teacher’s science is still in its infancy. 
 
 There are few units, indeed, in the secondary school in the 
 approach to which the pre-test can wisely be omitted. It serves 
 two important purposes: first, it orients the teacher and gives 
 him ground for intelligent approach to the particular problem 
 before him; and, second, it tends to establish in the minds of the 
 pupils a connection between prospective learning and present at- 
 tainments. It may, in rare instances, disclose the fact that one or 
 more pupils may be excused from presence in class during the 
 study of the unit, on the ground that they have already acquired 
 the adaptation for which the unit stands. Now and then a pupil 
 may be found on the pre-test of the first unit, if there are several 
 units, who reveals evidence that he need not take the course at 
 all. This is likely to be the case in courses in English composi- 
 tion especially. 
 
 In practice, the orientation of the teacher is perhaps the 
 matter of most importance. Teachers are prone to take specific 
 preparation for a given unit or course for granted. It thus often 
 happens, that, while the section is in general ready for the unit, 
 there are details which, if left untaught, will create wasteful and 
 perhaps fatal inhibitions. This is particularly true of the tech- 
 nical vocabulary of a science. It is perhaps unnecessary to em- 
 phasize the principle that the result of the pre-test is no part of 
 the system of appraising pupil progress. Its office is purely to 
 throw light on the teaching process, and to include its results in 
 any average of marks, if such still exist, is of course pedagogical- 
 ly absurd. 
 
 With the teaching member of the mastery formula we have 
 little to do at this point. Part III in its entirety deals with that 
 factor. 
 
 Nor is there needed extended comment on the teaching test. 
 We shall have occasion to deal with the matter in detail later. 
 Suffice it to emphasize the principle that the results of the testing 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE 81 
 
 member of the mastery formula are purely for the purpose of 
 deciding: first, whether or not the teaching has in fact regis- 
 tered and the teacher can now go on to the next step or the next 
 unit; or, second, what modification or procedure is needed, as- 
 suming that the test discloses that the teaching has not fully 
 registered. The results are no part of the final appraisal of the 
 pupil’s progress. To include them would be as absurd as it 
 would be for the physician to submit an average of pulse, respi- 
 ration, blood count, urine content, as his final evaluation of the 
 extent of the patient’s recovery. In the case of both patient and 
 pupil, it is the final condition alone which is significant. The test 
 results may be way-marks as well as guides on the road to recov- 
 ery or to mastery, but they are not themselves any part oi re- 
 covery or of mastery. 
 
 When the result of the teaching discloses non-learning in the 
 class as a whole or in any significant number of pupils, there is 
 first indicated due study of the meaning of the test results. 
 Mere scoring a test will not suffice. Every set of such results is 
 a body of phenomena which arose in some sequence of cause and 
 effect. As such they have meaning, and the meaning can usually 
 be found by the teacher who is actuated and guided by scientific 
 motives. Putting the test results and the teacher’s recollection 
 of the teaching procedure together, there should emerge a hy- 
 pothesis touching the character and location of the fault in the 
 teaching. The teaching is then redirected and the element is re- 
 taught. Lest the term “teaching” should mislead the reader, we 
 note that reteaching may very well at certain stages take the 
 form of redirection of study. 
 
 Now, it is exceedingly important that the teacher give to the 
 results of teaching tests this serious study before reteaching. 
 The routinist falls into the error of testing, scoring the result, 
 and reteaching without surveying the ground. He may well re- 
 peat this process four or five times before he makes his point 
 register, with great waste of time, energy, and pupil interest, or 
 may fail altogether and hastily conclude that a great share of 
 
82 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the class are non-learners. Before reteaching at all, every effort 
 should be made to find out what the trouble is. We recount here 
 illustrations showing the kind of trouble which the test may dis- 
 close. 
 
 Perhaps the commonest cause of non-learning is poor atten- 
 tion. The teacher finds that his teaching did not ‘“‘get across” 
 and recalls that he paid little attention to the task of holding the 
 class. He was so interested that day in the subject matter that 
 he overlooked the pupils. Now, so sensitive is a class to the per- 
 sonality of the teacher, in certain aspects of technique, that even 
 a seat outside the line of the teacher’s gaze—in a front corner of 
 a square recitation-room, for instance—will sometimes make the 
 difference between learning and non-learning. The teacher can 
 then be very confident that, if he recalls poor control, he has at 
 least one probable reason for the poor results on the teaching 
 test. 
 
 It will sometimes happen that a teaching test shows that 
 nearly everybody got half of an explanation and that very few 
 got the other half. The author had such an experience not long 
 before these lines were written. On reconsidering, he found that 
 he had used in the second part of a lecture material which only a 
 part of the class were qualified to receive. In such cases the cor- 
 rection is obvious. 
 
 In subjects like the languages, in which learning arises out 
 of practice, the teaching test will frequently disclose as non- 
 learners individuals who either are slow reactors or require un- 
 usually long practice at a given level before the progress in 
 learning sets in. The corrective procedure here implies resec- 
 tioning the class after the slow learners have been positively 
 identified.. It by no means follows, of course, that this is the only 
 cause of non-learning in a language course. 
 
 Not infrequently, in subjects like grammar, mathematics, 
 and the sciences, the teacher ultimately finds that he is trying 
 to teach an uneconomical or even an impossible unit. Commonly 
 the unit is not extensive enough, or it may be a unit which cor- 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE 83 
 
 responds to no possible adaptation, in other words there is noth- 
 ing to understand. In a certain case the unit selected was a 
 somewhat narrow phase of indirect discourse. The test on both 
 teaching and successive reteachings showed a very unsatisfac- 
 tory state of learning. The unit itself was then expanded so as 
 to include a much wider body of principles. The reteaching now 
 cleared up the situation with all except a few pupils. Apparent- 
 ly the pupils could not understand until they could see the unit 
 as a whole, that is to say, the real unit. 
 
 It may transpire from the evidence of the tests that the 
 course itself is an impossible one. 
 
 The foregoing illustrations are of course merely typical of 
 what the teaching test may reveal and the appropriate correc- 
 tive procedure. 
 
 Such is direct teaching of the learning unit, or, on our prin- 
 ciples, teaching as distinguished from lesson-learning in any of 
 its forms. The essence of the matter is application of the mas- 
 tery formula, and the root of the latter is the teaching test and 
 reteaching. From the pupil’s point of view, the issue is, “I do 
 not catch the idea, please repeat”’; or, perhaps, ‘Tell me where- 
 in I am wrong, in order that I may correct myself.” 
 
 Two questions are now naturally suggested: How many 
 times should reteaching be done? For what proportion of pupil 
 failures on a teaching test should the whole section be retaught? 
 
 In general, reteaching should be done until mastery takes 
 place. There is a pedagogical problem to be solved, and it is the 
 teacher’s business to find the solution. The number of reteach- 
 ings required is a measure of the teacher’s professional equip- 
 ment and skill. Ordinarily, the teacher who is willing to study 
 the problem will find that the number of reteachings required 
 steadily diminishes as the course goes on. The teacher becomes 
 better adjusted to the class and the pupils become better stu- 
 dents. Nevertheless, the reteachings may keep tediously up, and 
 after a time the problem becomes critical. There is then indi- 
 cated a broader study of the whole situation. The teacher may 
 
84 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 well find it necessary to call into consultation one of his asso- 
 ciates and the supervisory help of the principal’s office. A fault 
 hitherto unnoticed by the teacher may be discovered. It may be 
 found that the course has been unwisely placed in the program 
 of study. It may be found that the class is, in fact, so heterogene- 
 ous that it cannot be taught as a single section—a situation, by 
 the way, which is almost certain to be encountered periodically 
 in the graded system under the lesson-learning and passing- 
 grade teaching procedure. Whatever is found should be found 
 as matter of fact on evidential grounds and not as matter of 
 mere guesswork. , 
 
 Theoretically and ideally, whenever a pupil has learned, he 
 should go on with his learning even though he be the only one in 
 the section to do so. Practically, it does not altogether work out 
 that way. Assuming that the section is reasonably homogeneous, 
 that the pre-test has been properly administered and followed 
 up, and that the teacher’s control of attention is adequate, the 
 early teaching in a course is apt to disclose something like the 
 following situation. On the teaching test, perhaps one-third of 
 the class shows evidence of learning. On the retest, another third 
 reaches mastery. On a second retest, all but two or three in a 
 class section of thirty respond. Now, shall the first third sub- 
 mit to reteaching twice and the second third once after they 
 have responded to the test? The teacher’s best judgment will 
 have to settle the matter, and we trust that subsequent chapters 
 will more and more give ground for judgment. When as large 
 a proportion as two-thirds fail to respond, it is worth while to 
 verify the learning of the first third by reteaching and retest, 
 and even a second round of reteaching. It not infrequently hap- 
 pens that some of those who responded on the first test do not 
 respond on the retest, but do respond on the second retest. 
 Either the first test was not conclusive as a test or they made 
 simply a fortunate response. Further, when the test gives room 
 for qualitative differences in the response itself, the response of 
 some of the last third is often better than that of the first third 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE = 85 
 
 on any of the tests. The fast learner is not always a sound 
 learner, nor is the slow learner always a poor learner. 
 
 The small remainder of the class are indicated for special 
 individual treatment. On the next unit, one or more of them may 
 pass out of this group and others may join it. Ordinarily, how- 
 ever, something like 5 to 10 per cent, it may be, will segregate 
 as non-learners and linger farther and farther behind the body 
 of the class group as a whole. These soon become registered as 
 “problem cases” and perhaps as “remedial cases.”’ They form 
 an important subject of discussion in Part IV. It is essential 
 to note here that they are positively identified as non-learners, 
 instead of being simply cast to one side as people who failed to 
 make a passing grade and futilely required to repeat the course. 
 The teacher knows that they are not learning, and forms a tenta- 
 tive hypothesis of the reason why they do not learn. They differ 
 from the “corrective cases” who are for a time in and out of the 
 lagging group but who eventually catch the stride and go on with 
 the group. Since we shall have occasion frequently to use the 
 terms which have been quoted, let us adopt them into our ter- 
 minology and find for each a definite meaning in the following 
 manner. 
 
 A problem case is a pupil who is so far from responding to 
 the routine instruction to which the class group as a whole re- 
 sponds that he requires special individual study and treatment. 
 
 The problem case is a corrective case when the difficulty is 
 not such as to make necessary segregation from the group. 
 
 The problem case is a remedial case when the difficulty does 
 not respond to corrective measures within the class group. In 
 such cases, the school must set up an organization for special 
 study and special remedial treatment. Such treatment may go 
 on within the school or it may be necessary to invoke outside 
 agencies. A common-enough cause of remedial cases is a history 
 of non-mastery in the earlier school life. The pupil does not 
 learn simply because he has not the ideas and the thinking meth- 
 ods which are essential to learning. For such the school sets up 
 
86 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 a group or groups for correcting this malady in the learning 
 process. In another case, the cause is identified as defective 
 vision or hearing. The pupil is sent to the appropriate specialist. 
 In a third case, the cause is found to be seriously defective nu- 
 trition, and it then may be necessary to find means for a long 
 course of medical treatment. Finally, careful working out of the 
 case and family history may disclose that the pupil is indeed a 
 mental defective, and in that case he is sent out of school al- 
 together. 
 
 A little reflection will make it clear that the number of prob- 
 lem cases will be reduced year by year in proportion as the the- 
 ory of teaching in the school system as a whole is successfully 
 reduced to a systematic basis, in the place of the lesson-hearing 
 routine. 
 
 What shall we do with the really superior student, the pupil 
 who has native gifts and he who through fortunate experience 
 has acquired proficiency in the art of study? Shall we keep him 
 waiting throughout the tedious process of reteaching? 
 
 In the first place, as we have seen, it often happens, espe- 
 clally in the lower levels of the secondary school, that the supe- 
 rior student greatly profits by reteaching. The superiority of 
 bright pupils is very apt to consist rather in mere intellectual 
 smartness than in solid qualities. Not infrequently what this 
 type of pupil most needs is the discipline of learning to ‘“‘sweat 
 out” thoroughly a piece of learning which his brightness enables 
 him to acquire rapidly but superficially. We have further seen 
 that when we apply the mastery formula the pupils who re- 
 spond to the teaching test are not invariably those who respond 
 to the first retest. 
 
 Again, even those who do not respond until the second retest 
 on an early unit are not infrequently those who eventually be- 
 come the superior students. In a systematic laboratory test of 
 pupil progress, day by day until fifty days had gone by, with no 
 corrective treatment, the most striking disclosures turned out to 
 be the extent to which the pupils shifted places in progress from 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE 87 
 
 day to day, the frequency with which the slow learner was a sure 
 learner, and the lack of correlation between the mental-bright- 
 ness scale and rate of learning.’ Finally, even rather obstinate 
 remedial cases are sometimes corrected and become identified 
 with the superior student group. 
 
 Nevertheless, certain pupils do develop superior study ca- 
 pacities as unmistakably as some of the problem cases become 
 identified as non-learners. 
 
 In some instances, we may very easily find that their supe- 
 riority consists mainly in the fact that they do not need the 
 course. They have already acquired all or nearly all of the adap- 
 tations which the course contemplates. They may be released 
 from class work, perhaps called to report independently on a 
 few elements still needed, and assigned to another course. The 
 following is a case in illustration. In a certain college, all Sopho- 
 mores were required to pursue elementary courses in physics 
 and chemistry. Because the majority of students were found to 
 have no adequate foundation for the courses, a class was treated 
 as it would properly be treated if no student had such prepara- 
 tion. It so happened that several students would be found each 
 year who in fact had all the learning which the courses contem- 
 plated and more. Naturally they at once became conspicuous 
 as superior students and in the routine of appraisal by rank in 
 class were credited with an element of superiority which they 
 did not possess. In terms of real learning products, their per- 
 sonalities were unfavorably affected in that they were given an 
 utterly false sense of their intellectual attainments, time was 
 wasted which should have been devoted to courses of which they 
 stood in great need, and to some extent the process of general 
 education was needlessly prolonged. 
 
 In some courses, particularly in language, in which the as- 
 similative experience is a series of exercises, the pupil may be 
 transferred to a more advanced section. 
 
 *See Beauchamp, Studies in Secondary Education, Vol. II, “Supplementary 
 Educational Monographs.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925. 
 
88 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 In the majority of cases, however, the supplementary proj- 
 ect is the most useful recourse. For each unit, an ample series of 
 such projects is kept before the class and each pupil is allowed 
 to select. Some may not select at all, and this has an important 
 significance. Some work at a single supplementary project dur- 
 ing a large part of the year. Some work out several such during 
 the year. Thus the superior pupil validates his superiority, not 
 by rank in class, but by the acquisition of additional masteries. 
 It is sometimes objected that this is not “fair” to the superior 
 pupil, since it requires him to do more than others do. The ob- 
 jection is of course purely an instance of the performance stereo- 
 type at work and the commercial view of education. If educa- 
 tion is a matter of contract between pupil and school in which 
 the pupil does certain work in consideration of credits and an 
 ultimate diploma which the school covenants to award, then the 
 objection holds. If education is conceived as a process of supe- 
 rior adjustment, then the supplementary project is a rare oppor- 
 tunity to the superior student, on the one hand, and evidence to 
 the teacher of growth toward intellectual self-dependence, on 
 the other. 
 
 Now, the whole theory of systematic teaching rests upon the 
 mastery formula and its application. It does not guarantee suc- 
 cess to all teachers nor to any teacher for all pupils; but it does 
 furnish a method by which such progress as is made can be real 
 progress, and it furnishes a method by which the individual pu- 
 pil can be duly given that consideration to which he is entitled 
 by a society which brought him into the world without his will 
 or wish. More than that even, it gives us a theory of teaching, 
 on the basis of which may be developed actual individual self- 
 dependence, in brief, citizens who are capable of thinking for 
 themselves in the place of citizens who merely assert the right to 
 think for themselves. 
 
 We must now turn to the types of teaching found in the 
 school. 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE 89 
 
 TYPES OF TEACHING 
 
 Most theories of teaching have been founded on the assump- 
 tion that all teaching is one, that a theory of technique can be 
 found which is equally applicable to all subjects found in the 
 school. In a sense this is true, for there are certain laws which 
 apply in one form or another to all forms of learning. Among 
 these are the principle of apperceptive approach, the principle 
 of motivation, the law of initial diffuse movements, the canon of 
 the concrete before the abstract. In the theory which we here 
 advocate, we make large use of the principle that all real learn- 
 ing, except the learning of skills, is in the form of adaptations in 
 the individual. Nevertheless, a workable theory of teaching 
 must take into account the fact that the psychology of the learn- 
 ing process, the nature of the essential objectives sought, and 
 consequently the teaching process itself, all differ in important 
 details as we go from one subject to another in the secondary 
 school. We can, however, group all the subjects taught in the 
 field of general education, and indeed in the field of vocational 
 education so long as it is at the secondary level, into five differ- 
 ent types, which characteristically differ among themselves in 
 the nature of their objectives and in the psychology of the learn- 
 ing process. 
 
 The first is that which we shall denominate the science 
 type. The objectives here are adaptations which are in form 
 understandings of principles or processes in the relation of cause 
 and effect. The method of learning is a process of reflection and 
 rationalization. The product is an intelligent attitude toward 
 some aspect of the environment or of a science. The schoolroom 
 subjects which in the main classify under this type are mathe- 
 matics; the grammars of both the vernacular and non-vernacu- 
 lar languages; the principles of ethics and logic; the physical, 
 biological, and social sciences, including history; the theory of 
 music and the other fine arts; such courses in household arts as 
 home management and home economics; such courses in com- 
 merce as transportation and commercial law; and, in short, 
 
go THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 courses in any field in which the learning units are primarily 
 understanding or rationalization. This type is one of the three 
 fundamental types in which adjustment in the form of new atti- 
 tudes takes place. 
 
 The second of the three fundamental types is what we shall 
 call the appreciation type. The learning units here are in the 
 form of adaptations in terms of which are valued those products 
 of civilization which are and have been contributed by the fine 
 arts, by religion, and by the best examples of moral behavior. 
 Within this field are also found those learnings which are ex- 
 pressed in attitudes toward conduct. The adaptations may im- 
 ply enjoyment or they may imply some form of suffering, but 
 they always imply willing devotion. Psychologically, the type is 
 concerned with the affective side of man’s nature. Now the ma- 
 terials with which this type has to deal and its products are 
 sometimes put to critical evaluation by process of rationaliza- 
 tion. Literature is critically studied for the purpose of discover- 
 ing what are the qualities which make it literature. Religious 
 beliefs are subjected to scientific study and doctrinal appraisal. 
 The standards of moral behavior are traced in their evolution- 
 ary developments and attempts are made to separate that which 
 is valuable from that which is worthless. As soon, however, as 
 it is deemed desirable to set up a course dealing with this aspect 
 of the subjects which belong to the appreciation type, that 
 course goes back under the science type. It can be taught under 
 the technique appropriate to the science type; it cannot be 
 taught under that which belongs to the appreciation type. 
 
 The third of the types out of which arise the fundamental 
 adjustments to environment we shall call the practical-arts 
 type. The objectives here are adaptations which lead to the 
 intelligent manipulation of appliances and molding of materials. 
 The learning process is specifically different from that required 
 by other types and therefore the type has its own specific opera- 
 tive technique. There are included here most shop courses in the 
 mechanical arts; such courses in household arts as cooking, 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE ox 
 
 sewing, and dressmaking; such courses as drawing, painting, 
 and the plastic arts. 
 
 Other courses which are ordinarily associated with these, 
 and for which the same school departments are ordinarily re- 
 sponsible, must be managed under other types, according as the 
 objectives and the learning process dictate. A course in applied 
 electricity, for instance, may be offered by the mechanic-arts 
 department. It must be taught according to the principles of the 
 science type. The household-arts department commonly offers 
 courses in home management and in home economics. If the 
 courses are to have a valid intellectual foundation they will need 
 to be taught according to science-type principles. On the other 
 hand, the same department offers courses in household art. 
 Here, the objective sought is in the form of aesthetic adaptation, 
 and the principles of the appreciation technique must be in- 
 voked. 
 
 On the other hand, the teacher of physics, chemistry, or 
 biology, especially at the upper levels of the secondary school, 
 has occasion to use the appropriate laboratory facilities. There 
 is implied the skilful manipulation of appliances. The labora- 
 tory aspect of these sciences frequently fails as a serviceable 
 part of the study process because the student has not the requi- 
 site manipulatory skill. The essential teaching process involved 
 in these sciences is that of the science type. Nevertheless, the 
 teacher who expects to make effective pedagogical use of the lab- 
 oratory must turn from time to time to practical-arts principles 
 in order to develop the capacity to use effectively the laboratory 
 apparatus. 
 
 Again, the teacher who has to do with the use of drawing. 
 clay-modeling, and the like, for the development of appreciation 
 of artistic values is chasing a pedagogical will-o’-the-wisp unless 
 he is content to utilize practical-arts principles for the develop- 
 ment of some skill in manipulation before expecting the aes- 
 thetic adaptations to arise. Learning to draw or to manipulate 
 color so that the result will express a certain mental content is 
 
92 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 one thing; the refinement of aesthetic judgment is quite another. 
 Conversely, at some of the higher levels, creative artistic per- 
 formance is undoubtedly a powerful experiential factor in the 
 development of the more refined aesthetic adaptations. 
 
 The types which have thus been enumerated and character- 
 ized are fundamental in the sense that out of them arise the 
 adaptations which make up the educative process. The form of 
 teaching which is of primary importance, however, is that which 
 we shall call the language-arts type—of primary importance 
 because out of it arise the adaptations through which access is 
 had to most of the materials of learning. It is the type through 
 which the use of spoken and written discourse is learned, but it 
 is far from being limited to the learning of language. In general, 
 it applies to the learning of any method of receiving or express- 
 ing thought or feeling in the form of continuous discourse. The 
 infant’s learning to talk is an example of language-arts learning. 
 Learning to read and write the vernacular are other examples. 
 Learning English composition, the use of foreign language, 
 stenography, are still others. The learning of musical expres- 
 sion, either through the medium of the voice or through that of 
 instrumentation, is also subject to the principles of the language- 
 arts type. The essence of the type is some form of running dis- 
 course. Thought and feeling are expressed in other ways, for 
 instance through scientific formulas, on the one hand, or through 
 the pictorial and plastic arts, on the other; but in these cases 
 there is no discourse element involved. 
 
 In this type as in the others, we find associated elements of 
 learning which do not conform to the type. In the learning of 
 languages, for instance, it is commonly necessary to learn the 
 grammatical structure as well as the discourse use, and the two 
 cannot be learned simultaneously, much less through the same 
 form of teaching or the same learning process. The discourse 
 use is a language-arts type; the grammar must be learned on 
 science-type principles. 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE 93 
 
 Similarly, in the discourse teaching itself, we frequently en- 
 counter situations in which a different type of teaching must 
 be summoned to our aid. In the teaching of a foreign language 
 such as French, for instance, the process of vocalization fre- 
 quently calls for use of the principles of the pure-practice type 
 discussed below. In teaching the use of some musical instru- 
 ments, the point is soon reached at which the pupil is obliged to 
 acquire certain neuro-muscular facilities which must also be 
 learned by pure practice. 
 
 There remains a field of learning, commonly found in the 
 secondary school, in which the objectives are in the form of au- 
 tomatic facility, and the learning process is pure repetition until 
 the adaptation sought becomes established. To this field we 
 apply the term, the pure-practice type. To be sure, all learn- 
 ing implies practice. In the science and appreciation types we 
 shall find long experiential practice with assimilative material. 
 In the practical-arts type, assimilative practice with appliances 
 and materials is essential. In the language-arts type, the learn- 
 ing process is little more than practice with discourse of one 
 form or another. In all of these, however, higher mental content 
 is involved. In the first three, reflection is of the essence of the 
 learning process, and, while reflection is more or less fatal to 
 the learning process in the language-arts learning, still it is the 
 expression of thought or feeling which is being learned. In pure 
 practice, however, there is no thought content whatever included 
 in the learning process itself, although the objective may, in 
 some cases, be the automatizing of certain products of learning 
 which are in themselves content in the mind. 
 
 We may distinguish three subtypes: 
 
 The first of these is that field in which a new special ability 
 is gained by pure practice. Typical of this field is the learning 
 of the primitive neuro-muscular adjustments, such as walking, 
 swimming, skating, and the like. In the secondary school, the 
 best illustrations are perhaps the training of the vocal organs 
 
94 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 for the purposes of foreign language and vocal music. Finger 
 exercises in musical instrumentation also conform to this sub- 
 type. 
 
 The second of the subtypes has for its objective the fixing 
 in mind of elements which are constant in character and which 
 require no adjustment to the content in which they are from 
 time to time found. Two times two is always four, anywhere in 
 the world in any possible content. M-a-n always spells “man,” 
 but the meaning of m-a-n differs materially according to the con- 
 text in which it is found. The spelling can be learned on pure- 
 practice principles; the meaning grows out of language-arts 
 learning. The outstanding illustrations of the subtype are of 
 course the tables in arithmetic and spelling. 
 
 The third subtype has for its objective the fixation of con- 
 venient formal elements which have been developed through an- 
 other type, usually the science or the practical arts. For in- 
 stance, the formula for distance traveled by a moving body un- 
 der constant acceleration will be an element in an adaptation 
 mastered under the science type, and it is worthless to the edu- 
 cated intelligence unless it has been so mastered. Ordinarily, 
 the formula will be recalled without great difficulty by anybody 
 who has once really learned the principles involved, but it is 
 desirable so to automatize such elements that they are recalled 
 without the intervention of the reflective process. Much the 
 same need exists in the case of well-worded rules, in mathemat- 
 ics and grammar especially. Here are again cases in which when 
 certain adaptations of the science or practical-arts types have 
 once been mastered, it is convenient in subsequent economical 
 learning to have verbal statements so automatized that the pre- 
 vious learning is made rapidly available. 
 
 Some of the older schools made good use of this third sub- 
 type and thereby sometimes contributed a certain efficiency to 
 the study processes which was of the greatest convenience. 
 They were very likely to neglect, however, to establish the fun- 
 
 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE = 95 
 
 damental adaptation for which the rule or formula stood and 
 thereby set up the type of learning popularly known as “par- 
 roting.” 
 
 The characteristic and most searching test of the pure-prac- 
 tice adaptation is ability to use the power to which it corre- 
 sponds while something else is focal in consciousness. For in- 
 stance, no pupil has acquired an effective use of the multiplica- 
 tion table unless he can use it correctly while thinking of the 
 conditions of the problem to the solution of which the table is in 
 part applied. Similarly, nobody can spell efficiently unless he 
 can use words subconsciously in their correct form. 
 
 It would be of little consequence to enumerate these differ- 
 ent types of teaching, if to do so were merely to set up a con- 
 venient form of classification. Such, however, is not the case. 
 Each type stands for a form of learning and consequently for a 
 form of teaching technique which is appropriate to the specific 
 objectives within the type and to no others. A language-arts 
 objective cannot be learned under the principles appropriate to 
 the science type. Nor can a science-type objective be acquired 
 under the principles of pure practice. 
 
 There is perhaps no single factor so commonly responsible 
 for non-mastery as persistent attempts to achieve a given learn- 
 ing product under the wrong type of technique. In many 
 schools, practically the only type employed is the science type. 
 That is to say, the attempt is made to reduce everything to terms 
 of understanding or rationalization. While the actual outcome 
 is greatly obscured by the lesson-learning theory of instruction, 
 the actual product, as far as there ever is an actual product at 
 all, is always only that which can be attained under the type of 
 teaching used. No better example can be found than the result 
 of attempting to teach discourse under the science type. The 
 outcome is understanding of language structure and ability to 
 decipher discourse but not ability to read. Similarly, the at- 
 tempt to develop appreciation of literary values under the sci- 
 ence type may lead to understanding of the conditions under 
 
96 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 which literature is produced, but it never results, except casual- 
 ly, in a taste for that kind of reading. 
 
 On the other hand, failure to note the significance of differ- 
 ence in types of learning and teaching very often leads to as- 
 sembling incongruous elements in the same course or sequence. 
 Perhaps our best illustration is in the field of English. In courses 
 or parts of courses offered by the English department, there are 
 at least four different types of teaching. Grammar is a science- 
 type subject. Literature belongs clearly to the appreciation 
 type. Composition is a language art, and spelling is most effec- 
 tively learned on pure-practice principles. Grammar is pedagog- 
 ically as different from literature as is algebra different from 
 sportsmanship. The fact that all these subjects are logically 
 classifiable as English is of little moment in comparison with 
 the fact that pedagogically they are of four different kindred. 
 Further, the teacher who is well adapted to instruction in gram- 
 mar is apt to be wholly unadapted to successful teaching in lit- 
 erature. As we shall have occasion to see later, composition as a 
 language-arts subject is most effectively taught as a medium of 
 expression in learning science-type subjects. Now, the effect of 
 herding all these subjects together without discrimination is, as 
 we have seen, to attempt to teach them all under the science 
 type. The result is non-mastery and waste. 
 
 Closely related to our consideration of the types of teaching, 
 is a needful consideration of the non-teachable material which 
 has found its way into the textbooks which have been con- 
 structed to meet the requirements of the ground-to-be-covered 
 or information theory of education. The material in question is 
 non-teachable because it bears no relation to the development of 
 understandings, appreciations, or abilities in the pupil. It does 
 not correspond to any adaptations as such, nor is it utilizable as 
 assimilative material. To coin an expression, it is mere ‘‘educa- 
 tional journalism.” 
 
 A standard text in chemistry much used in the secondary 
 school, both high school and college, after developing the funda- 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE 97 
 
 mental chemical principles, devotes nearly one-fourth of its 
 pages to a multitude of short paragraphs on various aspects of 
 metallurgy, the rare earths, etc. If the material were really 
 teachable, it would correspond to several advanced specialized 
 courses. As it is, there is no body of principles to be mastered, 
 and, if there were such, there is not assimilative material enough 
 to make the learning of the principles anything more than a 
 memoriter exercise. In contrast with this volume is a standard 
 text in physics. In a typical chapter, that on the unit ‘Induced 
 Currents” (the authors have, by the way, used here a teaching 
 unit and not merely a topic), something over one-half the con- 
 tent is devoted to description of the practical appliances which 
 illustrate the unit; but in every case the application of the unit 
 is traced. Hence, these pages become valuable assimilative ma- 
 terial. The student can utilize their content as experience out of 
 which the fundamental adaptation arises, and in so doing the 
 appliances themselves become a part of his final intellectual 
 equipment. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking example of non-teachable mate- 
 rial is to be found in the older texts in history. Nearly all of 
 them were made up of this sort of content from beginning to 
 end. They were chronicles of a meager sort but not histories. 
 They recorded events in chronological order of occurrence but 
 they failed utterly as a class to interpret the past as an intelli- 
 gible evolutionary process. There was nothing to be learned 
 because there was nothing to be understood. They were much 
 less valuable than a reasonably veracious and well-written his- 
 torical novel or drama because they never had the literary qual- 
 ity which creates a gripping interest and which makes the mere 
 story of the past useful for appreciation values. A typical text in 
 United States history, for instance, would narrate the long series 
 of events which together make up the topic “Discovery and 
 Colonization,” but it would utterly fail to depict discovery and 
 colonization as the intelligible outcome of economic, political, 
 and religious causation. The normal outcome would be a tedious 
 
98 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 and scrappy memorization of the accounts of insignificant voy- 
 ages and of equally meaningless futile attempts at colonization, 
 unintelligible and soon forgotten. Later in the book would ap- 
 pear a meager rehearsal of the campaigns of the Revolutionary 
 War, too meager to capture the attention as examples of heroic 
 devotion; the story of presidential administrations down to the 
 Civil War; then another excursion into the field of military 
 science; and, finally, an unintelligible newspaper account under 
 some such caption as “The Wonderful Progress Following the 
 War.” Such great epics as “The Critical Period,” ‘““The Indus- 
 trial Revolution,” “The Winning of the West,” “The Slavery 
 Issue,” and ‘‘Foreign Relations” were untouched save as the pu- 
 pil of rare intelligence might by chance see a meaning in the 
 succession of numbered short paragraphs with which his book 
 was filled. 
 
 The typical text in geography was almost if not quite as bad 
 in this respect as the history texts. 
 
 Still another illustration can be found in many of the Eng- 
 lish and non-vernacular grammars. The lengths to which the 
 logician who is devoted to the deductive method can go have 
 often been exhibited in accounts of the follies of the later medi- 
 eval Schoolmen. Much the same sort of thing is found in the 
 classifications which not very ancient writers of school texts in 
 English grammar have incorporated in their books. Such con- 
 ceptions as the “copulative” and “‘substantive” uses of the verb, 
 the ‘“‘objective” and “‘subjective” uses of the possessive case, 
 may serve the purposes of refined analysis of the structure of 
 the language, but they are not teachable in the secondary school 
 for the reason that they correspond to no adaptation in the pupil. 
 He cannot use them in criticizing his own use of the language, 
 as he can use, for instance, the principles of agreement between 
 the sentence subject and its verb. These non-teachable distinc- 
 tions can be memorized but not ordinarily learned. 
 
 The common denominator of all the non-teachable material 
 which we have thus far discussed is found in the principle that it 
 
 ————————— ee 
 
OUTLINES OF APPROPRIATE TECHNIQUE 99 
 
 either cannot be organized into units or is incapable of serving 
 as assimilative material for units which might be organized. 
 Much of it makes interesting reading, just as do the contents of 
 the library shelves or the columns of the daily newspaper or the 
 periodical magazine, but it does not require the intervention of 
 the teacher and the school. 
 
 In truth, the number of learning units in the complete ho- 
 rizon of the field of general education which require teaching is 
 surprisingly small, because the round of significant aspects of 
 the environment is, after all, itself small. The sum of human 
 knowledge on the other hand, is too vast for the comprehension 
 of any human being. The objective of teaching in the school is 
 not only adjustment but adaptability, not only putting the youth 
 in intelligent contact with the world as it is but providing him 
 with the cultural tools with which he can and will read the 
 changing face of life. It is pedagogical waste, therefore, to use 
 teaching time and curriculum space for the schooling of the pu- 
 pil in what he can learn by himself, and especially in what can 
 be learned but not taught. Still worse, it would seem to be edu- 
 cational failure outright to compromise and put the student in 
 but partial and lamely specialized contact with the world in 
 which he must live under the mistaken theory that education 
 and knowledge are synonymous terms. 
 
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 CONTROL TECHNIQUE 
 
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CHAPTER VII 
 ESTABLISHING THE LEARNING SITUATION 
 
 HE foundation of any systematic technique of teaching 
 must obviously be the establishment of a condition in 
 
 the class group, and in the attitudes of the individual 
 pupils who make up the group, in which the adaptations implied 
 by the objectives of teaching become possible—one in which 
 teaching can register. We shall call such a condition the learn- 
 ing situation. The major elements in the learning situation are 
 motivation and attention. The two elements seem to be mu- 
 tually related. There is not likely to arise a sustained attention, 
 apart from the establishment of motivation, and conversely no 
 real motivation is possible without the development of capacity 
 for voluntary attention to the subject matter of teaching and 
 study. 
 
 A long time ago, students of the educative process came to 
 recognize the principle that no real learning takes place apart 
 from that sense of value which is commonly called “interest.” 
 Interest, in the meaning which educators have always given to 
 the term, implies an emotional condition with which pleasure 
 may or may not be associated. It frequently arouses in the indi- 
 vidual willing devotion to toil and hardship and sometimes to 
 experiences which are in themselves the reverse of pleasurable. 
 The doctrine has often been perverted by teachers until it is 
 sometimes made to mean little more than amusement or enter- 
 tainment. The arousing of genuine interest is the polar opposite 
 of ‘making a subject interesting.” 
 
 The course which an individual’s learning will take when he 
 has been released from the constraint of the schoolroom will de- 
 pend upon the character and extent of his genuine interests. If 
 he has acquired no sustaining interests, the teaching to which he 
 
 103 
 
104 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 has been exposed will have failed in its principal objective. If 
 he has become educated in the process of schooling, the fact of 
 his education will be manifested in his willing pursuit of the in- 
 terests implied by the curriculum and the teaching of the school. 
 
 As applied to the mastery of the objectives of any given 
 course in the secondary school, the doctrine of interest requires 
 the establishment of what is called in current pedagogical ter- 
 minology ‘“‘motivation,” that is, a desire to learn. It further re- 
 quires that such motivation shall not only be sustained but shall 
 increase in intensity as the ‘learning process goes on. A pupil 
 studying under the influence of powerful motivation exhibits a 
 characteristic type of attention to which we shall apply the term 
 absorption. Attention is sustained over long periods with only 
 occasional and momentary intermissions. If the refined instru- 
 mentation of the psychologist could be used, we should doubt- 
 less find that even such attention as this is subject to pronounced 
 fluctuation, but, for all practical schoolroom purposes, it is suffi- 
 cient to note this evident absorption which is characteristic of 
 study under strong motivation. 
 
 Now, if all learning had its own initial appeal, motivation 
 would take care of itself. Much of the learning of the school is 
 indeed for many pupils what we may call “self-motivated,” and 
 it is no less learning for that reason. But many of the essential 
 elements of learning are not initially appealing to all pupils, and 
 perhaps some elements lack this quality entirely. It is conceiv- 
 able that the program of study might be so skilfully arranged 
 and teaching so aptly applied that all normal pupils would grow 
 from interest into interest and spend their school days in a de- 
 lightful career of self-motivated studies. Such an ideal school 
 would, however, be useless unless it were the introduction to a 
 self-motivated world. Quite the contrary, the world in which we 
 have to live and find our happiness is full of duties and opportu- 
 . nities which are far from initially interesting, and the individual 
 who has learned to react only to that which is self-motivated 
 becomes a flabby incompetent in the world of realities. 
 
ESTABLISHING THE LEARNING SITUATION 105 
 
 Hence, from an early period in school life, one of the major 
 obligations of the school is to train the pupil into the capacity 
 of voluntary application to learning which is not in itself initial- 
 ly interesting. A pupil so trained becomes capable of developing 
 interest, and consequently sustaining motivation, in most of the 
 learning which a well-ordered school system sets before him. 
 After a period, longer or shorter as the case may be, the remote 
 initial motivation founded only on a sense of duty and voluntary 
 application, in many cases but not all, becomes transformed into 
 real, immediate, and sustaining motivation as the subject mat- 
 ter has opportunity to yield its inherent interest. The youth 
 who has become convinced of this principle and has learned to 
 apply it has taken a fundamentally important step on the path- 
 way to volitional maturity. “In many cases but not all,” for not 
 all subject matter placed before the pupil and taught never so 
 skilfully and pursued by the pupil never so faithfully is capable 
 of arousing interest in itself. It may be wrongly placed in the 
 pupil’s program of studies, its interest may be incompatible with 
 existing interest, or there may be other inhibitions—some of 
 them removable and others not. The fair presumption for 
 teacher and pupil alike, however, is that the subject matter is 
 normal in this respect and capable of eventually setting up its 
 own motivation. The opposite attitude leads inevitably little by 
 little to educational self-indulgence and “soft pedagogy.” 
 
 Sustaining motivation arising out of genuine interest is a 
 very intimate relationship between subject matter and the learn- 
 er, and it is obviously the only form which can be depended 
 upon as an element of the ultimate learning products, namely, 
 abiding and general intellectual interest and educational self- 
 dependence. The school in its devotion to lesson-learning and 
 ground-to-be-covered not infrequently sets up spurious motiva- 
 tion, that is, motivation calculated to stimulate the pupil merely 
 in the direction of the successful performance of tasks. The il- 
 lustrations which will occur to the reader are the passing-grade 
 theory of administrative technique, rank-in-class founded upon 
 
106 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 artificial marks and grades, and various forms of prizes, honors, 
 and the like. Even the work of the teacher who has the clearest 
 educational insight and the best pedagogical skill is frequently 
 handicapped, if not negatived, by the spurious motivation set up 
 by the misdirected efforts of well-meaning but unwise parents 
 and administrative systems. No doubt such spurious motivation 
 occasionally gives rise to genuine and sustaining motivation. 
 Such is very probably the case with the transfer type which we 
 identified in our study of lesson-learning. Nevertheless, the 
 useful effect is at best casual, and in the majority of cases the 
 removal of the stimulus removes the motivation as well. 
 
 The development in the pupil of the capacity for willing sus- 
 tained application, founded only on the expectation that the 
 subject matter will ultimately yield a sustaining interest, is 
 therefore the foundation of any systematic technique of teach- 
 ing and learning. It is the starting-point of control technique. 
 
 Teaching is, however, as often group instruction as the over- 
 sight of individual study. Whenever the teacher has occasion to 
 present a unit to the class group, or to make an explanation, or 
 to conduct an effective group exercise such as is the foundation 
 of operative technique in language teaching, a situation arises 
 in which it is necessary to secure and hold the attention of the 
 group as a whole. Let us call this aspect of the learning situation 
 group attention. 
 
 Group attention is frequently ignored. Under the influence 
 of the daily task theory of teaching, the teacher’s mind is apt to 
 be fixed upon hearing individual recitations rather than upon 
 teaching. Not unnaturally, he overlooks the importance of se- 
 curing and holding the undivided attention of every member of 
 the group. The characteristic picture of such a situation is eager 
 attention on the part of a few pupils, occasional attention on the 
 part of a few others, and no attention at all on the part of a large 
 percentage of the class. Obviously, a large waste occurs, and 
 one which is normally related to the lesson-hearing technique. 
 When one has delivered the goods which were called for and has 
 
ESTABLISHING THE LEARNING SITUATION 107 
 
 become sensible that they are evidently what was called for, why 
 be concerned while others deliver their own? Observation of 
 concrete cases not infrequently discloses instances of failure to 
 control the group aspect of the learning situation which have 
 reached the logical extreme: a considerable number of the stu- 
 dents are reading newspapers. The theory of teaching being 
 what it is in such cases, it is entirely reasonable for students to 
 be so engaged. They are utilizing time which would otherwise 
 be wasted in keeping up with current events. 
 
 Of course teaching can register only with pupils who are 
 mentally attentive, not occasionally but continuously. Hence, 
 neglect of the group-attention aspect of the learning situation 
 means that group teaching has little or no effect. It registers 
 only casually, and its results are seen later in the form of chance 
 distribution. Obviously, mastery need not be looked for in the 
 class as a whole. Nor is it sufficient that the class have the ap- 
 pearance of attention. The pupils must be listening with their 
 minds as well as with their ears. Spurious group attention is 
 sometimes found in classes which are in control of the martinet 
 type of teacher. The situation is analogous to that of the indi- 
 vidual pupil who is under spurious motivation. . 
 
 The continuous attention which is the condition precedent 
 to effective group teaching we shall call sustained attention, and 
 we shall use the term sustained application to refer to the similar 
 attitude in the pupil during periods of study. 
 
 Now, while sustained application is in the main the pupil’s 
 own affair, sustained attention requires the mental participation 
 of both teacher and pupil. The pupil learns to apply himself to 
 the study in hand, with such help as he can get from the teacher, 
 or he fails so to learn. Sustained attention, on the other hand, 
 requires not only a willing and attentive pupil but an intelligible 
 and forceful teacher conscious of the necessity of keeping every 
 member of the class group within the reach of a compelling per- 
 sonality. Nevertheless, forceful and intelligible teaching is still 
 only one of the two factors at work. The other is volitional train- 
 
108 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ing of the pupil into the capacity of assimilative listening to the 
 spoken word just as in study he is trained into assimilative read- 
 ing of the written word. To this extent, the same principles apply 
 to the pupil’s sustained attention which apply to his sustained 
 application. To neglect this aspect of pupil training is again for 
 the teacher to allow himself to fall back on the precepts of soft 
 pedagogy and to secure group attention by merely making the 
 subject matter he presents “interesting.” The development of 
 capacity for sustained attention and sustained application is 
 obviously the practical foundation of training pupils in effective 
 study habits. 
 
 While good control technique with its ultimate effect upon 
 the volitional powers of the individual pupil is clearly the foun- 
 dation upon which all good study habits must be built, it is far 
 from being the whole story of training in study capacity, Each 
 type of teaching has its own type or types of related methods of 
 study, and consideration of the further aspects of the problem 
 must wait until we reach the chapters which deal with operative 
 technique. 
 
 May we turn now to some of the consequences of poor con- 
 trol technique and by implication to some of the advantages of 
 good control. 
 
 It is obvious, in the first place, that good control technique 
 and the elimination of waste are intimately related. Since learn- 
 ing is wholly dependent, other things being equal, on the charac- 
 ter and amount of attention secured, the amount of learning 
 possible in a given time tends to be directly proportional to the 
 degree of control technique secured in the course and in the 
 school. Conversely, if we establish actual mastery as the stand- 
 ard of attainment, the time required is in part a function of the 
 control technique. If, for example, a given school maintains a 
 consistent average of 50 per cent control as compared with an- 
 other which on the same basis of rating yields a consistent av- 
 erage of 75 per cent, plainly the second school should accom- 
 
 
 
ESTABLISHING THE LEARNING SITUATION 109 
 
 plish in two years that for which the first requires three years, 
 other things being equal. 
 
 The waste-in-time consideration is not important in schools 
 which are conducted on the time-to-be-spent theory. These 
 schools arbitrarily define education in terms of time-to-be-spent 
 —four years constitutes a high-school education, four years a 
 college education, and so on. There can be no waste in time, for 
 time is arbitrarily fixed for all. Waste is therefore expressible in 
 terms of humanity which fails to conform. In such schools, good 
 control technique means thrift in the use of human lives—a rela- 
 tively low percentage of failure. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we set up definite objectives of teach- 
 ing in the form of mastery of definite learning units, then the 
 matter of control technique comes to be of critical importance. 
 With a low degree of group attention and the pupils left indefi- 
 nitely without the trained capacity for sustained application, 
 mastery may well be indefinitely deferred. 
 
 The problem of administrative technique which perhaps 
 calls for more attention than any other in current practice is that 
 of the spread of the class group in learning rate. The determi- 
 nist accepts this as inevitable and founded on inherent differ- 
 ences in capacity to learn. He accordingly seeks to discover a 
 homogeneous group by dint of discovering, through tests of va- 
 rious kinds, individuals who are of approximately the same 
 inherent rate of learning. He achieves some success in putting 
 together individuals who are of the same type of conformity to 
 the technique in vogue, usually the daily-lesson procedure. That 
 individuals do differ in rate of learning in manifold ways is be- 
 yond question, but many of these differences are founded on 
 characteristics which are remediable. Conspicuous among these 
 latter are differences in sustained attention and sustained appli- 
 cation. The teacher who tolerates day after day a spread in at- 
 tention from perfect attention to no attention at all and who ac- 
 cepts a dawdling pupil with the fatalistic verdict, ‘““He cannot 
 concentrate,” must expect a spread in the class group which 
 
IIO THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 makes any effective teaching of the group as a whole well-nigh 
 impossible. A high grade of control technique, say 90 per cent 
 or over, as a matter of fact, other things being equal, greatly re- 
 duces the spread, and we can readily see why it is so. In the first 
 place, teaching registers with the whole class instead of only 
 with a part of the class; and in the second place, true motiva- 
 tion is much more likely to characterize the class as a whole than 
 the casual few individuals only. 
 
 Low control technique means that there will be a large 
 amount of half-learning in the class, much of which may escape 
 detection in the presence of any tests which can be given. A 
 certain type of pupil acquires remarkable facility in catching 
 enough of the drift of things, by occasional momentary periods 
 of attention, to present the appearance of mastery. Unless the 
 testing is especially acute and rigorous, the superficial character 
 of his learning escapes detection only to form a handicap in later 
 units and in later courses—a handicap to the school because he 
 
 will later require much reteaching and a handicap to him not 
 
 only in school but in later life because of the habits of superfi- 
 ciality which have become established. 
 
 In practice, under mastery teaching, poor control shows its 
 chief wasteful effect in the amount of reteaching required. The 
 brilliant half-learner may escape reteaching for the moment, but 
 the bulk of the class which has been only half-attentive or alto- 
 gether inattentive fails in the teaching test and very probably 
 after a second, third, or fourth teaching. The effect often is to 
 create the impression of inferior learning capacity when in real- 
 ity the ground of poor learning is to be found in poor control 
 technique. The inattention is traceable simply to unconcern on 
 the part of the.teacher whether his teaching reaches the whole 
 class or only those few individuals in the class in whom motiva- 
 tion has been casually established. On the other hand, there will 
 usually be certain pupils in the class who have not learned vol- 
 untary attention and who must be trained in that direction. 
 Even with the best possible efforts on the part of the teacher in 
 
ESTABLISHING THE LEARNING SITUATION 111 
 
 the direction of group control, these pupils escape. We shall 
 turn to this aspect of the situation in chapter ix. 
 
 An important corollary of all the foregoing is the principle 
 that his control technique is a good fundamental index of the 
 teacher’s capacity asa technician. However valuable may be 
 the material which the teacher has to present, he cannot make it 
 register with his pupils, and establish in them the learning prod- 
 ucts which he seeks, unless he can and will secure and hold their 
 sustained attention and, in the secondary school at least, de- 
 velop in them the capacity for sustained application. The 
 teacher’s control technique is as important as his operative tech- 
 nique. No teacher who assumes to approach his task in a con- 
 structive spirit, and who is to be credited with the educational 
 point of view, can dismiss the matter from his mind with the 
 trite comment, ‘“These pupils have failed because they are in- 
 attentive.” That is the lesson-hearer’s theory of teaching. He 
 can more correctly say, “These pupils have failed because I have 
 been unable as yet to develop in them the capacity of sustained 
 attention and sustained application.” 
 
 On the other hand, it should be noted that, while poor con- 
 trol technique always means poor teaching, good control tech- 
 nique does not necessarily mean good teaching. The material 
 itself may be unsuitable and even false. It may be wrongly 
 placed in the pupil’s program of study. The teacher’s operative 
 and administrative technique may either or both be such as to 
 lead to failure to make the teaching register in the learning prod- 
 ucts intended. Control technique is of primary importance but 
 not necessarily of chief or ultimate importance. 
 
 Lest the supervisory officer be misled by attracting his at- 
 tention to the use of control technique as a means of rating’ 
 teachers, a cautionary statement is not out of place. Any super- 
 vision which is worth the while is constructive supervision. A 
 supervisor who uses this or any other device for rating teachers 
 simply as a means of detecting and eliminating the inefficient is 
 adopting the lesson-hearing attitude in his relation to his teach- 
 
112 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ers which he should be endeavoring to root out in their relations 
 to the pupils. A supervisor who has not the educational point of 
 view is not likely to develop that attitude among his teachers. 
 Just as the sustained-application profile of the pupils described 
 in chapter ix is the first step in building up the pupils’ volitional 
 attitude toward their studying, so the group-attention analysis 
 and score described in chapter viii should be used primarily 
 for the purpose of attracting the attention of teachers concrete- 
 ly to the obvious need of good group control and for the purpose 
 of assisting them to improve-their practice. Any supervisor who 
 will analyze and score his teachers’ group control, and will then 
 discuss with them collectively and individually the bearing and 
 significance of the whole matter, will be gratified by the im- 
 provement which he will see taking place. Of course, a mature 
 person who fails to improve his teaching, in either this or any 
 other respect, on account of either inability or contumacy, 
 should be eliminated from the teaching force. Society cannot af- 
 ford the elimination of potentially good teachers, nor, on the 
 other hand, can it afford the retention of persistent “problem 
 cases”’ in the teaching force. 
 
 In tracing out elements of the learning situation which are 
 associated with training in voluntary attention, we have of 
 course, emphasized these elements, perhaps to the point at 
 which the reader may conclude that attention and the sustaining 
 motivation which grows out of it are the only elements. This is 
 far from being the case. While control technique is primarily 
 concerned with securing and building up attention, it should be 
 thought of. as applied to the learning situation as a whole. 
 Among other elements which are related to control of the learn- 
 ing situation rather than to the effects of good operative tech- 
 nique, the following may be enumerated. It will be noted that 
 they are chiefly the removal of inhibitions. 
 
 Of these, perhaps the first in importance is the reduction of 
 the mechanical detail of class conduct to the minimum. If we 
 score the group attention from the moment when the study or 
 
ESTABLISHING THE LEARNING SITUATION 113 
 
 the teaching period is supposed to begin to that at which it is 
 supposed to end, we frequently come upon cases in which con- 
 trol is nearly perfect during actual teaching or study time while 
 the final score is low owing to waste of time in taking attend- 
 ance, in entrance and dismissal of the class, and the like. It is 
 very easy to lose ten minutes out of every class period in this 
 way, and this loss may amount to anywhere from one-sixth to 
 one-third of the whole learning time available. 
 
 Control technique implies control of the physical conditions 
 under which learning goes on. Temperature and humidity will 
 often make the difference between a score which reflects atten- 
 tion of high quality and an equal score which is associated with 
 attention of poor quality. Similarly, street noises, disturbances 
 in corridors and adjacent rooms, and the like furnish the condi- 
 tions under which the good effects of good control are partially 
 or wholly lost. 
 
 It is of course a great mistake to think of good control tech- 
 nique as practically synonymous with the securing of good or- 
 der. We have seen that the martinet frequently succeeds merely 
 in securing spurious attention. Nevertheless, due respect for the 
 teacher, for the class, and for study is an esséntial element in the 
 establishment of the learning situation and a major problem of 
 effective control technique. Noisy, disorderly, insubordinate 
 conditions in the class represent the weeds and rank primitive 
 growth which must be extirpated before it is worth while to be- 
 gin the process of cultivation. In a thoroughly good school sys- 
 tem, this aspect of the learning situation is established in the 
 primary social adaptations. Even in such a system, however, the 
 influx of children from other communities is apt to make the pri- 
 mary education a matter of continuous concern. There are two 
 positions commonly held on this issue which must be met. 
 
 One is that of the slack teacher and demagogic school exec- 
 utive who talk plausibly of democracy and of the vice of re- 
 pressive measures. This attitude can usually be identified as 
 pure defense for inability or job-holding proclivities, and it is 
 
114 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 not entitled to serious argument. Suffice it to point out that it is 
 full of peril to real democracy in a period when there resort to 
 the secondary schools multitudes of children who are growing 
 up in the indolent homes of the unduly prosperous, or in immi- 
 grant homes in which the restraints of Europe have been relaxed 
 without replacement by the wholesome restraints of America. 
 
 The other position is in essence that children learn from ex- 
 perience and that self-government can never be achieved in any 
 fundamental and lasting sense except as children learn it for 
 themselves, apart from compulsion. The premise is undoubted- 
 ly sound, but the conclusions which are often drawn are falla- 
 cious. It is true that children who are merely kept in good order 
 by force of a dominating personality and an arbitrary school 
 government are likely to leave school with few wholesome learn- 
 ing products of a volitional sort established. It is, on the other 
 hand, probably true that if children were left to themselves to 
 do as they pleased in each generation, society would soon re- 
 vert to its primitive condition, since it would become impossible 
 to accumulate from generation to generation the appropriate so- 
 cial controls. Children and youth learn from experience, and 
 they are not likely to learn the blessings of good order unless 
 they can experience good order. Such experience comes normal- 
 ly out of rational obedience to the older generation. If the older 
 generation, whether parent or teacher, gets no farther than the 
 maintenance of obedience as a tribute to its own self-love, only 
 the docile and unventuresome will profit, and these only in a 
 spurious and undesirable fashion. If it convinces the youth of 
 the necessity and dignity of good order, even though it be 
 through the exacting of obedience, it achieves a real educational 
 product. 
 
 
 
 ————s 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 
 
 technique in a constructive manner, it is evidently desirable 
 
 to find some means of measuring and exhibiting sustained 
 attention in the group and sustained application in the individ- 
 ual pupil. To this purpose the present chapter and that which 
 follows are addressed. Since the practicing teacher can hardly 
 undertake the fundamental problem of developing individual 
 sustained application until the class group as a whole is under 
 control, we shall find it advantageous to deal with the latter as- 
 pect of control technique first. 
 
 The problem reduces itself to finding some way in which the 
 aggregate pupil-minutes of attention in a given class period can 
 be counted. If we attempt to refine the process to exact terms 
 expressed in seconds and to take into account actual fluctuations 
 in the individual pupil’s attention as they appear in the stream 
 of consciousness, we shall find ourselves so bound down to the 
 methods of the psychological laboratory as to be able to make 
 little progress in dealing with the actual classroom situation. We 
 can, however, set up a method by which useful approximations 
 can be secured, measures more useful for our present purpose 
 than would be refinements which cannot be used in teaching 
 practice at all and which, if they could be used, would probably 
 add little for the purpose which we have in mind. This is not to 
 imply that the refined methods of the psychological laboratory 
 could not be applied at all to the study of the sustained attention 
 of the class group. On the contrary, they probably could be so 
 applied with promise of much light on the nature of the learning 
 situation as such. 
 
 We can perhaps best begin by noting the number of pupils 
 
 I: order to secure a concrete basis for dealing with control 
 
 rms 
 
116 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 in a group who are apparently attentive, minute by minute, dur- 
 ing a class period. 
 
 The observer takes a position near the front of the room so 
 placed that he can look into the faces of all the pupils and at the 
 same time be himself out of the natural line of their vision. It 
 is essential that the class shall not to any considerable degree be 
 curious about the observer to the extent of directing attention 
 upon him and his activities. To this end, it may be necessary to 
 experiment in several different meetings of the same group or 
 until the pupils become accustomed to the presence of the ob- 
 server. More often, the observer will need only to wait until the 
 pupils’ first curiosity has been satisfied and their minds have 
 resumed normal activity. In this case, he can usually get a fairly 
 satisfactory score for the latter part of the period. The tech- 
 nique of observation is primarily for the observer to make him- 
 self as inconspicuous as possible. If the class evidently does not 
 become accustomed to the presence of the observer, the record 
 should be thrown out. 
 
 An appropriate situation having been established, the ob- 
 server notes minute by minute the number of pupils in attention. 
 It is convenient for this purpose to have a simple record card so 
 fastened to a tablet that it can be laid on the lap, or on the arm 
 of a chair, in such a manner that the observer can record with 
 his right hand while holding a watch in the left. A sample scor- 
 Ing is shown in Table V. 
 
 In this case the observer began on the stroke of the bell to 
 count pupils in attention. At 10:01, he was ready to count again 
 and so continued until the end of the period. Scoring is not ordi- 
 narily done in this somewhat meticulous fashion. The minute- 
 by-minute score has the advantage of greater precision, and it is 
 well for the beginner to practice with this form until he secures 
 facility. Much the same result can be obtained by scoring at 
 two- or three-minute intervals, averaging the results, and multi- 
 plying by the total elapsed number of minutes in order to derive 
 the total pupil-minutes attention. 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 1 47, 
 
 TABLE V 
 Pupils in 
 Attention 
 BrP 111 te CASSIE Lids 5! c's. «ian: « a d.0, vlaleeinisters 30 
 
 POEL CUE oes atl aia's. o's 0 sc + .00's ¢ 5c 5 10:00 6 
 OI 6 
 02 6 
 03 6 
 04 6 
 O5 6 
 06 6 
 07 7 
 08 9 
 09 16 
 10 25 
 iI 27 
 12 28 
 13 28 
 14 28 
 15 28 
 16 28 
 17 24 
 18 23 
 19 20 
 20 20 
 21 20 
 22 20 
 23 19 
 24 18 
 25 17 
 26 16 
 ey 30 
 28 30 
 29 30 
 30 28 
 3t 24 
 42 20 
 33 16 
 34 13 
 
118 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 TABLE V—Continued 
 
 Pupils in 
 Attention 
 35 8 
 36 6 
 37 6 
 38 6 
 39 6 
 40 6 
 4l 6 
 42 7 
 43 8 
 44 6 
 45 6 
 46 6 
 47 39 
 48 30 
 49 30 
 PETIOG ENLASs sa sha Wisle'y a la'e e's Cla sateen ae 10:50 
 Number of mintites ss 0) 0.0. ose e wen ena oiar ee 50 
 Possible pupil-minutes attention 
 30X 50=1,500 
 Actual pupil-minutesattention: 6 g2.c, 8 bistels bee ie y's Sie cee 821 
 Percentage of attentions ise je siciy Sicsta ec bn icin i te ars. c eee 55 
 
 Even a single minute is a very considerable interval of time, 
 and the fact becomes impressive when one is observing a class 
 with occasional glances at the second-hand of a watch. Even 
 during a single minute, a given pupil will be in and out of appar- 
 ent attention several times. The pupil who is really attending to 
 business, however, remains in that state over several minutes at 
 least, and the observer soon learns to count the pupils who ex- 
 hibit the characteristics of attention rather than the mere mo- 
 mentary physical fact of apparent attention. 
 
 The question at once arises, When is a pupil in attention? 
 The observer must practice with classes until he can answer the 
 question for himself and rapidly note the attentive pupils with- 
 out arousing in his own mind debate as to whether a given pupil 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 119 
 
 is or is not in attention. He will find before long that he has at- 
 tained considerable confidence in the snap judgments which he 
 must thus make. In the ordinary class there are usually found 
 three kinds of pupil situations with respect to our problem. 
 
 The large majority of pupils who are inattentive are ob- 
 viously so. They are looking out of the window, conversing with 
 neighbors, engaged in arranging their toilets, obviously dream- 
 ing, doing something which is clearly not connected with the 
 work in hand. 
 
 Most of the pupils who are attentive are again obviously 
 attentive. Eyes, physical posture, activities, leave the observer 
 in no doubt. Everything speaks of the mind which is focused 
 upon the work in hand, whether it be an explanation which is 
 being presented by the teacher, the recitation of a fellow-pupil, 
 or a piece of study upon which the pupil. is himself engaged. 
 These pupils of course represent the standard to which the group 
 as a whole must be brought. 
 
 The observer’s principal problem is with a third group, the 
 pupils who are “listening with their ears but not with their 
 minds.” These pupils range from the prim little girl who sits 
 erect, in perfect decorum, ready to react to any obvious stimu- 
 lus, such as a question put by the teacher, to the lounging boy 
 with head on hand sprawled over the top of the desk whose 
 hand moves listlessly and automatically whenever others’ hands 
 move. In sorting out the really attentive from this group, the 
 observer will learn to depend much more upon his own expe- 
 rience than upon any precepts which can be laid down. Certain 
 guide marks can, however, be suggested. _ 
 
 In the first place, in all but a few exceptional cases, the at- 
 tentive child or youth has a characteristic physical attitude. His 
 feet are usually drawn up beneath the chair, head slightly in- 
 clined forward, the whole body tense rather than relaxed. As 
 the play of the mental situation develops, from the alert teacher 
 to the responses of another pupil, eyes, head, and whole body 
 follow the movement. 
 
120 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The almost infallible index of attention is the eye. Would 
 that we could describe in precise terms the characteristics of the 
 eye expression which tells of the alert and attentive mind! We 
 can only advise the observer to note, confident that a brief expe- 
 rience will enable him to identify the signs with a degree of as- 
 surance which will give abundant help in arriving at a reliable 
 approximate estimate of the amount of sustained attention 
 found in a given class period. 
 
 If the obviously inattentive and the obviously attentive are 
 first counted and then the two rules which have been suggested 
 are applied to the doubtful cases, there will be little of the ele- 
 ment of uncertainty left in the measure. There will be some. A 
 certain type of pupil wears an inexpressive face. If he is not ob- 
 viously inattentive, it is hard to tell whether or not he is atten- 
 tive. Neither his physical attitude nor his eye carries conviction 
 to the observer. As the period draws on, however, such a pupil 
 often sooner or later gives clear evidence whether or not he has 
 been attentive, and in that case the score can be corrected. If 
 a need is felt for the greatest possible precision in scoring—and 
 this is usually the case when scoring is being done for investiga- 
 tional purposes—these uncertain individuals can be excluded 
 from the counting altogether and due note made of the circum- 
 stance. 
 
 In considering a class score with the teacher, the supervisor 
 will frequently be met with a statement which runs something 
 like this: “I note that you have rated A as inattentive because 
 he was looking out of the window. Now, that is his way, but he 
 is paying attention just the same, for he always answers correct- 
 ly when I ask him a question.” The issue comes upon the teach- 
 er’s phraseology, “paying attention.” The period is usually a 
 lesson-learning situation and A has learned how to keep the gen- 
 eral situation always in the margin of consciousness sufficiently 
 well to enable him to pick it up at need with little lost motion. 
 There is, however, a vast difference between “paying attention” 
 and that focal attention to material which is being presented by 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 121 
 
 the teacher or the textbook which is the essence of the learning 
 situation. 
 
 “When is the pupil attentive?” suggests “attentive to 
 what?” In general to any situation in respect to which the ob- 
 server wishes to measure attention. It may be a study period, a 
 presentation or explanation, a class discussion, or a class period 
 as a whole. In systematic supervision, the last is properly the 
 object to be measured, but with discrimination. 
 
 _ Good control technique presumes sustained attention to the 
 work in hand, from the moment when the opening bell rings un- 
 til that at which the closing signal is given. Nevertheless, it 
 should be borne in mind that it is teaching technique which we 
 are measuring and not merely the pupils’ occupation. If a study 
 period is evidently expected, then the object of attention is 
 study. If the teacher is making a presentation to the class, pre- 
 sumably he requires the attention of the class to his words. If 
 a pupil in that case keeps on studying, he is out of attention, 
 even though he may be engaged on profitable study. If the work 
 in hand is a recitation, it is presumably conducted on the theory 
 that it is serviceable to the class as a whole; therefore a pupil 
 who is attentive to something else than the recitation is out of 
 attention. 
 
 The observer who has been long accustomed to the mechan- 
 ical administrative technique which is so common a feature of 
 schoolroom practice is apt to approach the task of measuring 
 educational products under the obsession of various stereotypes, 
 which have become established in a process of scoring and grad- 
 ing and crediting persons rather than things: The questions are 
 ever to the foreground in his mind: “Is this score just to the 
 pupil?” “Is it fair to the teacher to include that incident?” 
 “Must I not omit this interruption in order to be fair to the prin- 
 cipal?” It is essential that all such stereotypes be destroyed. 
 The purpose of measuring and recording is a veracious picture 
 of an actual objective situation. There is no question of justice 
 as between individuals in the matter. The personal element is 
 
222 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 in the observer’s mind because it has been placed there by an ut- 
 terly false and mechanical theory of education and of teaching, 
 namely, that the whole problem of teaching is the award of 
 credits to individual pupils and that the nature of education is 
 the accumulation of a standard number of such credits. In 
 measuring group attention, the observer has before him the sim- 
 ple problem of estimating accurately, and as precisely as cir- 
 cumstances will permit, the actual situation before him, personal 
 implications of every sort whatsoever being for the moment 
 completely ignored. 
 
 How reliable is the score thus found? That is to say, How 
 closely will two equally competent observers agree in their final 
 estimate for the same class situation? It may be stated in an- 
 swer that the process is not one of precision, and consequently 
 absolute agreement between the scores of two observers is out 
 of the question. If such occurs, it is to be attributed to accident. 
 
 The minute-by-minute score is more precise and conse- 
 quently more reliable than the analytical score by phases de- 
 scribed below, although the latter is far more useful for practical 
 purposes. 
 
 In a group of, let us say, forty observers, there will usually 
 be two or three individuals whose scores are markedly eccen- 
 tric, deviating perhaps twelve to fifteen points on the percentile 
 scale from the median of the group. With these exceptions, the 
 scores of individual observers rarely deviate more than five 
 points from the median of the scores of the groups of observers. 
 The agreement is commonly within a range of less than ten 
 points between the extreme estimates. Classes with scores of 
 about 80 per cent to 100 per cent and those which show scores 
 of less than about 50 per cent can seemingly be estimated with 
 more confidence than others. The reason is obvious. The higher 
 scores include many individual pupils who show consistent sus- 
 tained attention, and the lower scores many who show consistent 
 inattention. The middle scores include a great deal of fluctu- 
 ating attention which is harder to count. Translated into com- 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 123 
 
 mon parlance, we may say that a computed score of, let us say, 
 80 per cent may correspond to an actual score of 75 per cent or 
 85 per cent, but we can feel sure that the actual score is not 90 
 per cent nor yet 50 per cent nor 60 per cent. 
 
 In learning the technique, observers should practice in 
 groups if possible until facility has been developed and until ec- 
 centric scoring has been eliminated. For example, a city district 
 superintendent can call his school principals and their supervis- 
 ory staffs together and set them to self-training. Similarly, in a 
 survey, the groups of observers who are to do the class scoring 
 should be submitted to a period of practice until their scoring 
 becomes homogeneous. In the process of such practice, the per- 
 sonal equations of the several observers will tend to develop. 
 That is, some individuals will be found to make relatively low 
 estimates and others relatively high. The period of practice 
 draws to an end when in the observing group different individ- 
 uals find their places in the following manner. In the first few 
 observations, observers A, B, C, D, E, and F will probably dis- 
 tribute themselves from highest score to lowest somewhat as 
 follows: | | 
 
 1. B—C—E—A—-D—F 
 
 2, A—D—F—-E—B—C 
 
 3. D—F—B—A—E—C 
 
 This distribution is eccentric and shows that the learning 
 process is still going on. On the fifth, sixth, and seventh observa- 
 tions, however, the distribution may appear more as follows: 
 
 oD RAe BE GC 
 
 6. D—F—A—E—B—C 
 
 7. D—F—A—E—B—C 
 
 The indication now is that the several observers have found 
 each his characteristic individual scoring tendency, and the pe- 
 riod of practice can be brought to an end. After some further 
 experience, the personal equation of each observer can be ap- 
 proximated statistically if desired and his scores corresponding- 
 ly corrected. 
 
124 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Lest the suggestions just made should discourage the prin- 
 cipal or superintendent who has no supervisory staff and who is 
 remote from fellow-workers, attention is called to the principle 
 that objective precision here is not a matter of first importance 
 for the constructive use which may be made of group-attention 
 measurements. Constructive supervision has to rely chiefly on 
 comparisons. A given score is not in itself so important as is the 
 relation which it bears to earlier and later scores of the same 
 class group. When the same observer makes both scores, the 
 chances are that he will terid to make the same error in one as in 
 another, and in a comparison these errors will largely or wholly 
 neutralize one another. 
 
 PHASE SCORING 
 
 The minute-by-minute score is of little use when it is de- 
 sired either to study the influence of different devices upon class 
 attention or to help the teacher to build up a satisfactory con- 
 trol technique. For such purposes, it is desirable to break up the 
 class period into phases, note the character of each phase and 
 the fluctuations of attention from phase to phase. The method 
 is illustrated by the reports of actual observations listed in Ta- 
 ble VI. 
 
 Case II gives us an excellent illustration of the use of the 
 class-attention analysis for purposes of constructive improve- 
 ment of control technique. The attention is very good compared 
 with the 40 per cent, 30 per cent, or even 10 per cent which we 
 frequently find, any one of which is of course practically equiva- 
 lent to no attention at all. But the technique reported in Case 
 II is easily susceptible of improvement, and we can readily see 
 wherein. 
 
 In the first four minutes we find a clumsy management of 
 mechanical detail. The papers might have been on the desks 
 when the class entered and a single announcement made to 
 serve. Further, in Phase I the instructor accepts inattention 
 from 8 pupils, or rather does not succeed in attracting their at- 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 125 
 
 TABLE VI 
 
 Case I. Mathematics (last 30 minutes of a 50-minute period) 
 I °’ 9! st 4! a! 
 28 30 30 30 30) 7: 
 So, TM TTDI EL a 98 per cent 
 
 Analysis by phases 
 J. Supervised study 
 Inattention caused by whispering 
 II, Explanation by instructor 
 II. Problem solving 
 IV. Discussion 
 7 pupils asked questions 
 2 pupils made suggestions 
 V. Explanation of problem by pupil 
 Computation 
 Number of pupils—3o0 
 Phase I—Pupils attentive, 28. Time elapsed, ro minutes 
 28X 10= 280 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase II—30X 9=270 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase III—30X 5=150 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase IV—30X 4=120 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase V—30X 2= 60 pupil-minutes attention 
 
 Total pupil-minutes attention = 880 
 Total possible pupil-minutes attention, 30X 30= 900 
 Percentage of attention=98 
 
 Case Il. Social science 
 
 ag 2! ae a r’ 
 
 p2td__O 20 23 24 15 23 23 O10 72323 1 2.30 | 
 STOLL y eee MVM ELL ADK XI 
 Analysis by phases 
 I, Announcement 
 II. Passing out test papers 
 III. Further announcements and settling down to business 
 IV. Work on tests 
 V. Belated pupil enters 
 VI. Work resumed 
 
 , 4 / 
 
 iuaten iit ae 
 88 
 
126 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 TABLE ViI—Continued 
 
 VII. Papers exchanged, graded, and handed in 
 VIII. More test papers distributed 
 LX. Work on papers; pupil leaves 
 X. Papers exchanged, graded, and handed in. Another set 
 distributed and announcement made 
 XI. Consultation and work on papers 
 
 Computation 
 Total Number of Pupils: 
 
 23 for 7 minutes 
 
 24 for 13 minutes 
 
 23 for 30 minutes 
 Phase I—Pupils attentive, 15. Time elapsed, 1 minute 
 
 15 1= 15 pupil-minutes attention 
 
 Phase II— oX 2=  o pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase JII—20X 1= 20 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase IV—23X 3= 69 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase V—15xX 1= 15 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase VI—23x 7=161 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase VII—23X 4= 92 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase VIII— oX 1= 0 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase IX—23X14=322 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase X—21X 5=105 pupil-minutes attention 
 Phase XI—2z0X11= 220 pupil-minutes attention 
 
 Total pupil-minutes attention= 1,019 
 Total possible pupil-minutes attention 23 7= 161 
 
 
 
 24X13Z= 312 
 23X30= 690 
 1,163 
 
 Percentage of attention = 88 
 
 tention. Out of these three phases, we get thirty-five pupil-min- 
 utes attention when we should have obtained ninety-two. 
 
 The entrance of a late pupil breaks down attention for one 
 minute. This is not nearly so bad as is frequently the case, but 
 the pupils should be trained not to permit attention to be dis- 
 tracted in this manner. We lose eight pupil-minutes here. 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 127 
 
 The second set of papers, like the first, should have been 
 ready on the desks and properly protected from premature in- 
 spection. We lose twenty-four pupil-minutes. 
 
 In Phases X and XI, we note a total loss of forty-three pu- 
 pil-minutes. Very possibly the attention could not profitably 
 have been saved, but the score for these phases at once brings 
 the technique into question. 
 
 It will be noted that in a relatively long phase, like IX in 
 Case II, a single figure is given as the count of the number of 
 pupils attentive. The figure is theoretically the average number 
 of pupils in attention during the phase. In precise scoring, the 
 observer makes a minute-by-minute count in one of these long 
 phases. In practice, however, it is usually possible, in a phase of 
 moderate length, to determine the attentive pupils by inspection, 
 for in most cases a pupil who is attentive during part of such a 
 phase will be attentive throughout. The observer should keep 
 his mind focused on the essential issue, which is in substance, 
 “Is a given pupil attending to business?” With this issue in 
 mind, it will quickly become apparent that certain pupils are at- 
 tentive and these can be dismissed from constant observation, 
 leaving the observer free to study the behavior of the inatten- 
 tive and the uncertain. After some practice, it is usually possible 
 to estimate closely the average number of attentive pupils dur- 
 ing a phase of considerable length, without making a minute-by- 
 minute score. 
 
 Division of a class period into phases is largely a matter of 
 the kind of analysis desired. In Case II, the observer has appar- 
 ently identified all the phases. Another might have combined I, 
 II, and III, and VII and VIII, so that there would have been a 
 total of eight phases instead of eleven. If the count is accurately 
 made, however, the final score will not be affected by the phases 
 selected. 
 
 Ordinarily, the phases select themselves, but it sometimes 
 becomes desirable to break up a long phase for special reasons. 
 This is particularly true when the observer notes a sudden fall 
 
128 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 or sudden rise in attention. For instance, if we regard the period 
 subjected to the minute-by-minute count shown on page II7 as 
 a single long phase, such as a study period or a lecture, it at once 
 becomes apparent that there are four well-marked phases— 
 one ending with the eighth minute, one with the thirty-fourth, 
 one with the forty-sixth, and one with the end of the period. 
 When such pronounced fluctuations in attention occur, it is of 
 course desirable to know the cause. 
 
 USE OF THE SCORING 
 
 Let us now give some further consideration to the use to 
 which sustained attention scoring and particularly the period 
 analysis by phases can be put. 
 
 In the first place, the minute-by-minute score, or some suit- 
 able modification thereof, gives us a good starting-point for 
 evaluating the teaching technique of different teachers. In this 
 sense, it is a device which can effectively be used in school sur- 
 veys. There is good correlation between the teacher’s control 
 technique and his gross effectiveness as a classroom technician. 
 It is fair to assume that the teaching in a large school or ina 
 city-school system which is associated with consistently low or 
 erratic attention scores is less effective than is the teaching in 
 another system or school which is associated with consistently 
 high attention scores. 
 
 It is fair to assume that a given teacher who has consistently 
 poor control technique cannot be an effective teacher, but it does 
 not follow that a teacher who has uniformly good control tech- 
 nique is therefore a good teacher. The attention may be spuri- 
 ous. The operative technique may be so defective in principle 
 that the teacher is doing more harm than good. Even the subject 
 matter may be false. 
 
 The supervisory officer can use his attention scores as one 
 means of locating trouble. If progress is slow under a given 
 teacher, if many reteachings are required, if a disproportionate 
 number of failures occurs, the supervisor may be able thus defi- 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 129 
 
 nitely to locate the cause. If the control technique is poor, we 
 have found the point at which correction should begin. If con- 
 trol technique is apparently good, the quality of attention comes 
 in question. Is attention genuine or spurious? If control tech- 
 nique is good and attention of good quality, we have at least 
 eliminated one major field of possible defects. 
 
 In the case of teachers whose control is good, the period an- 
 alysis gives us a means of locating the weak points and bringing 
 control close to 100 per cent. 
 
 In the case of teachers whose control is poor, simple exhibi- 
 tion of the results of a period analysis will start the process of 
 improvement. The supervisor will repeatedly encounter teach- 
 ers in whose cases exhibit of a period analysis will be the first 
 intimation they have ever had that control technique is a vital 
 factor in effective teaching. Improvement is ordinarily imme- 
 diate and marked, and the teacher becomes interested in subse- 
 quent scorings, which can be made either by the supervisor or by 
 a fellow-teacher. Conversely, consistently low scores studied in 
 connection with the teachers’ personality will sometimes prove 
 to be convincing evidence to the teacher himself that he has mis- 
 taken his calling. 
 
 The wise, and perhaps somewhat cynical, administrator dis- 
 trusts the ‘‘popular” teacher, and it is hard sometimes to secure 
 good evidence of the difference between popularity which is 
 wholesome and well founded and that which amounts only to an 
 unworthy appeal to the prejudices of immature pupils. Let us 
 take two such teachers and secure a series of group-attention 
 scores from an observer who is reliable, impartial, and for whom 
 the pupils will not be on their best behavior. In both cases we 
 find good scores while the teacher is present, but in one case the 
 score is equally good when the teacher is absent while in the 
 other work is laid aside as soon as the teacher is out of the room. 
 One teacher is educating; the other is not. 
 
 The same procedure will serve as a typical method of dis- 
 criminating between the educators and the non-educators who 
 
130 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 are not suspected of being popularity hunters but on the con- 
 trary are known to be martinets. Attention scoring when the 
 teacher is out of the room gives us a good fundamental index 
 whether or not any transformation is being wrought in the pu- 
 pils. If the class consistently shows a high score when the teach- 
 er is present and the attention falls greatly when the teacher 
 steps out, we may well doubt that any of the teacher’s work is 
 generating the true learning products. Here are a few notes 
 from observations: 
 
 Case 1.—The most interesting phases of this period were the third 
 to the eighth where the attention was practically 100 per cent. Five 
 pupils remained with their books as if they did not want to leave them 
 even when the bell had rung dismissal. 
 
 Case 2.—Teacher was one minute late—attention, o. Attention, 
 Phases II-VI, roo per cent, roo per cent, go per cent, go per cent, 
 go per cent. Phase VII, teacher leaves room for one minute—atten- 
 tion, 80 per cent. Phases VIII—XI: attention, roo per cent. 
 
 Case 3.—Phase I: Teacher gave directions for writing essays and 
 suggested topics. Left the room at 8:10. Attention, 100 per cent. 
 Phase IJ: Continued writing essays. Attention, 100 per cent. Phase 
 III: One boy consulted dictionary. He and other conversed for three 
 minutes. Attention, 89 per cent. Phase IV: Boy borrowed paper. At- 
 tention, 94 per cent. Phase V: Teacher returned at 8:40. Attention, 
 100 per cent. 
 
 Case 4.—Phases I-III. Confusion in getting settled. Attention, 
 o-50 per cent. Phases IV and V: Better order but conversation still 
 continued. Attention, 87 per cent and 94 per cent. Phases VI and 
 VII: Attention, 69 per cent. Phases VIII and IX: Teacher leaves 
 room for eight minutes. Attention, 37 per cent and 25 per cent. 
 Phase X: Teacher returns. Attention, roo per cent. 
 
 The foregoing paragraphs will serve to illustrate the many 
 uses to which scoring the group control can be put in the direc- 
 tion of inspection and constructive supervision. 
 
 We should not close this chapter without suggestions to the 
 teacher of means through which group control can be built up. 
 The suggestions do not imply that any person who happens to 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 131 
 
 occupy the teacher’s chair can take the list, go through the mo- 
 tions of applying them, and be assured of success. Success de- 
 pends upon the insight, the willingness, and the perseverance of 
 the teacher. The suggestions do represent a series of principles 
 which a teacher who possesses the qualities just named can apply 
 with assurance of improved group control. Each of them is the 
 product of observation of many class periods and analysis of the 
 results. 
 
 First in importance is the fundamental matter of direct 
 teaching as contrasted with lesson-learning. A class in the les- 
 son-learning situation is obliged to rely for its motivation upon 
 fellow-pupils rather than upon the teacher. In the nature of the 
 case, the instances are rare in which the reciting pupil can have 
 anything to say to which the class as a whole can yield genuine 
 attention. At the best, the class can only be brought into an atti- 
 tude of critical attention to the merits of what the fellow-pupil 
 gives forth, and, since by the fundamental hypothesis of the 
 school all are still learning, it cannot be presumed that the class 
 as a whole is in the intellectual position which makes criticism 
 valid. As a matter of fact, except in rare instances, the critical 
 comments of fellow-pupils are limited to a few individuals, and 
 these deal much in guesswork. A strong and masterful teacher 
 can of course develop the passive, spurious type of attention. 
 
 The physical circumstances of the classroom have much to 
 do with group control. Poor light and heat, often within the con- 
 trol of the teacher, creaky and noisy furniture and outside dis- 
 turbances which are within the control of the management if not 
 of the teacher, all make good group control difficult if not impos- 
 sible. 
 
 The arrangement of pupil positions in the room seems to 
 have a singular influence on the possibility of good control. The 
 ordinary rectangular arrangement, in which the normal lines of 
 vision of the pupils do not focus on the teacher’s position, tends 
 to center the teacher’s effort on those directly in front. In some 
 cases, scrutiny of the lists of failures in a school has disclosed 
 
132 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 that there are apt to be distinctly more failures in the cases of 
 pupils who are seated along the sides and in the corners of a 
 wide classroom than among the pupils who are seated directly in 
 front of the teacher. A circular placing of pupil positions, such 
 that the natural lines of vision of all pupils focus on the teacher’s 
 position, appears to be a distinct help in the direction of good 
 group control. 
 
 Observation shows very clearly that when the teacher knows 
 his subject and has a definite message for the class good group 
 attention usually occurs. The contrast is found in classes in 
 which the teacher is confined to the textbook, and especially in 
 classes in which the teacher deals largely in leading questions. 
 Theoretically, the lecture method is bad and class discussion 
 based on suggestive questions is good. Practically, a talk by the 
 teacher which is tantamount to a lecture usually secures a hear- 
 ing, provided it is clear, forceful, to the point, and not too long; 
 while suggestive questioning is usually associated with a low at- 
 tention score. In the one case, the pupils have something to 
 learn; in the other, the situation is either threshing over old 
 straw or else appealing only to those who have already devel- 
 oped an intellectual interest or are concerned about their marks. 
 Nothing is more banal than the “thought-stimulating” question 
 when the pupil has nothing to think about. 
 
 The teacher who has any teaching power at all usually suc- 
 ceeds in securing sustained group attention when he talks to the 
 class. Many a teacher who might become an effective technician 
 fails in a presentation, explanation, or class exercise, because his 
 mind is upon subject matter and not upon his pupils. The ob- 
 server can identify such practice, in much the same manner in 
 which he identifies the genuinely attentive pupil, by watching 
 the eye and expression. The “lecturer” has a far-away expres- 
 sion, he may look toward his class but the pupils are plainly in 
 the margin of consciousness, his gaze is frequently averted alto- 
 gether. On the other hand, the teacher who really has a message 
 to deliver has a kindling eye and tense physical expression. He 
 
 
 
MEASURING GROUP CONTROL 133 
 
 brings the whole class within the power of his message. He is 
 obliged to exert a great deal of energy, and the process is an ex- 
 hausting one. The teacher who is not physically tired at the end 
 of a day of teaching may well doubt that he has done any 
 teaching. 
 
 Closely related to the teacher who has his mind upon subject 
 matter is the individual who has his mind upon himself. His 
 whole personality is directed inward rather than outward. Now 
 teaching, whether it is in the form of awakening the minds of 
 high-school pupils to a given piece of understanding or apprecia- 
 tion or of convincing an audience of the truth of a proposition, 
 or of selling a customer a bill of goods, implies the vigorous pro- 
 jection of personality. The audience becomes convinced because 
 the speaker is convinced. The observer will find it hard to iden- 
 tify the egoistic teacher on such vague guidance as is implied in 
 the foregoing characterization, but we can be more concrete. 
 Such a teacher, if observed at some length, will usually resort to 
 sarcasm at times. A different variety of the same fundamental 
 type is the teacher who conducts a continuous vaudeville per- 
 formance in the classroom and thereby secures a high spurious 
 attention. A third variety is that insufferable menace, the popu- 
 larity hunter. We are by no means indulging here in mere con- 
 demnation. The instances which we have cited are valuable in 
 the present connection only as positive symptoms of an under- 
 lying personal attitude which is seldom associated with good 
 teaching or the capacity of maintaining a high degree of sus- 
 tained genuine class attention, and which can often be corrected 
 by the supervisor who knows how to handle men and women. 
 
 Particularly during the supervised study period, good group- 
 control technique depends upon good foremanship, that is, upon 
 the ability of the teacher to so organize procedure that the major 
 elements of waste will be eliminated. A supervised study period 
 frequently shows long cues of pupils waiting to consult the 
 teacher, or a waving forest of the hands of pupils who are en- 
 deavoring to attract the attention of the teacher to their more 
 
134 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 or less imaginary needs. These are illustrations of bad foreman- 
 ship. Such classes frequently score less than 50 per cent utiliza- 
 tion of available time. Better management would eliminate the 
 waiting lines altogether, reduce the pupil interview to the mini- 
 mum actually needed, and reduce the time lost in the interval 
 between the pupil’s call and the teacher’s attention to his call to 
 a negligible amount. 
 
 Assuming that all the suggestions here made are put into 
 effective operation, there will still be individual pupils who have 
 not learned to yield voluntary sustained attention. Many of 
 these cases will yield if the teacher bears in mind the principle 
 that he is teaching the group as a whole and not merely the pupils 
 who are ready to attend. It is of course futile to call out to the 
 inattentive, “I want your attention.” Equally futile is it to in- 
 dulge in some sarcastic remarks calculated to penalize the inat- 
 tentive. The writer has himself many times practiced and seen 
 others practice the following technique. After a few minutes of 
 teaching, the inattentive are noted. The teacher then talks di- 
 rectly to these people with the conscious purpose of drawing 
 them within the attentive group. Within a brief time, the teacher 
 notes that the inattentive begin to be restless, glances turn tenta- 
 tively in the direction of the teacher, and eventually one after 
 another they settle into attentive attitudes. If now the teacher 
 does not forget them, but persists several days, he will be pretty 
 likely to cure all but a very few stubborn cases. 
 
 These last become regularly identified problem cases, sub- 
 ject to corrective measures, the basis of which is training in vol- 
 untary sustained application. The latter aspect of control tech- 
 nique is discussed in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 SUSTAINED APPLICATION 
 
 HE term “sustained application,” within the meaning 
 which we attach to it, applies only to voluntary atten- 
 
 tion to a school task which does not initially carry its 
 own motivation. The contrasting attention is that which is de- 
 voted to an activity which is in itself appealing, the reading of a 
 stirring story for instance. The latter is what we have called 
 “absorption.” In a sense, the fundamental problem of teaching 
 is to so train the pupil, so arrange his studies and so apply an ef- 
 fective operative technique that he will eventually be able to be- 
 come absorbed in any study which in itself is worth while. 
 Apparently, the power of effective sustained application is some- 
 thing which must be acquired. It does not come of itself as an 
 element of the mental growth of the pupil. Hundreds of obser- 
 vations of individual pupils, from the lower grades throughout 
 the high school, exhibit little essential difference in capacity for 
 sustained application—apart from training of one sort or an- 
 other and apart from the intellectual interests which have been 
 casually or systematically developed. 
 
 Study of sustained application and systematic use of the 
 principle in teaching technique alike require a method of meas- 
 urement and recording. We shall need, not only to measure ap- 
 plication, but to record its character. For this purpose, the stu- 
 dent, the supervisor, and the teacher will find the sustained 
 application profile described below useful (see Fig. 1). 
 
 The column to the right of the heavy vertical line stands for 
 application; that to the left for distraction. The spaces marked 
 off by the horizontal lines are time intervals. The light horizon- 
 tal lines mark off spaces of ten seconds each, and the heavy 
 horizontal lines mark off minutes. The observation used in the 
 
 135 
 
136 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 illustration was made upon a girl in an VIII A class in a city 
 school. The observation ran for twenty minutes, during which 
 there were recorded four hundred and seventy seconds of appli- 
 cation (of poor quality) and seven hundred and thirty seconds 
 of distraction. 
 
 In making the mh the observer found a position in which 
 he could clearly watch the pupil, even to the point of being able 
 to follow roughly the eye movements, and such that the pupil 
 was not conscious of being watched. With timepiece in hand and 
 observation pad in a convenient position, he then noted the 
 shifting of the phases and recorded the time elapsed for each to 
 the nearest ten-second interval. He also noted, as well as he 
 could, the behavior of the pupil during each phase. When the 
 observation was complete, he made a neat profile with notes, as 
 shown in Figure 1, for the pupil’s case-history folder. 
 
 In discriminating between application and distraction, the 
 general rules laid down in chapter viii apply, and they need not 
 be repeated here. The reader is reminded, however, that the 
 pupil must be unconscious of the observation. As soon as the 
 latter becomes conscious, either spurious application will be set 
 up or else he will become idly curious of the observer’s inten- 
 tions and in that way set up prolonged distraction. If the ob- 
 server secures a profile during fifteen or twenty minutes and the 
 pupil then becomes conscious of observation, the record may be 
 brought to an end and the profile may be reserved for study as 
 useful and significant. If the pupil early becomes aware that he 
 is being profiled, the observation would best be deferred to a 
 more convenient period. 
 
 The profile taken is that of a placid, untrained pupil whose 
 study habits are practically nil. She is probably a part-learner, 
 of the get-by, lesson-learning type. The percentage of appli- 
 cation is 39. The average span of application is sixty-seven 
 seconds, with a range of 30-110. The pupil starts the period 
 with a distraction interval, which is itself apt to be symptomatic 
 of poor study habits. The recorded behavior during the applica- 
 
SUSTAINED APPLICATION 
 
 Idly turns pages of book 
 
 Plays with neighbor’s hair 
 
 Smiles at boys 
 
 Looks at some writing on the 
 board 
 
 Gazes about, distributing 
 smiles impartially over the 
 entire room 
 
 Again becomes interested in 
 her neighbor’s hair 
 
 Looks at the clock, smiles, and 
 whispers to her neighbor 
 
 Puts book away and converses 
 with neighbor 
 
 | 
 
 | 
 
 TTT 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 FIG. 1 
 
 137 
 
 Reads rapidly 
 
 = Reads slowly 
 
 Reads about one page 
 
 Continues to read 
 
 Very much bored 
 
 - Looking at pictures in. the 
 
 book 
 
 Hl 
 
 - Reads with very irregular eye 
 - movements 
 
 Reads with slow eye move- 
 ment 
 
138 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tion intervals is evidence that such application as there is has 
 little or no value. 
 
 This profile is perfectly typical of the healthy, untrained, 
 early adolescent, possessed of the volitional powers and study 
 
 habits of perhaps the third grade. She is probably 
 susceptible to immediate steps in the direction of 
 training in the manner suggested below. Different 
 is the case of the pupil who exhibits a profile like 
 that shown in Figure 2. 
 
 This is the*typical “fidgety” pupil. Before be- 
 
 ginning the training process, it is well to look into 
 the physical background of a profile of this type. It 
 may be that the seat is uncomfortable and perhaps 
 irritating or that the light on the desk is bad, or 
 that there is a continuous distracting noise of some 
 sort going on. It is more likely to be true that the 
 pupil is subject to some bodily irritation. It may be 
 bad teeth, eye-strain, irritation of the genital or 
 anal region; or more general disorder of the ali- 
 mentary tract traceable to bad eating habits or im- 
 proper food. Insufficient sleep may be responsible. 
 In any case, before attempting to develop volun- 
 tary sustained application, this whole region of pos- 
 sibilities should be explored. The parent will per- 
 haps need to be called in and either through the 
 family physician or the school health department 
 a thorough physical examination secured and reme- 
 dial medical treatment arranged for if needed. 
 When the pupil begins to show a profile more like that of Figure 
 3, Systematic training in volitional application may be set up. 
 
 6 minutes 
 
 FIG. 2 
 
 TRAINING 
 
 Figure 3 shows the progress of a piece of systematic train- 
 ing, and to this constructive work we now turn. In the presence 
 of such a problem, there are commonly to be found three differ- 
 
SUSTAINED APPLICATION 130 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Sept. 18 Nov. 22 
 30” 90” 
 4 rae a 209" 
 60” 
 1’ 10” 
 5/ 40’ 
 me 
 ag Q’ 90" 
 ere 50” 
 20” 4’ 0" 
 17107 
 30” 
 20” 
 40” 
 20” 20” 9! 10” 
 40” 
 20” ” 
 5” 20 
 20” 40” 
 5/ 0” 
 8" 20” 7/40” — | 640” 12/20" | 37997 16°40" 
 Percentage 65% | 83% 
 
 of application .... 48% 
 
 FIG. 3 
 
140 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ent attitudes among teachers and these are perhaps worth not- 
 ing, for they shed a great deal of light on the attitudes of dif- 
 ferent kinds of people to teaching in all its aspects. 
 
 The first of these teachers encounters the boy profiled in 
 Figure 3 early in the school year. He notes the pupil’s lack of a 
 trained volitional capacity in his study and renders the fatalistic 
 verdict, ‘George cannot concentrate.” That is the end of it. 
 His great-grandfather would probably have explained the situa- 
 tion more fully by asserting that ‘George is clearly not one of 
 the elect.” He was predestined from the foundation of the world 
 not to be able “to concentrate.” Our modern friend would say 
 that George has clearly inherited ‘lack of concentration” and 
 that it is fortunate that we have discovered the fact so early as 
 September in the seventh grade, for we shall now advise him not 
 to continue in school but to seek some vocation in which concen- 
 tration is not necessary. 
 
 The second teacher, who has the reputation of being a strong 
 disciplinarian, says that what George needs is ‘“‘to be made to 
 concentrate,’ and he forthwith descends on the boy in such 
 fashion that George becomes most skilful in setting up spurious 
 sustained application, that is, he “looks at his book.” There is 
 no denying that George sometimes under this process encounters 
 material in the book which sets up a sustaining motivation and 
 thereby profits. He is a great deal more likely to become an ac- 
 complished time-server and to build up a complete anti-learning 
 attitude. 
 
 The third teacher communes thus with himself: “This hu- 
 man organism, George, is doubtless like the rest of his kind, ex- 
 ceedingly adaptable. We must find some way to convince him 
 that he does not stick to business in his study and further that 
 such is obviously the probable foundation of the poor work he 
 is doing. George does not seem to have any particular pride in 
 poor work as such nor does he appear to derive satisfaction from 
 it.” And so the process of setting up a real volitional learning 
 product in George is begun. 
 
SUSTAINED APPLICATION I4I 
 
 Now if we could be made to see ourselves as others see us, 
 we should probably lay aside all but our most cherished follies. 
 Being reprobated for them, however, makes little impression 
 upon us other than to lead us to avoid exhibiting the said follies 
 in the presence of the person whom they seem to irritate. It is of 
 little consequence to inform George that he does not concen- 
 trate; he does not know what is meant. Bidding him “to study” 
 does no good. Studying is something he has yet to learn. On the 
 other hand, if the teacher, unobserved, makes a picture of 
 George at work for, let us say, fifteen minutes, and then pri- 
 vately exhibits to him his likeness with a clear explanation show- 
 ing why this sort of thing is intimately related to his difficulties 
 with his school work, something may come of it. 
 
 In the case which we present something like that was done 
 on September 18.* Little more was said beyond the statement 
 that he, George, could improve himself and that some day the 
 teacher would make another picture and see what had happened. 
 The pupil became at once interested. The profile of October 12 
 shows notable improvement. It can be seen that for the first two 
 minutes or more the boy has a struggle with himself. He has, 
 however, transferred his long phases from the distraction side 
 to the application side. He can “keep going” for nearly ten 
 minutes with only one resting-point, and the latter is not a pe- 
 riod of restlessness. He has improved his gross application from 
 48 to 65 per cent, but there is still room for improvement. The 
 profile for November 22 is nearly normal for the kind of work 
 he is doing. He starts in application, shows no restless periods, 
 and ends in application. His rest intervals are still too long, but 
 he is doing well enough for the present. If he is profiled occa- 
 sionally, he will eventually show an absorption profile, ie., a 
 profile like that of November 22 but with the rest periods re- 
 
 * The pupil in this case was a retardate in the rapid-promotion group of the 
 Ben Blewett Junior High School, St. Louis. The case is reported by Miss Dena 
 
 Lange. The boy’s name is of course fictitious. Poor concentration was only one 
 of the boy’s troubles. 
 
142 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 duced to mere momentary distractions. His gross percentage 
 is now 83 over a period of twenty minutes, but the character of 
 the profile is more significant than the percentage of appli- 
 cation. 
 
 Before setting out on the program of training thus described, 
 the skilful teacher will canvass the situation, and remove the 
 external stimuli of distraction. We have already seen what this 
 means in the case of the pronouncedly restless and fidgety pupil. 
 George at the outset has some appearance of this characteristic, 
 but we note that he can sit placidly in distraction for nearly five 
 minutes, and there is therefore some reason for thinking that 
 his bodily condition is not predominantly responsible for his 
 restlessness. But there are many distracting influences at work 
 in the school which are not related to the bodily organism. 
 George very probably has a neighbor, the presence of whom 
 constitutes a mutual distracting influence between the two. 
 After exhibiting the first profile, we may suggest to the two 
 neighbors that they will be helped if for the present they occupy 
 other seats. We may suggest to the girl, Blanche, whom we may 
 have occasion to study, that it would be wise for her to leave 
 her vanity box in the girls’ dressing-room or still better to forego 
 those charms to the endurance of which the vanity box seems 
 to be essential. Mary may be told that the temperature of the 
 room seems hardly to justify the protection of her new fur coat. 
 Nevertheless, such matters should come to the pupil not as com- 
 mands but only as suggestions. If they are not accepted and the 
 teacher observes that they are not, an early profile will reveal 
 their influence. We are building up a learning product, and the 
 test of such is always voluntary behavior. It may be that the 
 neighbors will continue to sit together and that Mary will con- 
 tinue to cherish her new garment and still resist distraction. If 
 such is the case, the learning is distinctly better than otherwise. 
 Ability to resist distraction is better than skill in removing 
 temptation, albeit the latter is doubtless more economical. 
 
 Thus far we have emphasized the relation of sustained ap- 
 
SUSTAINED APPLICATION 143 
 
 plication to the merit of the school work which the pupil does, 
 or better to the facility and the completeness with which he 
 learns. The reader must not be misled by such emphasis. Other 
 things being equal, the pupil’s power of sustained application 
 will bear a very direct relation to the learning which he does, but 
 other things are not always equal. This pupil may have a very 
 respectable degree and quality of sustained application and still 
 his learning may be difficult and poor. He may present an in- 
 adequate apperceptive mass, that is, he may have fatal gaps in 
 his intellectual background. The teacher’s presentations may be 
 defective. The pupil may be a bad reader. There may be any 
 one of a host of inhibitions. On the other hand, a pupil who has 
 poor sustained application may not be able to correct his inade- 
 quate learning by improving his application; additional correc- 
 tives may be needed. But, poor sustained application is incom- 
 patible with efficient learning. The pupil who learns in spite of 
 it would learn more, learn better, and learn more rapidly if his 
 application were corrected. If we find a non-learner with poor 
 sustained application, our first step in the corrective or remedial 
 process is to develop this essential power. In order to make con- 
 crete the significance of improving application as the foundation 
 of improving study capacity and the learning which goes with 
 it, the following case study is presented in brief. The study was 
 made in the winter of 1924 in the University High School by 
 Miss Catherine Morgan, a student of the author. 
 
 The subjects are two girls, whom we will call A and B, en- 
 rolled in an eighth-grade science class. The pupils had entered 
 the school in October, 1923. Their previous school history in 
 brief had been eight years in the public schools. The study and 
 experimental teaching began January 22, 1924, and ended 
 March 11. The I.Q.’s were 115 and 1009, respectively. At the 
 beginning of the study, in point of time required for mastery, A 
 was one of the slowest pupils in the class and B somewhat below 
 the median. 
 
 Seven profiles were first made, in order to secure the charac- 
 
144 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 teristics of each girl. The pupils were then shown the profiles 
 by the teacher and the process of training was carried on in the 
 manner which we have already described. Profiles were then 
 made on February 6, 7, 15, 19, 26, 27, 29, and March rr. 
 Figure 4 shows the profiles at the beginning of observation. 
 These are, on the whole, poorer than others in the first series of 
 seven, but they represent typically the two girls at what may be 
 called their “untrained level.” Figure 5 exhibits the profiles on 
 the second day after conference; and Figure 6, the profiles at 
 the end of the period of observation. Inspection of the series will 
 
 TABLE VII 
 JAN. 22-23 FEB. 7 MARCH II 
 A B A B A B 
 ' Percentage of application........... 67 84 95 89 gt 87 
 Number of distractions............- 13 10 5 12 5 8 
 Mean span of application........... 61 IOI 190 79 218 130 
 
 Range in span of application........ 10-250] 20-410]70—420] 20-160|80-390} 20-345 
 
 reveal the improvement both in quantity and quality of applica- 
 tion. If the whole series of profiles were exhibited, it would be 
 seen that there were fluctuations from day to day, but that, on 
 the whole, the trend was upward. The improvement is shown 
 more exactly in Table VII. 
 
 Student A shows a distinct and sustained improvement in 
 both quality and quantity of application. She increases her per- 
 centage of application markedly and decreases the number of 
 her distractions. She improves her mean span of application and 
 her shorter periods of application. In other words, she studies 
 more and studies more steadily. Her chief remaining opportuni- 
 ties for improvement are: (1) to decrease the number of distrac- 
 tions, for she still allows herself to be interrupted at the rate of 
 fifteen times in every hour; (2) to increase her shorter periods 
 of application. 
 
 Student B improves somewhat, but not much, in both quan- 
 

 
 SUSTAINED APPLICATION 145 
 
 A. Jan. 23 20 minutes B. Jan. 22. 
 
 
 
 Slow in getting started Conversation 
 
 Fixes hair 
 
 Talks to girls 
 
 Conversation 
 
 Vacantly gazing about | 
 Stares about 
 
 Conversation 
 Conversation 
 
 Stares about 
 
 Gazes at doings in 
 front of room 
 
 
 
 Watches teacher with Speaks to neighbor! 
 
 another pupil —| 
 
 
 
 FIG. 4 
 
146 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tity and quality. Reference to the behavior record of March 11 
 shows her outstanding faults: She is still too much interested 
 in her neighbors, and she is inclined to depend somewhat on the 
 teacher. By concentrating on these points, the teacher can rap- 
 idly train her to full voluntary absorption. 
 
 Neither girl exhibits the dawdling profile of the pupil pic- 
 tured in Figure r. 
 
 Observations were made on these two pupils by a regular 
 teacher two months after Miss Morgan’s last observation. The 
 new observations covered fifty minutes instead of twenty min- 
 
 TABLE VIII 
 
 May i5 
 Percentage of application........ 89 
 Number of distractions.......... 7 
 Mean span of application........ 156 
 
 Range in span of application..... 10-620 
 
 
 
 utes, and the test conditions were therefore much more exacting. 
 Tabulation of results is presented in Table VIII. 
 
 The numbers of distractions in the May profiles are reduced 
 to the number per twenty minutes, in order to make them com- 
 parable with the numbers shown by the January, February, and 
 March profiles. Otherwise the figures for May are on a basis of 
 fifty minutes. 
 
 During the period which elapsed between March 11 and 
 May I5, no training whatever was given. The sustained appli- 
 cation shown by the profiles was purely that which had been 
 established earlier. The distinctly better record made on May 
 16 may very probably have been due to the fact that the pupils 
 discovered that they were under observation once more and 
 spurted. Nevertheless, if we compare the records of May 15 
 with those of March 11 and then with those of January 22-23, 
 
SUSTAINED APPLICATION 147 
 
 A. Feb. 7 20 minutes B. Feb. 7 
 
 Rubs eyes and watches [ 
 
 teacher 
 Conversation 
 
 Relief 
 Relief points points 
 
 Talks to girls 
 
 Fic. 5 
 
148 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 there can be little doubt that we have here a true learning prod- 
 uct—a volitional adaptation. 
 
 It will be recalled that at the beginning of the period of train- 
 ing, A was one of the slowest pupils in the class. As a matter of 
 fact, she was consistently one of the slowest three. At the end of 
 the period, there were only three pupils who learned more rap- 
 idly. At the beginning, B was somewhat below the middle of the 
 class; at the end, she was somewhat better for she was among 
 the eleven of a class of twenty-four who worked most rapidly. 
 More than that, the class group had been drawn somewhat 
 closer together by simply training one of the slowest pupils out 
 of her bad habits of work, thus effecting not only substantial 
 progress in the education of an individual but likewise an econo- 
 my in the group teaching of a class. To the extent of improve- 
 ment in one laggard, mastery for the group became more possi- 
 ble, the need of sectioning the group was decreased, and better 
 progress for the group as a whole became possible. 
 
 A represents a simple case of corrective teaching. She is not 
 handicapped by gaps in her intellectual background, by physical 
 inhibitions, by low mentality, nor by any other of a multitude of 
 possible obstacles to learning. All that was needed was to cor- 
 rect her scatter-brain ways. B presents a slightly different con- 
 dition for she was somewhat weak in arithmetic. Nevertheless, 
 with a small improvement in her sustained application, she rises 
 into the half of the class which works more rapidly and, as a 
 matter of fact, at optimum speed. She is still subject to improve- 
 ment in correctable details. 
 
 It is far from true that training always turns out this way. 
 Sometimes we find a pupil who is a definite remedial case in the 
 whole volitional field—usually a spoiled child. Other and addi- 
 tional measures are then required. Again a pupil is found who, 
 in spite of poor sustained application, does creditable work. 
 Usually the indication is that he has not enough to do and should 
 either be transferred to a faster section or interested in a volun- 
 tary project. The crux of good teaching is not to accept the pro- 
 
SUSTAINED APPLICATION 149 
 
 A. March 11 20 minutes B. March 11 
 
 Slow in starting 
 
 Interrupted by neigh- 
 bor 
 
 Interrupted by neigh- 
 bor 
 
 Conversation 
 Speaks to neighbor 
 
 Waits for teacher 
 
 Neighbor interrupts 
 
 Watches teacher 
 
 Speaks to neighbor 
 
 
 
 Fic. 6 
 
150 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 file as it stands but rather to interpret it in terms of the pupil 
 profiled. 
 
 Should all pupils be subjected to the same individual train- 
 ing? In theory, yes; in practice, it need not be necessary. In the 
 first place, a considerable number train themselves. Further, the 
 teacher can usually train the group in the same manner in which 
 A has been trained. Suppose, for instance, after securing the 
 profile of A for January 23, the teacher had placed the profile on 
 the board, without naming the pupil, and had talked to the class 
 as a whole much as he talked to A. With many of the pupils in a 
 class containing many A’s, the improvement would have been as 
 marked as in her case. The problem with every class, from the 
 grade level at which pupils begin to study, onward, is to bring 
 every pupil up to the level of the absorption profile, not only 
 because that is a fundamental step in the pupil’s education and 
 in developing his ability to study, but also because it necessarily 
 brings about economy in the process of group instruction. In 
 practice, the teacher can survey his class and determine by in- 
 spection the pupils who need no specific training and likewise 
 those who are in this respect problem cases. The latter being 
 identified, corrective training is carried on in the manner which 
 we have described. 
 
 A record of sustained application is one of the first steps in 
 the diagnosis of a remedial case assigned for special treatment. 
 In a large percentage of such cases, poor application is asso- 
 ciated with, if not originally responsible for, the maladjustment 
 which eventually requires remedial treatment. This is particu- 
 larly true when the maladjustment is purely experiential in char- 
 acter, that is, where there are gaps or half-learnings in the edu- 
 cational history. There is little likelihood of lasting adjustment 
 unless this fundamental defect is corrected as well as the other 
 defects which are the immediate occasion of trouble. 
 

 
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CHAPTER X 
 INTRODUCTION TO OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 
 
 Y “operative technique” we mean that phase of the teach- 
 B ing process in which the units of learning are developed 
 in the class and in the individuals thereof. It includes 
 presentations of one sort or another, the supervision of study, 
 the testing of the pupils for the adaptations which the learning 
 units contemplate, identification of pupil problems, and correc- 
 tive teaching. Why distinguish different phases of the teaching 
 
 process, such as control technique and operative technique? 
 If we should lead ourselves thereby into the habit of looking 
 
 upon the two phases as essentially disparate and successive, the 
 
 effect would indeed be unfortunate. Good control technique is 
 the foundation of good operative technique, but poor operative 
 technique may make good control difficult or impossible. For 
 instance, daily lesson-hearing is a poor form of operative tech- 
 nique, and sustained attention is exceedingly difficult under that 
 procedure. On the other hand, devotees of that view of interest 
 which makes of it little more than educational pleasure-seeking 
 frequently adopt an operative technique which buries the fun- 
 damental volitional adaptations implied by sustained attention 
 and sustained application under a mass of pupil self-indulgence. 
 Their operative technique is often brilliant and showy, but es- 
 sentially non-educative. And so the two phases of teaching are 
 closely interrelated as is indeed administrative technique, to be 
 discussed later, with both. Nevertheless, it is useful to distin- 
 guish the several aspects of teaching for a variety of reasons, 
 among which may be mentioned the following. 
 
 In the first place, to do so enables us to think more clearly 
 and more precisely about the process of teaching itself. It isa 
 great help, in orderly and clear thinking about matters which are 
 
 153 
 
154 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 at best complicated, to be able to analyze the subject of our 
 thoughts in significant ways, to deal with each part by itself, and 
 then to see the interrelationships of the several parts. 
 
 In a practical sense, it is useful because it makes it easier 
 to locate and correct teaching troubles. We have seen that the 
 first step in dealing with a problem case, or indeed with a poor 
 class, is to investigate the control technique. We can often cor- 
 rect trouble at that point. If we find the control technique good, 
 we can eliminate that whole region, and proceed successively to 
 the fields of operative and administrative technique, each of 
 which we shall find to be capable of analysis. 
 
 The five types of teaching which we have enumerated in 
 chapter vi are the subject matter of Part III. The differences in 
 operative technique from type to type are a great deal more im- 
 portant than the features common to all types, but we must note 
 certain underlying general principles which are frequently vio- 
 lated, with results fatal to that attainment of the learning units 
 which we have called “mastery.” 
 
 THE LEARNING CYCLE > 
 
 The first of these principles we shall designate as the learn- 
 ing cycle of stimulus, assimilation, and reaction. The cycle is 
 apparently the process through which all adjustments to en- 
 vironment at the level of human consciousness are made. That 
 is to say, educational adaptations arise through the learning cy- 
 cle. In order to make our meaning concrete, we may perhaps 
 use that never failing source of illustration, the care of an auto- 
 mobile. | 
 
 After purchasing the first car, most of us go through rather 
 a futile period of lesson-learning with the book of instructions. 
 After a time, as we drive over the country roads, we become irri- 
 tated by the unsatisfactory behavior of the machine. It skips, 
 balks, and refuses to climb hills as it should. The stimulus cul- 
 minates, and we resolve to find out what is the matter. Now 
 follows a period of experience-getting or assimilation. We exam- 
 

 
 OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 155 
 
 ine the engine, read the book of instructions, discuss our trou- 
 bles with our friends, vaguely experiment with this feature and 
 that, reflecting at every step. Finally, the explanation dawns 
 upon us, and assimilation culminates. We now react to our the- 
 ory, make the appropriate adjustment in the mechanism, and 
 peace once more enters the soul. We have acquired a new intel- 
 lectual attitude to that general region of automobile mechanics 
 from which the stimulus came. When the same symptoms recur 
 later, we proceed directly and intelligently to remedy the trou- 
 ble. Now, we might have balked the learning process at either 
 of two points. After experiencing the stimulus, we might have 
 driven the car into a garage and paid for having it adjusted. We 
 should have restored our mental equilibrium, so far as that par- 
 ticular experience was concerned, but we should have learned 
 nothing. Quite likely we should have acquired a stimulus in the 
 field of economics. Again, after having become satisfied with 
 our explanation, we might have employed a mechanic to correct 
 the trouble. Our learning would have remained a vague memory 
 of an experience. When we have located trouble, accounted for 
 it, and eliminated it ourselves, the whole emotional coloring is 
 quite different from that which is experienced when we have 
 stopped with our assimilative hypothesis. We experience a sense 
 of reality and assurance. 
 
 The vital importance of the reaction member of the cycle as 
 a part of the learning process can be realized by most teachers, 
 if they will reflect upon their intellectual grasp of what they 
 have taught as compared with their hold upon what they have 
 covered in school or college but never taught. We often make a 
 subject our own for the first time when we teach it. The expla- 
 nation is found in the principle that then for the first time we 
 pass through the réaction member of the learning cycle. 
 
 Schoolroom procedure frequently omits the stimulus mem- 
 ber. The pupil is brought into the presence of the new learning 
 in a purely passive state, without curiosity, desire, or any other 
 immediate incentive. He delves into the experience which is as- 
 
156 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 sumed to be appropriate without mental focalization upon the 
 learning unit intended by the teacher. He may encounter a stim- 
 ulus in the study period which will start a learning cycle, but 
 whether or not the learning process thus started will lead to the 
 learning intended is largely a matter of chance. 
 
 Experience which might be assimilation under systematic 
 teaching is seldom omitted, but, under the textbook, daily-lesson 
 practice, such experience is seldom focused upon the unit of 
 learning intended. Performance at the daily task is mistaken for 
 study. Again, if any learning results, it is casual rather than 
 systematic, and directed to a definite learning objective. It may 
 well be that we have here the fundamental explanation of the 
 pedagogical phenomena noted in chapter iv in our discussion of 
 lesson-learning, and perhaps the explanation of the chance dis- 
 tribution of pupil attainments so often encountered in the 
 schools and thought by some to be the inevitable characteristic 
 of group learning. 
 
 The reaction member is commonly omitted altogether, until 
 some chance experience in life calls for the relearning of the ma- 
 
 terial studied in school and the establishment of the adaptation _ 
 in a real reaction. Such is apparently the case when we come to 
 
 teach half-learned principles or processes, already used in illus- 
 tration. ) 
 We can scarcely hope to establish the learning cycle, in the _ 
 more or less artificial conditions of the schoolroom, in the vigor 
 which characterizes it when it occurs under natural conditions. 
 Nevertheless we can do much. After all, learning under the hit- 
 or-miss conditions of nature is a wasteful affair, and the individ- 
 ual is perhaps only slightly more likely to learn the truth than to 
 learn falsehood. On the other hand, the learning of the school — 
 can be made systematic, the needed objectives can be conscious- 
 
 ly and definitely selected, and what the learning of the school 
 
 loses in point of vigor can be much more than made up in the 
 systematic methods which the school is able to employ. In the _ 
 
 
 
OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 154 
 
 operative technique with which we shall deal, an effort is made 
 to give due heed to the requirements of the learning cycle. The 
 cycle is much more obvious in the science type, in which indeed 
 it is perhaps most imperative. It is only less obvious in the ap- 
 preciation and practical-arts types. In the language arts and 
 pure practice, the three members of the cycle tend to coalesce, 
 but they are none the less present and their importance cannot 
 safely be ignored. 
 
 PRINCIPLE OF INITIAL DIFFUSE MOVEMENTS 
 
 The second of the important general principles upon which 
 operative technique in all the types of teaching is based is the 
 principle of initial diffuse movements. The operation of the 
 principle can perhaps be most clearly pictured by an illustration 
 from the pure-practice type, learning to skate let us say. In the 
 learner’s early attempts, his whole body passes through a series 
 of violent contortions. Not only do his legs perform random 
 movements unrelated to the ultimate needs of the art, but his 
 arms swing wildly, his body jerks backward and forward in fu- 
 tile attempts to maintain equilibrium, his face quite likely is 
 contorted in grimaces, he repeatedly loses balance and falls. 
 The expert bystander gives him specific instructions which are 
 not only useless but irritating. He perseveres, however, and 
 soon his movements begin to co-ordinate, the useless are elimi- 
 nated, and eventually he can skate. He has reached what we 
 may call the ‘skating adaptation.” If now he wishes to become 
 expert, he must begin to acquire skill at the level of his adapta- 
 tion through conscious refinements and practice. 
 
 The working of the principle is perhaps best seen in the 
 learning of ordinary neuro-muscular adjustments, but it applies 
 equally to learning in all types. The infant in learning to talk 
 gives us a particularly good illustration. For a time he apparent- 
 ly tries to talk with his whole body. When he later acquires a 
 foreign tongue, though his unregulated movements may be less 
 
158 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 diffuse, he learns, if he learns at all, in much the same blunder- 
 ing fashion. The pupil who grows into an appreciation of a 
 superior quality of reading material does so through long experi- 
 mentation with relatively inferior material which for a long time 
 meets his fancy. The student who grapples with a law of phys- 
 ics, or a movement in history, or a principle in teaching, makes 
 it his own only after much vague experience-getting, catching 
 a meaning here, failing to get one there, reflecting, and finally 
 catching the vision from which all nonessentials have been elim- 
 inated. 
 
 The principle is frequently violated in teaching because of 
 the teacher’s obsession for having everything right the first time. 
 The teacher of handwriting in the early grades who identifies 
 the elements of successful penmanship and builds up a series of 
 artificial skills out of these simply produces a lesson-learner 
 whose handwriting usually goes to pieces in high school, as na- 
 ture reasserts her demand that the pupil shall build his adapta- 
 tion on his inherited complex of neuro-muscular tendencies, in 
 much the way in which he has built his characteristic walking 
 gait. The teacher of English composition who conceives it to be 
 her mission to train pupils in correct usage apart from an abun- 
 dant volume of free writing, all of it designed to express mean- 
 ing and most of it inexpressibly crude for a long time, usually © 
 fails to secure either correct or incorrect expression. Far better — 
 that the pupil should say “ain’t” than that he should say nothing 
 at all. The teacher of mathematics who inculcates a principle, ‘ 
 hears his class recite, grades their responses, and passes on to 
 
 another principle, without giving ample opportunity for experi- _ 
 mentation with the application of the principle, commonly suc- 
 ceeds in producing pupils whose mathematics is good until 
 
 examination day but not beyond. The law of initial diffuse _ 
 movements spells patience, abundant assimilative practice or — 
 
 experience for the pupil, and a realization that early blunders © | 
 
 are signs of learning health rather than evidences of failure. 
 
 
 
OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 159 
 
 IDENTIFICATION OF THE TEACHING OBJECTIVES 
 
 The third of our cardinal principles is identification of the 
 objectives of teaching. The principle seems so obvious as hard- 
 ly to be worth noting. Nevertheless, it is so commonly ignored 
 or misconceived in practice that we have felt justified in devot- 
 ing a considerable part of this volume to emphasis upon its im- 
 portance and to tracing the nature of the various kinds of ob- 
 jectives. 
 
 While there is apparently marked progress in the critical 
 study and evaluation of the objectives of the curriculum, there 
 is little evident progress in determining the teaching objectives 
 implied by those of the curriculum. It is one thing, for instance, 
 to decide whether or not the use of the French language is a de- 
 sirable curriculum objective; it is quite another to fix in our 
 minds the specific learning and teaching objectives which the 
 use of the language implies, if we teach it at all. Again, it is one 
 thing to conclude that ability to organize and use social facts 
 effectively in arriving at conclusions is a desirable piece of cur- 
 - riculum content; it is quite another to set up a series of teaching 
 objectives through which the desired ability can definitely be se- 
 cured in the individual. 
 
 In the great majority of classrooms which one visits and in 
 the great majority of programs of study which one reads, there 
 are, strictly speaking, no teaching objectives set up. We are apt 
 to find instead a list of things to be done, or a syllabus of ground 
 to be covered, evidently in the hope that the pupil will learn 
 something as he passes through the routine. “‘We have fractions 
 in Grade V”’ or “‘College English in Grade XII” is about as near 
 _assuch schools approach the identification of their teaching ob- 
 jectives. | | 
 
 Now, if we look upon all learning, and indeed education it- 
 self, as a series of adaptations to be made in the learner, we must 
 evidently have definite and comprehensible objectives to be 
 mastered. We cannot apply our formula, ‘Teach, test, and re- 
 teach,” unless we can have a definite unit of learning to which 
 
160 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 it can be applied. In whatever type we are teaching, the critical 
 question always is, What new attitude or ability am I trying to 
 bring about in these pupils? not, What is the textbook content 
 to be covered this term? The objectives of teaching change from 
 type to type as the nature of the adaptations desired changes, 
 but always and everywhere the starting-point of operative tech- 
 nique is the determination of the teaching objectives. Nor is it 
 an easy matter. Most of them can be found only after thorough 
 study, the application of.all the insight of which the teacher is 
 possessed, and then experimental teaching. 
 
 DIRECT TEACHING 
 
 The fourth of the general principles which are applicable in 
 all types of operative technique is that of direct teaching. 
 This term has found its place in our pedagogical terminology 
 in its application to a method in foreign-language teaching. 
 There it signifies the development of the power to use the lan- 
 guage as a form of discourse by practice in such use rather than 
 an approach through the study of language structure. The ap- 
 propriateness of the term “direct method” lies in the principle 
 that the method proposes to attack the adaptation desired, in 
 this case a reading or speaking or writing ability, directly instead 
 of through an intermediate form of learning, in this case lan- 
 guage structure or grammar. The latter is in effect one form 
 of lesson-learning and attainment of the adaptation in that way 
 is, as we have seen, a matter of chance. People who have expe- 
 rienced the process in their own school careers can usually bear 
 witness to the truth of the assertions just made. Direct teaching 
 is not, however, confined to language learning. It applies equally 
 well to all learning. In the practical arts it has been very largely 
 the theory of teaching used from the beginning. In the shop or 
 the dressmaking-room, pupils do not read or listen to lectures 
 about the processes which they are desired to learn and pass ex- 
 aminations on what they can remember. They learn “by doing,” 
 
OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 161 
 
 which is another expression which has crept into the terminol- 
 ogy of teaching and which implies the same pedagogical princi- 
 ple which we find elsewhere signified by the term “direct meth- 
 od.” The principle is precisely as applicable to the teaching of 
 science or mathematics or history as to the teaching of French 
 or auto mechanics. In the first three subjects just mentioned, 
 the contrast is between centering all teaching and study directly 
 upon a major unit of understanding, such, for instance, as ““The 
 Germ Theory of Disease,” or ‘““The Westward Movement,” and 
 assigning indefinite reading material and exercises from a text- 
 book in the hope that the pupils will eventually know their his- 
 tory or their biology. 
 
 Teaching which aims at the objective directly, records pupil 
 performance, and then passes on is however only half direct 
 teaching. The more essential half is found in the principle of 
 corrective teaching or the application of the testing and reteach- 
 ing members of the mastery formula. Apart from corrective in- 
 struction, there is fundamentally no systematic teaching at all 
 but only the administration of one form of intelligence test. 
 
 STUDY 
 
 The fifth of our fundamental principles is that of study. 
 We have stated and often reiterated the principle that in so far 
 as the secondary school fails to train pupils how to study, devel- 
 ops in them the inclination to attack their world through study 
 and finally makes them capable of formulating their own prob- 
 lems and studying at the level of self-dependence, it fails alto- 
 gether. Apart from this contribution, it might as well leave them 
 with the primary adaptations and trust them to secure adjust- 
 ment to their world through the aid of the newspaper, the pe- 
 riodical, and such books as they can find. 
 
 Now, a large part of the contact which the pupil makes with 
 the present-day school is not study at all, but what we may per- 
 haps call “education by propaganda.” The school-health pro- 
 
162 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 gram is a good illustration. Here we have all sorts of talks by 
 teachers, posters, lithographs, even vaudeville performances, in 
 
 the interest of good health. In so far as the objective is to induce 
 pupils to take better care of their health, the objective in itself 
 
 is worthy and the technique is certainly effective. Other forms 
 
 of this sort of thing are thrift campaigns, good-English weeks, 
 
 ' selling Latin to the pupils, patriotism, cleanup and paint weeks, 
 
 the city beautiful, and so on in an endless series. Far be it from 
 
 us to decry either the worthiness of most of these purposes or the 
 technique used in securing them. In many instances, that is the | 
 most economical way in which an immediately desired objective _ 
 can be realized. Only, it is not training pupils to study and not ~ 
 leading them into the inclination and the ability to attack their | 
 world through study. In so far as the school conceives such de- 
 vices to be the essence of teaching, it will fail in its supreme task 
 of generating citizens who are capable of independent thinking. 
 The psychology employed is that of the advertiser, and it is a ; 
 sorry society which is borne along at the beck of a multitude of ( 
 special and often selfish interests each seeking its own ends 
 through the use of advertisements and other forms of propa- 
 ganda. 
 
 Each of the five types of teaching discussed in the chapters 
 which follow has its own method of study, ranging in importance 
 from that of the science type, in which learning is very largely 
 a matter of study, to pure practice, in which study is at its sim- 
 plest and minimum. In each of the five types, the mission of the 
 teacher is in the end to put the pupil in effective control of the 
 learning methods peculiar to the type. At the level of education- _ 
 al self-dependence, the student can use the method of study © 
 which is appropriate to his problem, and he has the resolution 
 needed to launch him in new learning. If he needs a new process 
 in mathematics, he knows how to secure command thereof. If — 
 he needs the use of a new language, he knows how to acquire it 
 in the most expeditious and economical fashion. i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 163 
 
 APPERCEPTIVE MASS 
 
 A sixth principle fundamental to all operative technique is 
 that of the establishment of adequate apperceptive mass. 
 
 We learn the new in terms of the old; hence the pre-eminent 
 justification of the term “assimilation.” It is probably impos- 
 sible to acquire either new ideas or new abilities absolutely de 
 novo. The new must have a point of connection in the existing 
 experience or else in the existing instinctive equipment of the 
 learner. It follows that, other things being equal, the pupil will 
 learn most readily and most effectively whose background of 
 early experience is most nearly a complete horizon, such that 
 any line of needed adjustment will always find its appropriate 
 starting-point somewhere in the pupil’s apperceptive mass of 
 organized or unorganized intellectual content, information, and 
 incipient interests. 
 
 It is altogether probable that individual differences in learn- 
 ing capacity, which are so noticeable among the pupils of any 
 class, are traceable to differences in apperceptive background 
 as much as to any one cause. Some children come from homes in 
 which there is an abundance of reading material and a tradition 
 of discussing books in the family circle. Others have scarcely 
 encountered the printed page outside of school. Some have had 
 the varied experiences of village and small-city life. The expe- 
 rience of others is of the narrow sort peculiar to the city streets 
 _ or to the meager environment of an isolated farm. Others still, 
 quite likely some of those who have enjoyed the good fortune of 
 homes of abundant reading, have had only the restricted expe- 
 _ rience of the large-city apartment house and yard with an occa- 
 sional trip to a city park. The experiential horizon of some is a 
 complete circle. They have enjoyed wholesome, healthy lives in 
 a normal environment of child society and contact with nature. 
 In the cases of others the horizon is simply a more or less re- 
 stricted segment of the circle. Unless the deficiency is made 
 good, they can at the best be only specialists from the beginning. 
 Outside their segment they are too ignorant to learn. 
 
164 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Some children bring to school not only restricted, segmented, 
 experiential backgrounds but apperceptive masses which are 
 perverted as well. 
 
 Through overmuch travel and hotel life or a surfeit of mov- 
 ing pictures, some have had such an excess of experience that 
 definite problems in the learning process are created. In the lab- 
 oratory, an occasional reading problem in the primary school is 
 traced to such an excess of artificial experience that any possible 
 learning to read is inhibited by the child’s blasé lack of curiosity 
 about what he reads. Ih content, his experience requires the 
 reading material which is suited, perhaps, to the junior high 
 school. In reading ability, he is at the same stage as his con- 
 temporaries in the kindergarten or first grade, that is, he cannot 
 read at all. 
 
 The child of the slum, or of the vicious home and neighbor- 
 hood outside the slum, is apt to bring to school such a stock of 
 perverted ideas that much of his later learning, instead of pro- 
 ducing the adjustments intended, produces instead curiously 
 perverted adjustments. Nor are learning perversions confined 
 to the classes just named. Especially in the adolescent period, 
 careless and thoughtless and immature teachers or parents 
 sometimes allow children to come in contact with vicious litera- 
 ture or with revelations, more or less scientific in character, 
 which the children are not yet sufficiently mature to assimilate 
 and justly evaluate, with the result that the young people come 
 to build up twisted apperceptive masses purely pathological in 
 character. To such, even murder may look reasonable and 
 proper. 
 
 A very fundamental condition of effective operative tech- 
 nique is then the establishment in all pupils of apperceptive 
 masses which are normal and so well rounded that the pupil will 
 not encounter learning to which he is an entire stranger. The 
 child experience must further be brought into what may perhaps 
 be called “literary form.” In the case of children of the city 
 streets, especially, the experience has been received and is ex- 
 
OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 165 
 
 pressed in the form of a patois. The child has a patois mind, as 
 far as content is concerned, and the books which he begins to 
 encounter belong to another world. 
 
 The capacity of the school to fill up the rich and wholesome 
 round of child experience which is outside of books is of course 
 limited. Children who grow up in villages, or thickly settled 
 rural districts, and in small cities are, other things being equal, 
 the fortunate ones of their kind. The great city and the isolated 
 farm alike will probably never be able to give a satisfactory sub- 
 stitute, although the modern city with its playgrounds and parks 
 does the best it can. 
 
 We shall perhaps be justified in using some space to point 
 out ways in which the school life as a whole can be organized to 
 meet this very fundamental need. 
 
 In the first place, either an effective kindergarten system or 
 a satisfactory substitute is essential, and, as far as the present 
 author knows, no satisfactory substitute has been developed. 
 The modern kindergarten, divested of the earlier mysticism, 
 provides in substance what the best of homes should provide and 
 ordinarily cannot. In its motor activities, it supplies a kind of 
 experience which many city children entirely lack and to which 
 most are strangers in greater or less degree. In its stories, ex- 
 cursions, and other similar activities, it supplies an informa- 
 tional background which the cultivated home of leisure could 
 doubtless supply but which it seldom does supply. In its con- 
 trolled group life it furnishes a background for the primary so- 
 cial adaptations which no home, in this day of small families, 
 can ever hope to set up and which few homes in which large 
 families are found are qualified to supply. To be sure, the neigh- 
 borhood life in sections in which there are several cultivated 
 families is sometimes able to provide something of a substitute, 
 but it is to be noted that such sections are usually the most ear- 
 nest advocates of the kindergarten. The tenement neighbor- 
 hoods with their swarming children are apt to provide simply a 
 social jungle in which child individualism runs rampant. The 
 
266 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 kindergarten is or should be the dominant feature of the pri- 
 mary school. The present tendency to characterize the period as 
 “kindergarten-primary” is a happy augury. 
 
 In the second place, the process of teaching children to read, 
 in its early stages, should be related to the actual experience of 
 the children concerned, and in its later stages the books supplied 
 to the children should be rich in informational content. Experi- 
 mentation shows that children learn to read most effectively and 
 economically in that way rather than by perusal of the history of 
 the feuds of the family cat with the rodent pests of the house- 
 hold, or of the doings of the phonetic Dan, Fan, and Nan. If the 
 school will come to realize that the essential purpose of teaching 
 children to read is to teach them to want to read rather than to 
 develop proficiency in oral reading for exhibition purposes, it 
 will provide, even in the primary-rooms, an abundance of free 
 reading, books of all grades of difficulty which individual chil- 
 dren can use, aS curiosity and their newly acquired ability 
 prompt. 
 
 Third, every school should center about a library or read- 
 ing-room plentifully stocked with children’s reading of an in- 
 formational character as well as with child literature. In the 
 -high school and junior college, this library may well contain 
 some material of a somewhat formidable character. If foreign 
 language is taught, then the library should have an abundance 
 of informational material in the languages taught. Children 
 should be released for free reading whenever opportunity serves, 
 and we shall find many such opportunities. The pupils should 
 have free access to the shelves and not be inhibited by the for- 
 malism of the typical library routine. Doubtless this practice 
 will result in the loss of some books but loss can be reduced to a 
 minimum, and the comparatively small annual cost traceable to 
 this item is, after all, a productive cost. Every such room should 
 be in charge of a teacher especially qualified by natural gifts or 
 special training for the purpose. 
 
 Much might be written concerning the selection of books 
 
OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 167 
 
 for such free-reading tables and rooms. We shall comment on 
 but two points. 
 
 As soon as children learn to read, they are apt to find contact 
 with that destroyer of all intellectual vigor, the cheap juvenile. 
 We have not in mind the positively vicious book, but rather the 
 type which is merely of passing interest and a portrayal of an 
 impossible boy or girl life. The practical effect of such books 
 seems to be that, far from creating a desire for better things, 
 they lead the pupil into an actual intellectual perversion in 
 which he will read nothing which requires mental effort of any 
 sort. The school cannot prevent children from falling victims 
 to the unwise selections of books which parents make and the 
 
 _cupidity of bookstores makes possible, but it can avoid estab- 
 
 lishing such contacts itself. By wise selection and guidance, it 
 
 can establish reading interests which will in many cases substi- 
 
 tute genuine interests for this form of childish self-indulgence. 
 Another type of book which should find no place in the 
 school library shelves, particularly in the high school, is the 
 decadent literature of which many sex novels, poems, and 
 dramas are types. Whatever value the critic of literary crafts- 
 manship may attach to such material, it certainly has no place in 
 education. There is much of the beast still left in humanity, and 
 the portrayal of the beast may require as perfect a sense of lit- 
 erary structure as does the revelation of the ideal, but that is no 
 reason for stimulating the primitive instincts of developing 
 youth, which it is the highest function of education to sublimate. 
 Much reading of such books seems to achieve the educational 
 result which one would antecedently expect; it adjusts the young 
 person backward toward the primitive type. He comes to ex- 
 hibit the moral attitudes characteristic of the remote pagan 
 world. In some cases, apparently, there is induced such a com- 
 plete adaptive reversion that the result is tantamount to insan- 
 ity. Again, the school cannot prevent children from coming in 
 contact with such books, but it can avoid providing the contacts 
 
168 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 itself and it can furnish a counteracting and constructive type of 
 reading. 
 
 In the third place, the school should furnish an abundance 
 of extra-classroom informational and other educational stimuli, 
 of which the following are illustrations. 
 
 The thoughtful and resourceful room teacher maintains a 
 bulletin board on which she collects from time to time a wealth 
 of clippings and pictures of an informational type calculated not 
 only to add to the pupil’s apperceptive mass but also to arouse 
 intellectual interests of various sorts. The elementary-school 
 reading-room especially should emphasize this feature. Most 
 high-school classrooms can effectively serve the same purpose, 
 and of course the high-school library can elaborate almost in- 
 definitely. Even in the junior college, with students who are 
 high-school graduates and in one of the subjects supposed to be 
 the least susceptible of this kind of elaboration, namely, modern 
 language, the bulletin board has been found to be a popular and 
 useful aid. 
 
 Perhaps the most comprehensive of the schoolroom subjects 
 in its service of educative adjustment is geography, and, because 
 of its very comprehensiveness, it is singularly dependent upon 
 the building up of an extensive informational background. It is 
 a sheer impossibility to teach geography effectively with a single 
 text or series of texts. Hence, there should be presented to the 
 pupil, especially in the elementary school, an abundance of geo- 
 graphical material apart from the textbooks and outside the 
 geography period. Before the days of rolled-up maps, when 
 maps were a familiar and permanent feature of every school- 
 room, hanging always in plain view on its walls, the pupil ac- 
 quired a foundation for geographical thinking which is seldom 
 found in the modern school. Whenever the pupil looked up from 
 his work, his eyes rested on maps which exhibited the main fea- 
 tures of the earth’s land forms and political divisions. Before 
 long he had acquired a series of visual images to which much of 
 
OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 169 
 
 his geographical thinking would naturally refer. Not so with a 
 pupil whose visual imagery in geography is the vague and un- 
 certain thing which has been acquired by occasional glances at 
 small and inadequate maps in the textbook and rare glimpses of 
 maps briefly unrolled from the cases on the wall. 
 
 What applies to geography applies with equal force to 
 charts, tables, lithographs, and the like, illustrative of history, 
 mathematics, natural science, and public health. 
 
 The school playground is of course an obvious illustration 
 of the extra-classroom appurtenances which contribute to the 
 elaboration of the pupil’s apperceptive mass. It is hence a mis- 
 take to think of the playground as being valuable only for phys- 
 ical-education purposes. If well conducted, it furnishes perhaps 
 the most essential segment of the pupil’s experiential back- 
 ground and thus contributes heavily to sane adjustment in cul- 
 tural lines which seem remote. Similarly, it is one of the most 
 available resources for the fundamental correction of perverted 
 experience. 
 
 It is a commonplace to note that the growing child, well up 
 into adolescence, requires a deal of constructive activity. Left 
 to himself, the normal boy is always making something. The 
 rural or village home is apt to provide an abundance of such op- 
 portunities, but not always. The large city home seldom does so 
 or can. The modern school attempts to meet the need in its man- 
 ual training, but classes in manual training meeting once or 
 twice a week at set periods can accomplish little although they 
 may accomplish something. Rather should the school shop be 
 open all day and before and after school for boys who find op- 
 portunity to work there, and this should continue throughout 
 the school career, from the time when the little boy wishes to 
 make a “scooter” of his own until the time when he uses the 
 engine lathe for the construction of a piece of apparatus which 
 he wishes to use in his voluntary project in physics. The paral- 
 lel opportunity for girls will readily suggest itself. 
 
170 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 To repeat the schoolmaster’s maxim: ‘We are continually 
 underrating the ability of children and overestimating their ex- 
 perience.” The rich and varied experience-getting which we 
 have urged as our sixth fundamental to operative technique is 
 the appropriate method of meeting the requirement. 
 
 With these underlying principles in mind, we shall now turn 
 to the discussion of each of the five types and to the teaching and 
 study peculiar to each. 
 
 SS 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE UNIT IN PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 
 
 HE learning process in the science type is essentially re- 
 - flection upon experience. It is the most common form in 
 
 which the process of higher adjustment of the human be- 
 ing is found, whether it be in the diffuse, casual, wasteful, and 
 often cruel experience which nature provides in the affairs of 
 everyday life, or in the systematic selected experience of the 
 school, made possible by the accumulation of a body of rational- 
 ized and systematized experience which we call “science.” The 
 most that the school can do is to bring together appropriate and 
 selected bodies of experience which themselves interpret and ex- 
 plain different aspects of the environment, and arrange such 
 experiences in the form in which reflection can be stimulated 
 and made most economical. Such is the essence of teaching in 
 this type. The school’s most, however, is nearly all; it makes the 
 difference between civilization and the rule of the jungle. 
 
 The product of learning here is a new attitude toward the 
 world in the form of understanding. The individual can now in- 
 terpret and explain some things which were before incompre- 
 hensible and toward which his attitude was the naive and irra- 
 tional attitude of passive acceptance characteristic of the child 
 and primitive man. In brief, his attitude toward what he has 
 studied becomes intelligent, whereas before it was unintelligent. 
 
 The unit in the sciences, to which the teaching process is di- 
 rectly applied, is some significant and comprehensive part or as- 
 pect of the environment or of the science which is being studied. 
 The unit mastered is a step in the immediate and direct adjust- 
 ment of the individual to his world. For instance, a unit some- 
 times employed in the teaching of elementary science is “The 
 Water Supply.” Let us analyze. 
 
 171 
 
172 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The unit is a significant and important aspect of the world 
 of well-nigh every individual who lives in a civilized society. It 
 is inclusive of the whole aspect and not a fragment. The con- 
 trasting approach is often a study of the principles of hydro- 
 statics and hydraulics and of the practical applications thereof 
 in pumps of different kinds and in systems of gravity distribu- 
 tion. The teaching technique is usually a series of lessons about 
 physical principles and their application. Under the lesson- 
 learning technique, it is matter of chance whether or not the 
 pupil really masters the principles themselves. Granted that he 
 masters the principles, it is still a matter of chance whether or 
 not he grasps their application to an understanding of this or 
 any other aspect of the world of reality. 
 
 Now selection of a comprehensive unit like this and direct 
 learning of the unit requires mastery of all the principles which 
 are essential to the appropriate understanding, but only the es- 
 sential principles. For instance, the general principles upon 
 which pumps operate will be one element in acquiring the unit 
 learning, but not a study of all kinds of pumps. In the former 
 case, we use the applied principle of the pump to establish an in- 
 telligent attitude toward a familiar body of experience; in the 
 other, there would be only the accumulation of a body of special 
 knowledge, which tends soon to become mere content in mem- 
 ory. In connection with the learning process, a great many facts 
 are encountered. For instance, the pupil learns that a cubic foot 
 of water under certain normal conditions has a definite and con- 
 stant weight. He probably notes the weight in pounds. It is not 
 very important that the non-professional individual should re- 
 member the weight, but it is part of the ultimate understanding 
 that he should think of water and other fluids as having constant 
 weight. If he later needs the factual information, it is a simple 
 matter to look it up. As a matter of fact, however, full and ac- 
 tual understanding proves to be a powerful mnemonic, for it is 
 apt to carry along with it the important facts which were en-— 
 countered in the achievement of the large understanding. 
 
PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 173 
 
 The unit which we have been discussing is found in the field 
 of elementary science at perhaps about the seventh- or eighth- 
 grade level for most pupils. Later it becomes desirable that the 
 learner should master the elements of physics, chemistry, and 
 biology as organized sciences. Possessed of a body of intelligent 
 attitudes toward those aspects of the common life which are in- 
 terpreted by elementary or general science, the pupil has become 
 adjusted but he has not acquired intellectual adaptability. He 
 can understand his world as it is, but not the changing world. 
 He has expanded and organized his apperceptive mass, but he 
 has not yet acquired the tools of systematic study in the field of 
 the natural sciences. For the purposes of general education, 
 toward the end of the secondary period, the sciences become 
 properly methods of thinking, of attacking and studying the en- 
 vironment. Hence, the senior high school or junior college stu- 
 dent encounters units which are significant aspects of science 
 rather than significant aspects of the environment. As an illus- 
 tration of a unit at this higher level, let us consider the unit ‘“Ox- 
 idation” in chemistry. 
 
 We might devote several days, or weeks, to acquiring infor- 
 mation about oxygen, its properties, its behavior, its place in the 
 elementary structure of matter, and much else besides. No 
 teaching is involved but only experience-getting on the part of 
 the pupil. Whether or not the pupil will thereby come to focus 
 all his information and his understanding of isolated principles 
 upon a vision of oxidation as one of the most important environ- 
 mental controls and one of the key-processes in elementary 
 chemical thought will be a matter of chance. If he does so, we 
 are content to classify him as a “bright student” with probable 
 talent in chemistry and to conclude that the Lord never intended 
 the others to be educated as far as chemistry is concerned. Oxi- 
 dation is here the significant aspect of the science and acquaint- 
 anceship with oxygen and its peculiar character but one of the 
 elements through which understanding of the unit is built up. 
 The latter may very well be assimilative material in building up 
 
174 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 intelligent attitudes in the other units as well. The other chem- 
 ical elements may or may not be serviceable as assimilative ma- 
 terial in the teaching of significant units. Their description and 
 properties as recorded in the books is organized knowledge 
 which requires no teaching. 
 
 On these principles are the units in the organized sciences 
 selected. Each must meet the test, Is this a significant contribu- 
 tion to the pupil’s intellectual tools of attack upon that aspect of 
 the world to which this science furnishes the key? 
 
 To illustrate the nature of the unit in all the subjects which 
 are teachable under the science type would require more space 
 than we have available. A series of courses for which unitary 
 organizations have been worked out is exhibited later in the 
 present chapter. We shall ask the reader, however, to bear with 
 us for one further illustration at this point, and for that purpose 
 we present the unit, “Liberty under the Law,” chosen from a 
 senior high school course in social science. 
 
 There is sometimes offered at about the level indicated a 
 course described as American history and civil government, or 
 perhaps constitutional history of the United States, or, it may 
 be, simply civics or political science. The justification of such 
 courses is usually the vague plea that young people “ought to 
 know something” about their own country and its institutions. 
 Granted the justice of the plea, there is indubitably required to 
 meet the need not one but several courses. The problem at bot- 
 tom evidently is to build up in the younger generation a series of 
 intelligent attitudes toward government in general and toward 
 American civil institutions in particular. There is hence at once 
 suggested the question, What are the significant aspects of gov- 
 ernment and of our civil institutions toward which intelligent at- 
 titudes must be established? As we canvass the field, we find 
 comparatively few such major aspects but each is of critical im- 
 portance and together they constitute the units of our course or 
 courses. One such is the unit which we cite. 
 
 It would perhaps be hard to think of a more necessary adap- 
 
PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 175 
 
 tation in the field of general education than development of the 
 attitude toward popular government and life in the Anglo-Saxon 
 civil state which the unit implies. And so the unit is set up as a 
 direct teaching objective, the subjective correlate of which in the 
 pupil is a right intellectual attitude toward a political principle 
 which many centuries of civil experimenting have demonstrated 
 and handed down to him. He comes to see that civil liberty is, 
 on the whole, a pretty definite and objective kind of thing, de- 
 termined not by assertion but by conditions deeply rooted in the 
 nature of things. In brief, he comes to sense the difference be- 
 tween liberty and license. He realizes that civil law is properly 
 something which legislatures should be endeavoring to discover 
 rather than create, and that liberty and the law go together. His 
 own civic attitude is definitely modified; he becomes capable of 
 more intelligent political opinions. 
 
 In the process of developing the unit, the teacher will make 
 a great deal of use of material, historical and other, which serves 
 to illustrate the unit. He will use a great deal of direct verbal 
 explanation. But, in the end, learning consists in attaining the 
 attitude aimed at and not a memory of the content of the docu- 
 ments or other material used in developing the unit. As a matter 
 of fact, however, here as in physical science we do tend to recall 
 as knowledge the material which has proved critical in develop- 
 ing the new attitude of which we ultimately become conscious. 
 In testing the product of learning, the teacher focuses his test 
 items upon the new attitude rather than upon the content which 
 has been used in developing the unit. 
 
 The contrasted treatment at its best is a study of perhaps 
 Magna Charta and the other great liberty documents, the ob- 
 jective of which is the content of a course. That is, the pupil 
 must be tested upon his knowledge of the documents studied. 
 If any adaptations at all arise, they are much more likely to be 
 appreciations of the human figures involved—a result no doubt 
 valuable in itselfi—than any specific and desirable social and 
 civic attitude. The result is precisely analogous to that attained 
 
176 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 in elementary science when the principles of hydraulics and 
 hydrostatics are studied rather than the water supply. The re- 
 sult is erudition, and possibly some incidental moral growth, 
 rather than social adjustment. At the worst, the contrasted 
 treatment is a memoriter learning of the Federal Constitution, 
 the results of which abide until examination day but no longer. 
 
 There is thus pointed out the distinction which is critical be- 
 tween the selection of the significant units of learning in subjects 
 which belongs to the science type and the discussion of isolated 
 principles which presumably might be focused upon such units 
 but which in fact are not so focused. In most cases, such unfo- 
 cused material which is found in our textbooks and in our teach- 
 ing is there because of the persistence of the logical analysis 
 stereotype brought over from the older psychology and because 
 of failure to recognize the principle that learning has laws of 
 its own which do not necessarily follow the lines of the logical 
 exhibit of material. Perhaps the point can be made somewhat 
 clearer by exhibiting differences in the organization of books. 
 
 I have before me a treatise on what used to be called “‘phys- 
 iological psychology.” It runs to twenty or more chapters, and 
 each chapter is subdivided into from sixteen to thirty-six para- 
 graphs. The chapters are for the most part simply logical divi- 
 sions of the field, and the paragraphs in a similar sense are sim- 
 ply logical subdivisions of the chapters. When a chapter gets to 
 be too long, the author cuts it off and begins his next chapter 
 under the heading, “Chapter XX—Continued.”’ It is exceeding- 
 ly difficult for the reader to get anything more out of his reading 
 than a series of unrelated, and therefore vague, notions. If the 
 reader is fortunate enough to be a member of a class in which 
 there is a teacher who organizes the material in a series of force- 
 ful lectures and class discussions, then the text may prove useful 
 as a reference-book and as assimilative material. It may prove 
 useful, but it is not likely to, for the organization itself implies 
 that the needed material at any particular point will prove 
 meager. The points covered are too many for adequate illumi- 
 
PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 177 
 
 nation of each point. A series of daily lessons from such a book 
 will produce the learning situation which we have described and 
 exhibited in chapter iv. 
 
 The modern master of expository writing first formulates 
 his central message. He then organizes an outline of the major 
 points which he thinks will best convey the message. With his 
 central message constantly in mind, he then develops his points 
 in order. In the end his book holds together, and he convinces 
 his reader. He thus tends to organize his material in terms of 
 units of understanding rather than in the form of a traditional 
 table of contents. In the new, the argument is focused upon the 
 task of creating a new point of view in the reader; in the old, the 
 book is organized in obedience to the logical arrangement of 
 material and the reader is left to learn what he can. One creates 
 a learning situation; the other does not. 
 
 The critical difference between a true unit of learning and a 
 mere chapter heading is then the difference between a significant 
 and comprehensive aspect of the environment, or of a science, 
 which can be understood, and a mere division of descriptive or 
 expository subject matter which cannot be understood except in 
 relation to other chapters which themselves stand in isolation. 
 Often the mere name of what might be a unit suggests a division 
 of the teaching into the topical, ground-to-be-covered routine. 
 To borrow an illustration from the next chapter, ‘“The World- 
 War” is often selected as a section of a course in modern history. 
 Now a teacher who has an acute sense of the nature of a teach- 
 ing unit in the science type can use properly and effectively 
 whatever is potentially a unit regardless of the title it bears. 
 Nevertheless, the title ““The World-War” suggests merely a nar- 
 rative topic, and the unwary easily find themselves trying to 
 teach or hear lessons upon a body of material which can doubt- 
 less be read, and pondered at university level, but which cannot 
 be directly understood at secondary level. If, however, we 
 change the title and call the unit “Making the World Safe for 
 Democracy,” or ‘““The End of Autocracy,” or “The Collapse of 
 
178 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the European System,” or give it some other title which ex- 
 presses the historian’s view of the nature of the conflict, a ques- 
 tion is immediately raised in the mind of the student which calls 
 for answer in terms of understanding. We thus secure a unit 
 which is capable of being taught and mastered. ‘The World- 
 War” suggests a topic; one of the other titles suggests a teach- 
 ing unit. 
 
 A matter of critical importance is the ability to distinguish 
 between the unit and its assimilative material. In the illustra- 
 tions which we have used, the isolated principles which explain 
 the flow of liquids under different conditions or the behavior of 
 the element oxygen, and isolated facts such as the weight of a 
 cubic foot of water or the atomic weight of oxygen, constitute 
 the assimilative material. Understanding of the water supply or 
 of oxidation constitutes the unit which is the objective. Most of 
 the textbooks in current use either fail to identify teachable 
 units altogether or else they set forth too many units and are 
 consequently limited in the amount of assimilative material 
 which they can present. 
 
 Teachers sometimes make the mistake of centering their 
 thoughts upon the question, ‘‘What shall I include under this 
 unit?” or “What are the minimal essentials of the unit?” Either 
 question implies the table-of-contents notion of study material 
 and the dominance in the teacher’s thinking of the information- 
 to-be-remembered stereotype. The question which suggests the 
 right conception of the nature of the unit and its assimilative 
 material is, ““What material shall I focus upon this unit in order 
 to bring about the appropriate understanding?” In response to 
 the first question, we may indeed get minimal essentials of infor- 
 mation which grouped together constitute a chapter. In re- 
 sponse to the second question, we should get a series of elements 
 of intelligibility, grasp of which, first in order and then in their 
 interrelationships, constitutes the unit and generates the under- 
 standing sought. 
 
 
 
PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 179 
 
 The situation as a whole, can perhaps be visualized through 
 diagrammatic aid (Fig. 7). 
 
 The number of teachable units, in a given course or series 
 of courses at secondary level, which is either necessary or desir- 
 able is small, but the amount of assimilative material needed for 
 each unit seems to be much greater than the ordinary textbook 
 can well supply. This outcome is strictly in accordance with the 
 principle of initial diffuse movements. The learner, who is still 
 relatively immature in the whole field, requires a great deal of 
 
 Direct teaching in oral pres 
 entation focused upon the 
 unit er 
 
 Directed study of assimilative 
 material which is focused upon 
 the unit 
 
 
 
 
 Test material focused upon the 
 
 The new attitude implied by hat 4 
 i earning product 
 
 the unit 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 FIG. 7 
 
 groping over a large and significant experiential area before he 
 can piece together the elements which illuminate the broad unit 
 which he is seeking to understand, his own individual appercep- 
 tive mass being what it is. The experienced teacher in the high 
 school, the college, or the university frequently notes in an ear- 
 nest student an expression of sudden illumination, and the latter 
 perhaps ejaculates, ‘“‘Well, I have never really understood that 
 until just now.” The truth seems to be that upon the point in 
 question the student had never secured a mere spread of assimi- 
 lative experience sufficient to establish the apperceptive con- 
 nection between his own old experience and the new truth. 
 
 The practical effect of failure to distinguish between the 
 unit itself, the true learning and teaching objective, and its as- 
 similative material is most notably manifest in the character of 
 the tests employed. If the teacher’s mind is upon the assimila- 
 tive material, he tends to test for the retention of isolated facts 
 and principles rather than for mastery of the understanding im- 
 plied by the unit. The principle is of course not peculiar to the 
 
180 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 science type. Its inconclusive and, in some respects vicious, 
 character can perhaps be seen in the following illustration. 
 
 In a given science course the teaching procedure is carried 
 out upon the textbook-assignment basis, or some modification 
 thereof, and in the course of a semester a great body of princi- 
 ples and isolated facts is accumulated. The test is now upon the 
 retention of such principles and facts. The test may be in the 
 form of a sampling of ten questions, or some other convenient 
 number, or it may be in the form of one of the more modern 
 completion, or best-answer, or true-and-false tests. The result 
 will be the familiar chance distribution because a complex of 
 chance elements is the determining factor. If no corrective 
 teaching has been done or is now done, the results will pass into 
 the school history in the form of pupils some of whom have re- 
 tained the material well, a majority vaguely, a smaller number 
 poorly, and some not at all. If, however, corrective teaching is 
 done, the chance distribution will be broken up and the problem 
 cases separated. In the end, however, in either case, the intellec- 
 tual content will be principles and facts in isolation not learned 
 in terms of their functional use in the interpretation of some sig- 
 nificant aspect of the environment. The performance may be 
 impeccable, and yet the practical-arts teachers in the same 
 school, or the science teachers at a higher level, complain that 
 the pupils “do not know their physics, or chemistry, or biology, 
 or economics.” The same set of pedagogical phenomena appears 
 in other types of teaching. The pupil scores high in handwriting 
 tests when he leaves the eighth grade, and in the tenth his writ- 
 ing is a miserable apology for penmanship. A class of elemen- 
 tary pupils wins praise at exhibitions for its remarkable draw- 
 ing, and in the high school few of them rise above childish forms 
 of graphic representation. The explanation is that in all these 
 instances performance with assimilative material or experience 
 has been to the fore and not the mastery of teachable and learn- 
 able units. 
 
 The vicious effect is seen in the principle that testing on per- 
 
PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 181 
 
 formance rather than upon learning tends to set up in the pupil 
 an entirely erroneous conception of the nature of his education. 
 The eager conformist becomes a lesson-learner and tends to get 
 farther and farther from a sense of reality and a sense of the 
 value of education as a means of discovering and adjusting him- 
 self to reality. The resolute direct learner becomes disgusted 
 and convinced of the futility of education itself. The placid in- 
 dividuals, who are always inclined to accept the world uncrit- 
 ically as they find it, conclude that education is indeed a desir- 
 able good and that its value consists in winning a diploma which 
 can be used as a key to unlock vocational possibilities. 
 
 The learning of the new unit as purely a new understanding 
 having been once mastered and tested as understanding, the pu- 
 pil is in possession of an additional intellectual implement with 
 which to apply nature’s supreme gift to man, the ability to inter- 
 pret novel situations through the exercise of the reasoning proc- 
 ess. It would be of little consequence to store the mind with 
 knowledge about oxygen and with other chemical lore. That 
 knowledge would very likely be obsolete long before the pupil 
 would have occasion to use it. The acquisition of the body of 
 concepts out of which the chemist builds his specific method of 
 interpreting the world abides and keeps pace with the advance- 
 ment of the science. An elaborate body of information about the 
 Federal Constitution and its historical background would leave 
 the learner as uneducated as before, unless that information 
 were focused upon the essential understandings which explain 
 our civil structure. Possessed of the latter, the individual has a 
 piece of critical apparatus with which he can examine the out- 
 worn stereotypes of civil behavior to which the reactionary ad- 
 heres and equally the nostrums of the political quack. And so 
 it is with all the units in the whole extensive field to which the 
 science type of teaching applies. In every case the attainment 
 of the objective is the attainment of an attitude from which rea- 
 son can be applied to the interpretation of situations which are 
 novel in the individual’s experience. The contrasting educa- 
 
182 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tional purpose is that which results only in habitual responses 
 to the present environment. The one represents education; the 
 other, regimentation. 
 
 DETERMINATION OF UNITS 
 
 How are the units in a natural or social science to be deter- 
 mined? 
 
 The pedagogical test of a unit, as we have seen, is that it 
 must be a comprehensive and significant aspect of the environ- 
 ment, or of an organized science, capable of being understood 
 rather than capable merely of being remembered. With this test 
 antecedently in view it becomes primarily the task of the teach- 
 ers of the sciences in question to set up a provisional unitary or- 
 ganization as a pedagogical hypothesis. This is no easy under- 
 taking. It requires thorough knowledge of the science itself, a 
 valid conception of the science as a factor in general education, 
 a sense of pedagogical values, and withal prolonged reflection 
 over the problem. Ordinarily, there will result even at the first 
 attempt a series of units which forms a much more satisfactory 
 basis for the conduct of the course than has the ground-to-be- 
 covered, lesson-to-be-learned procedure. 
 
 As in the case of all scientific work, the theoretical unitary 
 organization must be submitted to the test of experiment. In 
 this case, the conduct of the course itself is the experiment. If 
 the organization is a good one, it works. Ordinarily, at first it 
 works but not satisfactorily. The objective results manifested 
 by the class suggest the defects. Analysis reveals their cause and 
 intelligent modification improves the organization. And so from 
 year to year the effectiveness of the organization grows. 
 
 For the sake of illustrating the principles which have been 
 set forth in this chapter, several unitary course organizations 
 are exhibited as they have been worked out in the laboratory 
 schools. The reader should not make the mistake of accepting 
 these organizations as final or of imagining that any teacher in 
 any school can copy them and proceed. Sound teaching requires, 
 
PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 183 
 
 first, the organization of the course which is to be taught; sec- 
 ond, its organization in terms of present conditions in the school 
 rather than in terms of ultimate and desirable conditions; and, 
 third, selection of units in accordance with the materials avail- 
 able and the pupils to be taught. Rule-of-thumb will serve teach- 
 ing no better here than elsewhere. 
 
 Some of the units listed bear better titles than others; and 
 some are probably better units than others, but each can be con- 
 ceived as a unit within the terms of the definition which has been 
 given. Unless the teacher has himself achieved a clear concep- 
 tion of the nature of a unit, however, he may treat any one of 
 the units merely as a chapter of content to be memorized. 
 
 The author is frequently asked to furnish a list of the units 
 in a course in a particular subject for a particular school, or to 
 publish lists of units for all courses. Such an undertaking would 
 be as badly misconceived as would be the furnishing by a med- 
 ical school of standard treatment good for all cases of a given 
 malady. The teacher himself, or a group of teachers organized 
 for the purpose, thoroughly grounded in the unit principle and 
 well equipped with the academic content of the course, is the 
 proper agency for working out the unitary course organization. 
 
 TYPICAL COURSE ORGANIZATIONS 
 
 Elementary Science I (junior high school) 
 1. The Earth on Which You Live 
 2. Weather and Climate 
 3. Our Food Supply 
 4. Our Water Supply 
 5. Keeping in Good Physical Condition 
 6. Care and Selection of Clothing 
 7. Safeguarding Our Health 
 8. Nature and Control of Fire 
 9. Heating and Ventilating Our Buildings 
 10. Man’s Use of Building Materials 
 t1. Man’s Use of Machines 
 12. How Are Air and Water Put to Work 
 
184 
 
 13. 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Man’s Use of Steam and Exploding Gas 
 
 14. Man’s Use of Electricity 
 
 Le. 
 
 Lighting Our Buildings and Streets 
 
 Science II (junior high school) 
 
 ve 
 . How Plants Differ from Animals 
 
 . What Living Things Are Made Of 
 . How Plants and Animals Live 
 
 oO © COON NAM WwW ND 
 
 How Living Things Differ from Non-Living Things 
 
 How Living Things Are Named 
 How Plants and Animals Live Together 
 How Living Things Depend upon Their Physical Environment 
 
 . How We Are Like Other Living Things 
 
 . How We Are Unlike Other Living Things 
 
 . How Plant and Animal Life Is Improved 
 
 . How We Safeguard Our Health 
 
 . How We Safeguard the Health of Our Neighbors 
 
 Physics (normally senior high school or junior college) 
 
 i 
 . Force and Motion 
 . Work and Energy 
 . Thermometry and Expansion 
 
 La) 
 
 = 
 vo 
 
 Oo won Aum & WwW bd 
 
 The Molecular Nature of Matter 
 
 Heat 
 Magnetism 
 
 . Static Electricity 
 
 . Current Electricity 
 
 . Induced Currents 
 
 . Nature and Transmission of Sound 
 . Musical Sounds 
 
 . Nature and Propagation of Light 
 
 13‘ 
 
 Optical Instruments 
 
 Chemistry (normally senior high school or junior college) 
 
 . Nature and Composition of Matter 
 . Nature of Chemical Change 
 
 . Oxidation 
 
 . Elemental Nature of Matter 
 
 . Equivalent Weights 
 
 . Formulas and Equations 
 
PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 185 
 
 7. Solution and Colloidal State 
 8. Acids, Bases, and Salts 
 g. The Nature of Metallic Elements 
 10. The Nature of Non-Metallic Elements 
 rr. Chemical Equilibrium 
 12. The Cycle of Carbon in Nature 
 13. Periodic Classification of Elements 
 
 Biology (normally senior high school or junior college) 
 1. The Cell 
 2. Specialization of Cells in Organisms 
 3. Metabolism 
 4. Growth 
 5. Organic Response of Plants and Animals 
 6. Reproduction 
 7. Heredity 
 8. Evolution in Plants and Animals 
 
 Textiles (sixth grade)* 
 1. How to Recognize Fine Qualities in Workmanship 
 2. Understanding of Necessary Steps in Construction of Simple 
 Articles and Garments 
 3. How and Why a Girl Should Care for Her Clothing 
 4. How Spinning Is Done 
 5. How Weaving Is Done and How Patterns Develop 
 
 House Planning (normally senior high school) 
 1. Influence of Material Surroundings upon Home Atmosphere 
 2. Adjustment of Style of Architecture to Location, Topography, 
 and Climatic Conditions 
 . Relationship of Rooms 
 . Influence of Color and Design upon Beauty in the Home 
 . Architectural Problems 
 . Art and Economic Principles Which Should Govern the Plan- 
 ning of a Home 
 7. How to Visualize Individual Rooms and House Complete be- 
 fore Building 
 
 Ain > W 
 
 *The units here listed are the science-type units in a practical-arts sewing 
 course. 
 
186 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The Worker in Modern Society (senior high school or junior college) 
 What It Means to Work Together in Modern Society 
 
 . The Emergence of a Wage-earning Class 
 
 . The Worker as a Seller of Labor Power 
 
 . The Insecurities of the Worker 
 
 . The Worker’s Organization 
 
 . Personnel Management within the Business Unit 
 
 7. Regulation and Control by Society 
 
 Amn & ® N He 
 
 American Political Institutions (senior high school or junior college) 
 1. Liberty and the Law. 
 2. The Making of Law 
 3. The Enforcement of Law 
 4. The Administration of Justice 
 5. The Rule of the People 
 
 Elementary Economics (senior high school) 
 1. Human Wants and Human Production 
 . The Exchange of Goods 
 . The Distribution of Goods 
 . The Maintenance of Government (Taxation) 
 . The Economic Rights and Duties of Citizenship 
 
 wm & WwW 
 
 The number of units at any given stage is not so much a 
 question of the mentality of pupils as of the adaptations which 
 are utilizable in the field of general education. The number is at 
 no time large, for after all the number of significant aspects of 
 the environment with which all men come in contact is relative- 
 ly small. The temptation to increase the list of units is strong. 
 Increase in the number of true units quickly leads out of the 
 field of general education and into some form of specialized 
 study. 
 
 In general, skilful organization of courses tends to decrease 
 the number of units and to expand the assimilative material as 
 we advance to the higher levels of the secondary school until in 
 the university what would have been a unit in the lower secon- 
 dary region becomes a full course. 
 
 _ 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE UNIT IN HISTORY 
 
 S he notes the title of the present chapter and recalls the 
 AN ween chapter, the reader will doubtless receive the 
 suggestion that the author is disinclined to include his- 
 
 tory among the social sciences. Not so; our discussion is found- 
 ed upon the conviction that human history as an implement in 
 
 education is essentially a social science. The organization of 
 historical material for teaching purposes is not, however, an ob- 
 
 _ vious corollary of the discussion of units in the natural sciences 
 
 and in ecomonics and politics. The principles set forth in the 
 
 _ preceding chapter nevertheless furnish a helpful background for 
 
 our study of the units in history, and in all essentials the use of 
 history in the field of general education conforms to the princi- 
 ples of the science type. 
 
 The reader will recall that history is one of the recent addi- 
 tions to the curriculum of the secondary school. Save for a tra- 
 ditional course in United States history in the old grammar 
 
 _ school and for an occasional course which some college teacher 
 
 found time to offer, there seems to have been little or no recog- 
 
 _ nition of history as an important element in education down to 
 
 the early nineties of the last century. The period of acceptance © 
 of history as part of the curriculum of general education there- 
 fore coincides closely with the period of critical study of educa- 
 tional products. The use which we here propose to make of the 
 
 _ subject is based not so much upon any final judgment as to what 
 
 history means in education, or of the appropriate content of 
 
 _ courses in history, as upon considerations of what history can 
 
 oy) 
 
 be taught and how it can be taught. 
 The early view of the objectives of history teaching implied 
 simply memoriter conning of the pages of a textbook, in itself 
 
 187 
 
188 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 necessarily a meager and purely annalistic account of the past. 
 If the pupil developed intellectual growth of any sort at all, his 
 gains were purely fortuitous and accidental. Textbooks im- 
 proved chiefly in their historical reliability, in their illustrations, 
 and in the quality of the questions at the end of the chapters. 
 This conception of the teaching of history was that which we 
 have found in nearly all the schoolroom subjects, namely, 
 ground-to-be-covered and lessons-to-be-learned. There is little 
 in such a course which could not be equally well acquired apart 
 from teaching altogether. Whether it be desirable to bring the 
 individual in contact with all the happenings of the past or no, 
 we can feel confident of this at least: History cannot be taught 
 that way for the simple reason that there is nothing to teach. 
 
 The reader who has acquired an intellectual interest can no 
 
 doubt learn many things and continue to do so indefinitely, but 
 there is much in every field which can be learned and yet cannot 
 be taught. 
 
 Another view of the appropriate objective of history teach- 
 ing is the development of a liking for historical reading. Here 
 at least we have a comprehensible, attainable, and certainly 
 worthy end in view. If such is the aim, let us go systematically 
 and directly at the task of attaining the objective for all. It will 
 hardly do merely to offer courses in history without regard to 
 our purpose, in the hope that some individuals will attain the 
 educational product desired. The procedure required is evident- 
 
 ly that of the appreciation type, and history becomes essentially 
 
 a branch of literature. Instead of using a school text in history, 
 we shall use a library of great literary historical writers. 
 
 A third view would eliminate history as a separable educa-_ 
 
 tional factor and make of it simply the background of each of 
 the subjects taught. In that case, history ceases to be a school 
 subject and becomes a method of teaching. The issue here set 
 up is a problem in method and not one with which technique has 
 anything to do. If a given institution concludes to adopt this 
 view of educational history it is still subject to the same princi- 
 
 i 
 ; 
 D 
 ‘ 
 
 ‘ 
 
 a, 
 
 ; 
 

 
 HISTORY 189 
 
 ples of teaching which apply to the teaching of history as an 
 account of the evolution of human society. 
 
 Still another view would emphasize the need of training 
 young people in the critical attitude toward historical material, 
 both past and current, and in the capacity to separate the cred- 
 ible from the unreliable. Of the need there can be no reasonable 
 doubt. The issue is, however, primarily a curriculum problem. 
 lf the objective is set up, plainly a teaching procedure must be 
 adopted which is calculated to achieve the learning contem- 
 plated. The latter cannot be done with a technique which would 
 be appropriate to the development of a liking for historical read- 
 
 _ ing, nor under a technique calculated to bring forth understand- 
 
 ing of the past as a process of social evolution. 
 
 The view last named is that from which the present discus- 
 sion of teaching takes its departure: first, because under that 
 conception history can be taught; and, second, because it can be 
 taught on the principles of the science type. It makes of history 
 in its educational use essentially an evolutionary science, the 
 study of which in the school is to proceed by a technique not un- 
 like that which is applied to biology. It purposes to achieve in 
 
 the student a series of understandings of the larger significant 
 
 movements in human history which go far to explain the society - 
 in which he lives, and which develop in him a reasoning attitude 
 toward the social world of today, in the place of an attitude of 
 
 _ passive acceptance. 
 
 It becomes, then, the task of the teacher of history to dis- 
 
 cover the significant historical movements which can most ap- 
 _propriately be made the teaching units at a given level of the in- 
 
 tellectual development of the pupil. That is the problem of the 
 
 historian. The teaching problem hangs upon the selection of the 
 ‘units, upon the critical insight which distinguishes the teaching 
 ‘unit from mere topical collections of incidents and masses of 
 
 — 
 
 Se 
 ; 
 
 historical material which cannot be focused upon any particular 
 
 understanding. Both the curricular and the teaching problems 
 should be approached from the standpoint of experimentation. 
 
190 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 A provisional unitary organization is set up, carefully criticized, 
 and then tried out. Under experimental conditions, defects 
 which were not a priori evident will assuredly appear. It may 
 become evident that a given unit is not a significant aspect of the 
 evolutionary process, or it may be revealed that the unit in ques- 
 tion does not represent the best selection for developing an un- 
 derstanding of the historical movement with which we are con- 
 cerned. In either case, the defects are analyzed, accounted for, 
 and the course organization appropriately corrected for the next 
 offering. Every course should be under constant, critical, experi- 
 mental study. 
 
 As in the case of the natural sciences, the total number of 
 units needed to accomplish the whole series of historical adap- 
 tations in the field of general education is comparatively small. 
 At the time of writing, the University High School accomplishes 
 the task, in its “Survey of Civilization and Modern History” 
 courses in sixteen units. The selection of assimilative material 
 which will focus on the unit is more difficult. Restraint of the 
 teacher’s eruditional and mental-receptacle stereotypes is most 
 difficult of all, for the temptation is strong to include wholly 
 irrelevant material under the plea that the pupils “need to know 
 it.” “Need to know it” is a euphemism for needing to remember, 
 with its inevitable correlate of forgetting. Of what service is it 
 to charge the mind with intellectual material which cannot be 
 utilized in the production of any new attitude or power whatso- 
 ever? Once our minds are clear, it is always easy to look up 
 facts for which we have need. On the other hand, a mind may be 
 well stored with all sorts of facts and isolated principles and still 
 remain utterly confused and muddy in its major needs of ad- 
 justment to the world of reality and the interpretation thereof. 
 
 The correct notion of the relation of assimilative material to 
 the unit is so important that we venture to repeat what has al- 
 ready been stated in chapter xi. Teachers sometimes make the 
 mistake of asking themselves the question, ‘What assimilative 
 material shall I include under this unit?” or “What are the min- 
 
 Pied 
 
 a 
 
eee ited 
 
 HISTORY IQI 
 
 imal essentials of this unit?” Either question implies the table- 
 of-contents notion of study material. The question which sug- 
 gests the right conception of the nature of the unit and its 
 assimilative material is, ““What material shall I focus upon this 
 unit in order to achieve the appropriate understanding?” And 
 the visual aid already used is repeated. 
 
 
 
 Direct teaching in oral pres- 
 ‘entation focused upon the 
 unit 
 
 Directed study of assimilative 
 material focused upon the unit 
 
 Perhaps the relation of its assimilative material to the unit 
 can be made more concrete by discussing specific cases, and for 
 this purpose we shall use the outlines in the “Survey of Civiliza- 
 tion and Modern History” courses which were in use in the lab- 
 
 
 
 
 The new attitude implied by 
 the unit 
 
 Fic, 8 
 
 ¢_| Test material focused upon the 
 learning product 
 
 _ oratory schools during the school year 1922-23 and which are 
 _ explained in Barnard and Hill’s article on “The Curriculum in 
 
 History,” published in Studies in Secondary Education.* 
 The following is the description of a unit and its assimilative 
 
 _ material in the survey course. 
 
 The preceding unit is entitled ““Rome—a World Consoli- 
 dated.” A part of the understanding of the unit last named is 
 the breakup of the ancient world, a civilization in ruins. 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGE—TRANSITION TO MODERN 
 CIVILIZATION 
 1. The Dark Ages 
 a) The barbarian migrations 
 b) Rise of the Franks 
 c). The Empire of Charlemagne 
 d) The invasions of the Northmen 
 
 10Op. cit., Vol. I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923 
 
192 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 2. Medieval life and civilization 
 
 a) Feudalism: raids and invasions, self-help, feudal relations, 
 lord and vassal, mutual obligations, the feudal court, feudal 
 justice, feudal warfare, the feudal army, the castle, living con- 
 ditions, training the knight, jousts and tournaments, chivalry, 
 the manor, tillage, serfs and villeins, the village, life of the 
 peasants, self-sufficiency of the manor 
 
 6b) The church: the Pope, the clergy, the councils, the monastic 
 orders, monastic discipline, the monastery, occupations of the 
 monks, services to civilization, the parish priests, the church as 
 a social center, church worship, the sacraments, excommunica- 
 tion and the interdict, the church courts, heresy, the temporal 
 power of the Pope, the rise of the friars, the Franciscans 
 
 c) Life in the towns: growth of the towns, population, walls, sani- 
 tation, streets, lighting, police, public buildings, government, 
 dwellings, furniture, food and clothing, schools, great teachers, 
 universities, studies, use of Latin, medieval superstitions, medi- 
 eval art, the cathedral-builders 
 
 The present unit is in essence a comprehension of the Mid- 
 dle Ages as a process of building up a new civilization. It is of 
 little consequence to remember all that may be read about the 
 barbarian migrations or the church. It is of still less importance 
 to be able to recall the names of the Frankish kings and their 
 interminable dissensions. It is worth while to get a reliable pic- 
 ture of the brutal misery of the Dark Ages as a means of helping 
 one to realize what a world without civilization is like. It is of 
 immeasurable importance for the modern man to acquire a com- 
 prehension of what the destruction of organized society means 
 and to realize that the slow process of restoration requires many 
 centuries. Such is the understanding which must come out of 
 the unit. 
 
 Now every item of assimilative material is focused upon the 
 new attitude toward human society and its evolution which the 
 unit plans to establish, but that attitude is the objective and not 
 the assimilative material. The pupil may and probably will for- 
 get the most of what he reads about feudalism, but that is of 
 
HISTORY 193 
 
 little consequence provided his reading leaves him with a sense 
 of the stumbling, inadequate, and long-drawn-out efforts to se- 
 cure justice to the individual, without which life is hardly worth 
 living. Another pupil may cherish with meticulous precision 
 every item which he covers in his readings, and his learning is 
 of no consequence at all if he has failed to get the major bearings 
 of all his mass of facts. The pupil who has mastered the unit 
 has acquired an element of sanity, the word “civilization” will 
 come to have a meaning, and he will tend to be less hospitable 
 to the urgings of those who would tear out the foundations of 
 the civilization with which he is familiar. Furthermore, he will 
 have acquired a vantage-point from which he can reflect con- 
 structively upon the defects of his own society. 
 
 The assimilative material here outlined might have been 
 different and still have achieved the objective implied in the 
 unit. It is certainly capable of improvement, excluding some- 
 thing here and adding something there. 
 
 It might have been thrown out of focus. For instance, if the 
 teacher had allowed himself to be governed by the ground-to-be- 
 
 covered stereotype, he would probably have been offended by 
 _ the lack of chronological continuity. In that case, he would have 
 felt the necessity of bringing in the rise of the Mohammedan 
 power in the seventh and eighth centuries and would have thus 
 introduced an element incapable of being focused upon the pres- 
 ent unit. Instead, he utilizes this material in his next unit, en- 
 titled “The Crusading Movement,” the purpose of which is to 
 develop a sense of a conflict of civilizations and the survival of 
 that which finally evolved into the society with which the pupil 
 is familiar. 
 
 The unit with its assimilative material, as it stands outlined 
 above, is perfectly capable of being used as daily lesson learning 
 and as only another form of ground-to-be-covered. Whether it 
 is so used or is used for the attainment of the specific objective 
 implied in the unit will depend upon the teacher and upon his 
 perception of the principles of learning involved. The outline 
 
104 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 may be committed to the pupil and assigned as a series of tasks 
 to be performed. In that case, the result will be only casual or 
 accidental learning. In the secondary school, at least until the 
 pupil has reached the level of intellectual self-dependence, the 
 mastery of the real learning product will depend upon the teach- 
 ing procedure employed and the skill with which it is applied. 
 The appropriate technique as applied to the science type in gen- 
 eral we shall presently describe. 
 
 Let us spare the time for the consideration of another unit in 
 history, choosing our illustration this time from modern history, 
 a course for more mature pupils. The unit is “The Westward 
 Movement.” 
 
 THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT (In the United States) 
 
 a) The settlement of the Middle West, ca. 1775-1840; early ex- 
 plorers and settlers, settlement of Tennessee and Kentucky, occupa- 
 tion of the Northwest and Southwest, movement across the Missis- 
 sippi, foreign immigration and its effect. 
 
 b) Life on the frontier: homes, occupations, education, religion, 
 manners, amusements, ideals. 
 
 c) The development of transportation: steamboat, roads, canals, 
 railroads. 
 
 d) The disappearance of the frontier and the development of the 
 conservation movement: significance of the frontier in American his- 
 tory, waste of natural resources, origin and growth of the conservation 
 movement, present-day activities in conservation. 
 
 The objective here is a new attitude in the pupil in which he 
 comes to lock upon a great historical movement not as a series of 
 more or less interesting events but as a chain of cause and effect 
 which goes far to explain the society in which he lives and to 
 make that society comprehensible. The objective is another 
 adaptation in the series of adjustments all of which taken to- 
 gether lift the individual out of his attitude of mere passive, or 
 often rebellious, acceptance of the world in which he finds him- 
 self and yield to him an attitude of understanding and dom- 
 inance over his world and freedom in it. The testing is applied 
 
 x 
 Pa 
 
HISTORY 195 
 
 to the new understanding and not to the memoriter retention of 
 historical facts. 
 
 The assimilative material is focused upon the unit, and it is 
 not a mere collection of all the material which might logically be 
 gathered under the caption implied by the name of the unit. 
 All of the comments which we have made touching the unit pre- 
 viously discussed apply here. Whether the assimilative material 
 is used for its legitimate purpose or not will depend entirely 
 upon the judgment and sense of proportion employed by the 
 teacher. For instance, in the course of the reading to which the 
 first block of assimilative material is devoted, the pupil may en- 
 counter the picturesque figures of Pontiac and Tecumseh. The 
 legitimate contribution made by a consideration of the out- 
 breaks with which their names are connected is a perception of 
 the inevitableness of the survival of an organized society in con- 
 flict with primitive man. The barbaric chieftains may survive in 
 the pupil’s mind as a part of the coloring which he attaches to 
 the drama in the presence of which he is for the time being vi- 
 cariously living. But the teacher who brings the events con- 
 nected with the names of these Indians into prominence and 
 insists upon the retention of names and dates and events is sim- 
 ply throwing his material out of focus and setting up inhibitions 
 to the fundamental and all-important learning to be developed. 
 It may well be that later, at university level somewhere, the stu- 
 dent may wish to select for investigation the forest politics of 
 North America and their relation to European colonization. In 
 that case, the unit becomes contracted and the understanding 
 sought a specialized field beyond the legitimate content of gen- 
 eral education. At the higher level, a different body of assimila- 
 tive material is used and it is focused upon a different unit. 
 
 In order to make the unit in history still more concrete in 
 the reader’s mind, lists of possible units are presented below. 
 The warnings which were recited in the similar connection in the 
 previous chapter are, however, reiterated. The units which have 
 been tried out are not necessarily the only units. These units 
 
196 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 are themselves subject to modification and rearrangement in 
 the light of continued teaching experience. 
 
 I. Survey of Civilization (junior high school) 
 1. Primitive Man 
 2. The Civilization of Egypt 
 3. Athens—a World Enlightened 
 4. Rome—a World Consolidated 
 5. The Middle Ages—Transition to Modern Civilization 
 6. Islam and the Crusades 
 7. The Great Awakening 
 8. Colonial Expansion and Rivalry 
 
 II. Ancient History (senior high school) 
 Development of Oriental Civilization 
 Beginnings of Expansion of Greece 
 
 Growth of Athenian Power 
 
 Conquest of the East and the Age of Alexander 
 Expansion of Rome 
 
 End of the Republic 
 
 The World under Roman Rule 
 
 Rise of the Christian Church 
 
 Ill. Modern History (senior high school) 
 . The Industrial Revolution 
 
 . The French Revolution 
 
 . The Failure of Reaction 
 
 . The Development of Nationality 
 Slavery 
 
 The Westward Movement 
 
 . Expansion of the Industrial Nations 
 . The Collapse of Autocracy 
 
 OMAR AY Yn 
 
 Com Ot BW DN 
 
 IV. European History (junior college) 
 
 . The Barbarian Invasions and the Feudal Régime 
 
 . The Medieval Church and the Contest with the Empire 
 . Islam and the Crusades 
 
 . The Great Awakening 
 
 . The Reformation 
 
 . European Expansion and Colonial Rivalry 
 
 Ortn bh WwW NY HF 
 
 
 
Ms 
 8. 
 
 Q. 
 
 HISTORY 197 
 
 The Rise of Modern Democracy 
 The Rise of Nationalism in Europe 
 Imperialism 
 
 The following are suggestive course organizations which 
 have not yet been fully tried out in practice: 
 
 V. A course for the elementary school 
 
 a 
 . Civilized People Who Did Not Read and Write as We Do 
 
 . A Wonderful People Who Taught the World 
 
 . Another Wonderful People Who Made the World into One Na- 
 
 How People Lived before Civilization 
 
 tion 
 The Coming of Christianity 
 
 . Civilization Was Once Destroyed 
 
 Another World-Religion 
 The European People Learn Christianity 
 
 . A New Civilization 
 
 . A New World Discovered 
 . Kings and People 
 
 . Our Own Country Begun 
 £3; 
 14. 
 Ae 
 16. 
 
 How People Used to Earn Their Living 
 How Factories Came About 
 
 Keeping Slaves and What Came of It 
 The Coming of Science 
 
 VI. A course in United States history for the junior high school 
 
 I. 
 
 —I Amn & W NHN 
 
 Immigration: This unit is intended to serve the purpose of the 
 usual chapters on the European background. It deals with the 
 social causes having their origin in European conditions which 
 have stimulated immigration in its several forms from the be- 
 ginning 
 
 . Independence 
 
 . Establishing the Federal Government 
 . The Factory System 
 
 . The Slavery Conflict 
 
 . The Winning of the West 
 
 . American Foreign Relations 
 
198 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 VII. A course in United States history for the sentor high school’ 
 
 . Setting the Stage for Columbus 
 
 . The Expansion of the Old World into the New 
 . The Struggle for a Continent 
 
 . The New World Breaks Away from the Old 
 Making the Constitution 
 
 Testing the Constitution 
 
 Pushing Back the Frontier 
 
 The Industrializing of American Life 
 
 i 
 
 The assimilative material focused upon the several units 
 will be very largely economic and sociological, as well as polit- 
 ical, in its nature. 
 
 The reader may. well receive from the foregcing the impres- 
 sion that the seven courses here outlined constitute a proposed 
 curriculum in history. Nothing could be farther from our pur- 
 pose. We are concerned with the organization of material for 
 classroom presentation and not with the construction of a pro- 
 gram of study. At the present stage of our educational devel- 
 opment, the selection of the appropriate courses will depend 
 very largely upon the practical requirements of the individual 
 school. 
 
 * For the organization suggested by this course, I am indebted to Mr. D. C. 
 
 Bailey, of the history department in the Lyons Township High School, La- 
 Grange, Ill. 
 
 —_——- 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE UNIT IN MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 
 
 mar together in the same chapter is itself a good illus- 
 
 : pre of the teaching of mathematics and gram- 
 
 tration of a teaching unit in the science type. Logical- 
 
 _ ly, the two should be discussed in separate chapters. As a mat- 
 _ ter of understanding the teaching process, the two belong to- 
 
 gether for the reason that the principles which govern the selec- 
 tion of the units in one are those which apply to the other. The 
 reader will be able to gather a surer notion of the principles to 
 be applied if he can see the two as essentially the same and can 
 at the same time see them as qualifications of the principles 
 which govern the selection of units in the physical and social sci- 
 ences and in history. Mathematics and grammar, as commonly 
 taught, seem to differ from the other sciences in the severely log- 
 
 _ical nature of the apperceptive sequence of the units. To be sure, 
 _ apperceptive sequence is as valid and critical a matter in chem- 
 
 istry or in economics as in mathematics. It is futile, for instance, 
 for the pupil to attempt the mastery of the unit “oxidation” if he 
 has no notion of the nature of chemical changes. Nevertheless, 
 the learning process in the physical and social sciences admits of 
 wide variations in the order of the units, while in mathematics 
 and grammar each unit is built on the preceding in a much more 
 restricted fashion. 
 
 The critical test of the unit is the same as in the other sub- 
 jects named; it must be a comprehensive and significant aspect 
 
 of the science. It must further be teachable as distinguished 
 
 sy 
 
 from being merely learnable, and it must be capable of being 
 tested for mastery. 
 
 The unit must be comprehensive. For example, in English 
 grammar we find that children in about the fifth or sixth grade 
 
 199 
 
200 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 can learn the major elements of the simple sentence—the simple 
 subject, simple predicate, direct object, indirect object, predi- 
 cate noun, and predicate adjective—much more readily and 
 much more surely if they are learned together when the unit is a 
 comprehension of the simple sentence without modifiers than 
 when the elements are learned separately and in isolation. In 
 the latter case, the tendency seems to be to make the parts mere 
 content in memory, and the pupil soon begins to stumble be- 
 cause, as he puts it, he “cannot remember which is which.” Sim- 
 ilarly, processes like addition and subtraction in arithmetic can 
 more economically be taught together under the direct-teaching 
 procedure than taught separately. Furthermore, there seems to 
 be good reason in practice to think that addition and subtraction 
 of denominate numbers can be taught most economically in the 
 Same unit with the processes as applied to the decimal system. 
 The essential point is that the objective which can be mastered 
 is an attitude in terms of an ideational complex which sweeps 
 the whole unit, whatever the unit may be found objectively and 
 experimentally to be. If the unit is found and mastered, the 
 product is an understanding; if it is not found, the product tends 
 to be mere content in memory of the lesson-learning type. In the 
 latter case, the pupil exhibits his non-mastery by inquiring, “Do 
 you add or subtract?” There further tends to be set up a singu- 
 lar emotional inhibition, when processes are learned separately 
 which belong together in the same unit, in that the pupil tends 
 to magnify the difficulty of the later separate processes. 
 
 In experimenting with this issue, addition and subtraction 
 were first tried as separate and successive units. At the end of a 
 prolonged period of teaching, it was found that pupils would 
 still guess which process it was with which they were dealing. 
 The addition learning would still carry over into subtraction and 
 confuse the issue. The learning unit is not merely addition and 
 subtraction, one after the other, but the discrimination between 
 the two as well. 
 
 The extent to which the consolidation of a unit can be car- 
 
MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 201 
 
 ried depends upon the spread of the details which must be fo- 
 cused. Multiplication and division, for instance, constitute a 
 unit since they are essentially reciprocal aspects of the same 
 process. Nevertheless, there is much more complicated detail in 
 each than is true of either addition or subtraction. Hence, two 
 units are set up. A situation like this is met by the insertion of 
 what may be called a “generalizing unit,” in this case that which 
 bears the caption, “Variation.” Taught separately without such 
 a generalizing unit, the pupil tends to learn the processes as mere 
 mechanical manipulation but not to learn the arithmetical essen- 
 tial which may be described as a discriminating sense of appli- 
 cation in a thought process. All the way up into the high school 
 and beyond he inquires, either explicitly in words or implicitly 
 by guessing, ““Do you multiply or divide?” Hence the essential 
 pedagogical unit of multiplication and division is in the new unit 
 which we have inserted after the two manipulation units. That 
 unit is taught until the new understanding is established, until 
 the class as a whole sees the relation clearly and is in no more 
 need of hesitating over the application than are we adults who 
 are never in a shadow of doubt whether “you multiply or divide.” 
 
 The same principle can be seen in grammar in connection 
 with the very thin units, gender, number, person, case, and tense. 
 It is a simple matter to teach each of them and to apply the rules 
 of agreement to each. Indeed, this part of the teaching process 
 is so simple that it is entirely possible not to teach them at all 
 but rather to hold the pupil responsible for learning them with- 
 out teaching. The result is all too familiar: There is a memory 
 content which is perfectly good in a specific memory test but 
 which does not “transfer” to usage. Failure of transfer means 
 failure to learn some critical unit. If now we introduce a gener- 
 alizing unit, call it “agreement,” and teach this unit to the point 
 of mastery, we shall have established the critical and essential 
 learning product. Otherwise, such real learning as may result is 
 accidental. 
 
 The teaching of the learning units to the point of mastery 
 
202 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 requires the insight and the patience which is associated with all 
 scientific and systematic practice. That is another chapter, or 
 rather series of chapters. Each unit requires a great deal of time 
 and the application of skilful administrative technique. In point 
 of time required, however, three observations should be made. 
 In the first place, time required is of a great deal less importance 
 than assurance of learning obtained. In the second place, if the 
 specific allotments of time required by the graded-school tradi- 
 tion—so many weeks to this process and so many to that, with 
 its corollary of chance learning—is abandoned, the thoroughness 
 gained by teacher and by pupils is in the end a great time-saver. 
 Finally, the divisions of subject matter implied by the ordinary 
 lesson-learning and dependence-upon-teacher procedure run to 
 several times the nineteen or twenty units under which the arith- 
 metic taught in the first six grades can be organized. 
 
 Thus, the selection and organization of units in subjects like 
 grammar and arithmetic. The same principles will apply to the 
 unitary organization of algebra, trigonometry, the principles of 
 rhetoric, and the theoretical side of music. The reader will 
 doubtless inquire how the unitary organization would apply to 
 demonstrational geometry conceived as a sequence of logical 
 propositions. The answer is that it would not apply at all, since 
 the learning objective here is chiefly the development of the 
 power of logical analysis as applied to space relations, or the 
 mastery of an understanding of space relations through the ap- 
 plication of practice in deductive reasoning, rather than through 
 inductive learning of their properties. Much the same situation 
 is found as that which was found in the use of historical material 
 for the purpose of developing the power of critical analysis. 
 Both of these are instances of ability objectives, and they are 
 examples of the application of a higher form of the practice 
 type. The treatment of mathematics on the principle of fusion 
 of its several divisions, best illustrated perhaps by the textbooks 
 of Breslich, conforms in all essentials to the principles of unitary 
 
' 
 ; 
 i 
 ; 
 14 
 4 
 ‘ 
 j 
 
 
 
 MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 203 
 
 organization applicable to the natural and social sciences, and to 
 this problem we shall presently turn. 
 
 In the case of mathematics and grammar as in those of the 
 subjects discussed in the two preceding chapters, a very critical 
 consideration is the distinction to be made between the unit and 
 its assimilative material, between the learning product itself and 
 the experience out of which learning may arise. In daily lesson 
 procedure, the distinction is commonly overlooked and the pupil 
 is constantly taught assimilative material until the objective 
 itself is lost to view. 
 
 ASSIMILATIVE MATERIAL IN MATHEMATICS 
 
 So far as general education is concerned, mathematics is val- 
 uable chiefly as a means of interpreting those aspects of the | 
 world which are not otherwise capable of analysis. The junior 
 high school pupil gives expression to the principle when he an- 
 nounces, “You can solve that problem by algebra but not by 
 arithmetic.” Similarly, the chief use of grammar is that of a 
 piece of critical apparatus which the individual uses in justifying 
 the clarity and logical coherence of his discourse. Hence the 
 best assimilative material in both mathematics and grammar is 
 the application of the mathematical processes and grammatical 
 principles to concrete material. The principle upon which reli- 
 ance is thus placed is that which is familiar to the modern stu- 
 dent of teaching under the designation “functional learning.” 
 
 In each unit of mathematics, therefore, the assimilative ma- 
 terial is properly concrete applications in the form of what are 
 commonly called “problems,” all of which are focused upon the 
 unit. The problem aspect as such is not important; the concrete 
 application aspect is important. Assimilative material is oppor- 
 tunity for the broadest and most varied experience-getting in the 
 application of the unit studied. Every element of the examples 
 given for study, however, must itself be within the comprehen- 
 sion of the pupils, for otherwise it will not focus upon the unit. 
 Appropriate assimilative material for addition and subtraction 
 
204 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 at about third- or fourth-grade level, let us say, is examples of 
 the following type: 
 
 “Tn Miss A’s room are 41 children; in Miss B’s, 39; in Miss 
 C’s, 26; in Miss D’s, 45. How many are there in the four rooms? 
 How many more has Miss A than Miss C?” The material is 
 within the experience of the pupil and it focuses upon the unit. 
 
 The example might have been this: 
 
 “There are four pipes pouring oil into a tank. One pours in 
 18x gallons a minute; another, 156 gallons; a third, 175, anda 
 fourth, 216. How many gallons do all pour in in one minute?” 
 The elements may be within the experience of some children, but 
 these are very few. Most children will get the cue that addition 
 is called for, and the result is a mere drill exercise with numbers. 
 The material does not focus upon the use of the unit as a means 
 of interpreting actual environment. The pupil senses no reality. 
 The docile take a step in the direction of lesson-learning. The 
 direct learners are apt to balk. 
 
 Again an example like this (an actual case): 
 
 “Mr. H sells his potatoes for $1,275; his wheat for $2,480; 
 his hay for $752. How much does he realize on his sales?” 
 Again, many of the children got the addition cue, but, in a 
 school in which the emphasis is upon direct learning, most of the 
 children balked upon the expression “realize on his sales,” which 
 was not within their vocabulary. The performance of some of 
 the children was satisfactory, but there was no more evidence of 
 learning in their cases than in those of the children who balked. 
 
 In the higher mathematics of the secondary school, it is not 
 always so easy to use concrete assimilative material. Geometry 
 of course in its nature deals with such and trigonometry to a 
 large extent. In algebra the situation is somewhat different. In 
 the algebra units suggested below, the first unit encountered as 
 we read down the list which cannot be so treated is No. 7. But 
 here the unit has to do with the manipulation of certain alge- 
 braic expressions, and they become themselves the concrete ma- 
 terial. The same thing is true of units 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 
 

 
 MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 205 
 
 17,and 18. All the others can use concrete aspects of the environ- 
 ment as assimilative material. 
 
 The emphasis placed upon problem-solving in many mathe- 
 matical texts sometimes tends to throw assimilative material 
 completely out of focus. At bottom, the difficulty arises from con- 
 fusion in the objectives. The proper objective, for instance, may 
 be the application of the mathematical process known as the 
 equation to the interpretation of certain concrete situations. 
 The textbook-maker hopes to develop in conjunction therewith 
 an abstract power which he calls “problem-solving ability.” The 
 two objectives cannot be developed in unison unless one is a 
 function of the other, and this is not often the case. The solution 
 of a puzzle focuses the learning power upon that unrelated ob- 
 jective and directs it away from the learning of the mathemati- 
 cal principle which is the proper objective. The pupil becomes 
 more concerned in the solution of the puzzle than in learning the 
 equation principle. The result is pedagogical confusion. The 
 learning which results is uncertain and accidental because there 
 is no single clear objective in the teacher’s mind to which the 
 mastery process can be applied. The situation is frequently ag- 
 gravated, especially in the case of the equation, by the introduc- 
 tion of special types of problems which require the application 
 of special methods of solution. These are apt to be either prob- 
 lems drawn from specialized fields, in which the pupil has had 
 no experience, or else problems which are pure mental gymnas- 
 tics unrelated to any probable environmental need. Clock prob- 
 lems, hare and hounds problems, fast and slow train problems, 
 tank problems, and the like will occur to the reader as illustra- 
 tions. The problems which are to be focused upon the unit 
 should be such that their elements are within the experiences of 
 the pupils concerned, such that the conditions involved are with- 
 in the powers implied by the pupils’ mental age, and so worked 
 that the vocabulary employed is their usable vocabulary. 
 
 There seems to be a broad principle of learning and intel- 
 lectual development involved here upon which it is worth while . 
 
206 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 to comment in passing. Problem-solving is essentially and fun- 
 damentally reflective thinking, and, conversely, reflective think- 
 ing is problem-solving. As we have seen, the conditioning fac- 
 tors under which thinking takes place are: (1) something to 
 think about; (2) a method of thinking; (3) inherent capacity to 
 think at all; and (4) a motive for thinking. Now, mathematics 
 and linguistics are primarily methods of thinking. When we add 
 to a pupil’s repertoire of methods an adaptation implied by one 
 of the units, the equation in mathematics for instance, we have 
 put him in possession of an additional tool for use in his reflec- 
 tive processes. We have in that sense improved his capacity to 
 think, but we have not modified his inherent mentality. His 
 mental index remains the same as before. If he uses his new tool 
 a great deal he acquires facility in the application of that partic- 
 ular tool to many kinds of situations which he meets, but it is 
 facility which he acquires through practice and not a generalized 
 gymnastic effect upon his inherent mentality. We do not expand 
 his stock of things to think about; we give him a method of re- 
 flection upon his present stock and upon the additions to that 
 stock which he may later acquire. We make possible an exten- 
 sion of his motives for thinking by giving him an additional tool, 
 just as we expand his motives for carving, or mischief as the case 
 may be, by giving him a knife. 
 
 If we think it worth while for him to learn a particularly 
 puzzling type of problem, then in reality we have decided to give 
 him an additional method of thinking. If it is worth while for 
 him to learn how to solve clock problems, then we should add a 
 unit on clock problems and teach it. The value of such a unit de- 
 pends strictly upon its usefulness in attacking significant aspects 
 of the environment and not upon its use as mental gymnastics. 
 The process or principle taught in its application to actual expe- 
 rience is what is important to the development of thinking power 
 and not its mechanical manipulation, on the one hand, nor its ap- 
 plication to difficult and unusual problems, on the other. 
 

 
 MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 207 
 
 ASSIMILATIVE MATERIAL IN GRAMMAR 
 
 The choice of assimilative material in grammar in all re- © 
 spects follows the same principles which have been set forth in 
 connection with mathematics. The comprehensive objective is 
 an intelligent attitude toward the structure of the pupil’s own 
 discourse, not the extended apparatus which is needed by the 
 specialist in English composition. This intelligent attitude is 
 built up in a series of adaptations or unit understandings of the 
 structure of the English sentence. Assimilative material is prac- 
 tice with the analysis of typical sentences which the pupil uses 
 or might use. In this case the environment for our purposes is 
 the pupil’s own discourse. The objective of learning, or the true 
 learning product, is an understanding of the unit taught and not 
 a memory content which, as expressed in the pupil’s own phrase- 
 ology, is ‘““How did she tell us to analyze this kind of sentence?”’ 
 The following unitary course organizations are suggested, 
 not as dogmatically final products, but, first, as concrete illustra- 
 tions; and, second, as bases from which the practicing teacher 
 can experiment in the direction of new and better organizations. 
 
 ARITHMETIC IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 
 
 This course organization assumes that the primary number 
 adaptations have already been established. 
 
 . Reading numbers 
 
 . Addition and subtraction (includes simple denominate numbers) 
 
 . Multiplication 
 
 . Division 
 
 Variation (see above, p. 201) 
 
 a) If pencils cost 4 cents apiece, how much will 6 cost? How 
 many can be bought for 24 cents? 
 
 b) If pencils are 3 for 10 cents, how much will 6 cost? How many 
 can be bought for 40 cents? (The direct ratio relation) 
 
 c) If 3 pencils cost 12 cents, what will 7 cost? How many can be 
 bought for 40 cents? (The unit cost analysis situation) 
 
 d) If pencils cost twice as much as before, I can buy half as many 
 for the same money. If pencils cost twice as much, I shall have 
 to pay twice as much for the same number 
 
 on & WW NY f 
 
208 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Note that the objective is a clear understanding of all the 
 
 cases in their relation to one another and not the mastery of each 
 as an isolated element. It is perhaps not too much to say that 
 this unit is the most important elementary method of mathemat- 
 ical thinking. 
 
 6. 
 oe 
 
 Measurement. (The notion of measuring) 
 The fraction understood as a ratio (not fractional parts which is 
 properly an item in the primary adaptations) 
 
 . Lowest terms 
 
 . Fractions greater than unity and mixed numbers 
 
 . Common denominator 
 
 . Addition and subtraction of fractions 
 
 . Multiplication and division 
 
 . The decimal fraction (objective is an understanding of what the 
 
 decimal fraction is) 
 
 . Conversion of common fractions into decimals and vice versa 
 . Addition and subtraction of decimals 
 
 . Multiplication and division of decimals 
 
 . The percentage relation. 
 
 . The three cases 
 
 . The notion of factors 
 
 It will be observed that this organization makes no provision 
 
 for various items usually found in courses in arithmetic. There 
 are omitted, in the first place, the primary adaptations, that is to 
 say, the elementary number concepts upon which the possibility 
 of study depends. These include especially the following: 
 
 a) 
 
 b) 
 c) 
 d) 
 e) 
 f) 
 
 g) 
 h) 
 
 t) 
 
 The concept of number itself, which most children properly de- 
 velop within the kindergarten period 
 
 Figures as symbols for expressing number 
 
 Combinations of numbers into other numbers 
 
 Fractional parts 
 
 The concepts of multiplication and division of numbers 
 
 The concepts involved in the common measurements 
 
 The primary spatial concepts 
 
 The number space (addition-and-subtraction combinations) and 
 the multiplication table 
 
 The conventions for expressing United States money 
 

 
 MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 209 
 
 Note, however, that, while 4) may be taught in the primary 
 school it is no part of the primary adaptations proper, but is an 
 illustration of automatic habitual-response development under 
 the pure practice type of teaching. It is essential to the study 
 process and may need to be perfected within the secondary pe- 
 riod. 
 
 CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE PRIMARY ADAPTATIONS 
 
 Discussion of the technique of teaching as applied to the pri- 
 mary adaptations in number belongs to a volume devoted to pri- 
 mary teaching. Their fundamental importance to the whole 
 problem of mathematical thinking is however so critical that 
 something more than passing notice of their relation to uni- 
 tary organization of the course in arithmetic is called for. Clear 
 notions of their influence on the later learning process are of 
 practical service, especially in connection with the treatment of 
 problem cases whether the latter be corrective or remedial in 
 character. It is commonly taken for granted that bright children 
 passing through the primary school are sufficiently well ground- 
 ed in this respect. Ingenious testing focused upon the primary 
 adaptations often shows the contrary to be the case, shows that 
 such children’s ordinary responses are mere verbal memory con- 
 tent rather than evidences of the essential concepts. Noteworthy 
 shortages are illustrated by the following instances. 
 
 The child has acquired a sort of perverse facility in manipu- 
 lating figures without a realization of the quantities for which 
 the figures stand or of the meaning of the processes or combina- 
 tions which he employs. Among other later symptoms of inhibit- 
 ed learning power is often a tendency to report results of calcu- 
 lations which are on the face of things absurd. The pupil does 
 not sense the absurdity because he senses nothing about the situ- 
 ation beyond manipulation of figures. 
 
 The common measurements turn out to be mere memory 
 content. A quart is a measure and it is made up of two pints; 
 somebody told him so. But the measure stands for no concrete 
 
210 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 quantity in his mind. He can box the clock dial, as the mariner 
 boxes the compass, but told to be in a certain place at ten min- 
 utes after twelve, he asks his room teacher if it is time to go. 
 
 Many of the shortages occur simply because the teacher has 
 not diligently checked up the learning units by individual appro- 
 priate testing. The median of the class is equal to or above the 
 norm of class performance for that grade. The teacher does not 
 stop to inquire whether she is using a performance test or an in- 
 dividual adaptation test, nor is she concerned about the non- 
 learning individuals so long as the group is up to standard. In 
 brief, failure of the pupil to make the primary adaptations 
 means failure to learn to use mathematics as an implement of 
 thinking. 
 
 The development of the primary adaptations calls for direct 
 teaching, testing, and reteaching, but no element of study, prop- 
 erly so called, is present. 
 
 Second, there is omitted from the course organization in 
 arithmetic, as outlined above, the development of appropriate 
 facility in the use of the arithmetical processes, such, for in- 
 stance, as rapid and correct column addition. This, like the de- 
 velopment of facility in the number space and multiplication 
 table, requires teaching under practice principles and the tech- 
 nique is quite different from that which is applicable to the units 
 of understanding which we have listed. When such facility be- 
 comes desirable, a separate course should be set up and the ap- 
 propriate objective systematically sought (see chap. xxvii). 
 
 In the third place, there is omitted the learnable but non- 
 teachable material in which automatic response is unnecessary. 
 There is included here, especially, factual material such as the 
 tables of denominate numbers. Some few facts should ultimate- 
 ly be made items of automatic response, such, for instance, as 
 the number of inches in a foot, the number of ounces in a pound, 
 etc., but for the most part such bodies or arithmetical constants 
 should be made conveniently available to the pupil and he 
 should be made responsible for looking up his material when he 
 
Ne ei ee 
 
 MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 211 
 
 needs it without the intervention of the teacher. In the lower 
 levels of the secondary school, it will be convenient to hang in 
 the room the appropriate charts. Later, the books provided 
 should contain tables of constants. In due time, the pupil will 
 tend to select for himself the constants to which he needs auto- 
 matic response. 
 
 ELEMENTARY ALGEBRA 
 
 The following unitary organization of a course in elemen- 
 tary algebra is suggested as illustrative of the principles set 
 forth: 
 
 1. The concept of literal numbers 
 
 2. The concept of plus-and-minus quantity 
 
 . Graphic representation 
 
 . The equation (the concept of the equation and the solution of the 
 
 simple linear equation but not extended processes of solution) 
 
 . Addition and subtraction 
 
 . Multiplication 
 
 . Expansion of binomial and trinomial expressions 
 
 Division 
 
 . The concept of factors 
 
 10. The factoring process as applied to the following type forms:? 
 a) x*t2xy-+y? 
 b) x?—y? 
 c) ax?+bx-+ce 
 d) x4 b3* 
 
 11. The algebraic fraction as a ratio 
 
 12. Lowest terms 
 
 13. Fractions greater than unity and mixed numbers 
 
 14. The common denominator 
 
 15. Addition and subtraction of fractions 
 
 16. Multiplication and division 
 
 17. The linear equation with one unknown—proportion as an item of 
 assimilative material 
 
 > WwW 
 
 0 OI AN 
 
 * The appropriate assimilative material in factoring is found in fractions and 
 quadratics. Hence mastery is apt not to be complete until later. 
 
212 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 18. The linear equation with two or more unknowns 
 19. Functions—linear and quadratic graphing 
 
 20. The quadratic equation 
 
 21. Formulas as algebraic representations 
 
 22. Square root 
 
 As in the case of arithmetic, and indeed of all the science- 
 type subjects, items which are learnable but do not require 
 teaching are omitted. Two illustrations will suffice. 
 
 In the first place, the algebraic vocabulary is not included. 
 For instance, there may be placed on the board the following: 
 “A monomial is an expression of one term: a”b? is a monomial.” 
 “A binomial is an expression of two terms: (x+y), (x’+xy), 
 (abc—def) are binomials.” And so on. The legends are then 
 allowed to stand and teacher and pupils drop naturally into the 
 appropriate use. 
 
 A special consideration arises in the case of factoring. In the 
 first place, an understanding of the nature of factors must be 
 established. Too often the pupil fails at this point; he learns the 
 manipulation and perhaps acquires considerable ability in fac- 
 toring expressions which are set down in plain terms. But fail- 
 ing to understand the nature of factors, he is quite as apt to pick 
 out expressions which are not factors as those which are. For in- 
 stance, he becomes expert in manipulating expressions in the 
 form x’+2xy-+y’, but confronted with an expression in the 
 form 
 
 xt— yt 2(a?-+-b?-+-c*) 
 e+ytoe+h+co ’ 
 he is quite as likely to treat x--y and the expression a?-+-b?-+-c? 
 as if they were factors of the terms of the fraction as otherwise. 
 He does not understand the nature of factors. The objective im- 
 plied by Unit g is this requisite learning product. 
 
 On the other hand, the manipulation of the type forms listed 
 above, and of others which the teacher may think desirable, in- 
 volves an element of memory. For instance, there is nothing in 
 
——.s— 
 
 MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 213 
 
 the understanding of the nature of factors which gives us the di- 
 visors in forms like c) and d) on the list. That has to be remem- 
 bered. For this purpose, it is well to have on the walls of the 
 room charts in which these type forms are set up in factored 
 form. If, however, the pupil is preparing for special study in 
 some mathematical field, the manipulation itself should be drilled 
 until it becomes automatic. This calls for appropriate drill pro- 
 cedure under practice principles. 
 
 Unitary organization in correlated mathematics is illustrated 
 by the two courses presented below. The organization thus set 
 up has been in use in the University High School. 
 
 MATHEMATICS I (GRADE VII UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL) 
 
 . The conception of line segments 
 
 . Formula representation of numerical facts 
 
 . The angle 
 
 . Indirect measurement 
 
 . The circle 
 
 . Formulas and equations 
 
 . Areas of rectangles and squares. Multiplication of polynomials. 
 Square root 
 
 8. Areas of quadrilaterals, triangles, and circles 
 
 1 Qtr bh W WN FF 
 
 MATHEMATICS II (GRADE VIII UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL) 
 
 1. Areas of surfaces and volumes of solids with algebraic implica- 
 tions 
 
 . The conception of positive and negative numbers 
 
 . Solution of problems involving signed numbers 
 
 . The quadratic equation 
 
 . Functions of one variable 
 
 . Linear equations in one and two unknowns 
 
 The quadratic equation (second unit) 
 
 . Factoring and fractions 
 
 . Exponents and radicals 
 
 Oo oom Amn ff WH bh 
 
 It will be noted that geometry can be taught under the sci- 
 ence type, provided it is conceived as an inductive science in 
 which the objective is primarily and solely the establishment in 
 
214 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the pupil of an understanding of the nature of the various space 
 relations. If, on the other hand, the objective is primarily train- 
 ing in the application of deductive reasoning to the study of 
 space relations, the learning product, as we have seen, is in the 
 form of a specific power and the technique which is applicable is 
 a form of practice. Viewed as the establishment of a series of un- 
 derstandings of the phenomena of space relations, Units 3 and 5 
 in Mathematics 1 above are appropriate illustrations. The teach- 
 ing technique is in all respects the same as that which is applic- 
 able to a unit in physics, chemistry, or biology. The unit dealing 
 with the circle, for instance, is developed in precisely the same 
 manner as the chemistry unit which deals with oxidation. Wheth- 
 er inductive or deductive teaching is the appropriate means of 
 accomplishing the desirable educational adjustment is a problem 
 of method with which this work has nothing to do. It is essen- 
 tially important, however, to keep the two teaching objectives 
 distinct in mind and not to attempt to apply the same technique 
 to both methods. There is appended a unitary analysis which 
 seems to be appropriate to the treatment of plane geometry as a 
 science-type subject. 
 
 PLANE GEOMETRY TREATED AS A SCIENCE-TYPE SUBJECT 
 
 t. The angle 
 Conception of the angle; measurement; the right angle; sum 
 about a point; complementary and supplementary angles 
 2. Parallel lines 
 3. Perpendicular lines 
 4. The triangle as a plane figure 
 Sum of angles; types of triangle; the exterior angle relations; 
 properties of right, isosceles, and equilateral triangles; congru- 
 ence; similarity; relation of angles and sides 
 . Quadrilaterals 
 . The polygon - 
 7. The circle as a plane figure 
 Angular values; angles and arcs; tangency; chords and arcs; in- 
 scribed angles; angle relations of chords, tangents, and secants; 
 
 On ur 
 
MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 215 
 
 relation of circle to inscribed and circumscribed triangle, square, 
 and polygon 
 8. Areas 
 9. Loci 
 10. Proportion as applied to plane figures 
 It. Symmetry 
 
 The objectives in the units here are the development of a 
 series of understandings of the nature and properties of the most 
 significant space relations by direct inductive presentation and 
 study. No element of training in the use of deductive reasoning 
 is involved. In Units 1, 4, and 7, the outstanding properties are 
 listed as suggestive of the appropriate assimilative material. The 
 unit, however, is the objective; the assimilative material is not 
 the objective. The test of the unit is its application to the inter- 
 pretation of concrete situations, not the memory of the proper- 
 ties involved. The assimilative study should rest, so far as pos- 
 sible, upon geometrical construction and upon the solution of 
 concrete problems, arithmetical and algebraic as well as geo- 
 metrical, which can be focused upon an understanding of the 
 unit. The reader is reminded that all such assimilative problems 
 should be calculated for the purpose of developing the unit un- 
 derstanding intended and not for the purpose of training pupils 
 in “problem-solving.” See comments on assimilative material in 
 arithmetic above. For purposes of geometrical construction the 
 study-room should be fitted up with suitable drafting apparatus 
 and with roomy blackboards. Careful and workman-like draw- 
 ing should be insisted upon. 
 
 THE UNIT IN GRAMMAR 
 
 In developing the theory of the science-type unit as it is 
 found in mathematics and grammar, we have thus far used 
 mathematical illustrations almost entirely. No illustration and 
 no argument drawn from the field of mathematics is without its 
 application in the field of grammar. It is, however, perhaps 
 
216 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 worth while to trace the application of our principles specifically 
 to courses in grammar. 
 
 Throughout the greater part of the modern period, the use 
 of English grammar for educational purposes has had an uncer- 
 tain and precarious place in the circle of the schoolroom sub- 
 jects. The evident futility of attempting to teach children to 
 speak and write correctly through the learning of grammatical 
 principles led at first to a considerable inclination to cast gram- 
 mar out altogether. Subsequently, it tended to come back, com- 
 bined with usage conventions in the form of language books. 
 Finally, the scientific movement in education brought about a 
 study of the principles of correct writing which children need to 
 learn and especially those upon which emphasis needs to be 
 placed. The result has been a much more economical and sys- 
 tematic training in the usage conventions. 
 
 The correct use of clear and convincing discourse seems to 
 be capable of analysis into at least three distinct adjustments. 
 
 In the first place, we must note the ability to use discourse 
 for the expression of any thought at all and its development into 
 the ability to express one’s self at length, quite apart from ac- 
 curate use or conventional use. We have here one of the most 
 important language-arts objectives, attainable only on language- 
 arts teaching principles. The lack of such training and experi- 
 ence apparently results in the production of what are sometimes 
 called the “inarticulate masses.” 
 
 In the second place, we have the language conventions, in- 
 cluding spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, correct use of 
 words, and the like, which in its higher ranges includes the ele- 
 ments of style. The objectives here are largely practice objec- 
 tives—in the case of spelling, conspicuously and definitely so. 
 
 The third adjustment in the series arises out of the study of 
 grammar. Grammar, properly conceived as an educational im- 
 plement, is a description of the structure of the sentence and the 
 implications thereof. Hence, there is involved a series of under- 
 standings of structural relationships which imply the science 
 

 
 | 
 
 
 
 MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 217 
 
 type of learning and a training which is distinct from that used 
 for the development of the fundamental discourse ability or the 
 
 _ conventions of correct usage. The pupil who has mastered the 
 
 essentials of grammar is in possession of an intellectual imple- 
 ment which he can apply to the criticism of his own discourse. 
 It is probable that nobody ever learned to write correctly or 
 clearly solely through the study of grammar, but it is certain 
 that nobody can today enjoy intellectual self-dependence with 
 respect to his own discourse unless he understands and can apply 
 the principles of grammar. The child who has been constrained 
 to use “were”’ rather than “was” in a sentence of which the 
 subject is ““you”’ demands the learning of the principles of gram- 
 mar when he asks the question, ‘“‘Why should I say ‘were’?”” He 
 might go on to the end of the chapter correctly using a conven- 
 tional form, such as that of the illustration, with no knowledge 
 of the principles of grammar, but as he becomes involved in 
 
 novel forms of discourse, he must be able to think his way 
 
 through to the correct form which he needs accurately to express 
 his meaning. Grammar is a method for such thinking. 
 
 There is perhaps no part of the field of general education 
 characterized by more inefficiency than that which deals with 
 training in English writing and the learning of foreign languages. 
 It is easy to believe that the chief reason for such inefficiency 
 has been the failure, first, to discriminate between the educa- 
 tional purposes which grammar is well calculated to serve and 
 those which it cannot possibly serve; and, second, to realize that 
 the use of discourse as a means of receiving or expressing 
 thought can be learned only on principles which are wholly un- 
 like those which apply to the acquisition of an understanding of 
 the structure of discourse. 
 
 The educational use of grammar is then limited to those 
 principles which put the student in an intelligent attitude toward 
 the structure of his own discourse or toward the structure of dis- 
 course which he is likely to use. It does not imply the grammati- 
 cal training of the specialist nor purely eruditional acquisitions 
 
218 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 which have little or no bearing upon accurate use. Now the edu- 
 cational use of grammar has been singularly liable to attacks of 
 eruditionalism. While such refined study is in many cases no 
 doubt of the highest importance to the linguistic specialist who 
 works in the ever present hope that some refinement of analysis 
 will lead to the shedding of new light on the nature and develop- 
 ment of language and the evolution of human society, its prod- 
 ucts serve no useful purpose in helping the pupil of the secondary 
 school to understand the structure of the discourse which he 
 uses. The test of the value of a unit in the teaching of grammar 
 is, therefore, Will it help the pupil to understand? The test is 
 not, Does the pupil need to know? 
 
 The illustrative unitary organization given below is subject 
 to all the qualifications which have been enumerated in this and 
 in preceding chapters touching such organizations. 
 
 UNITARY ORGANIZATION OF A COURSE IN GRAMMAR 
 
 1. The notion of parts of speech 
 
 2. The simple sentence in its basic elements 
 (Unmodified subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object, 
 predicate noun, and predicate adjective) 
 
 . Adjectives and adjective modifiers 
 
 . Adverbs and adverbial modifiers 
 
 Comparison 
 
 The prepositional phrase 
 
 Number? 
 
 . Person 
 
 . Gender 
 
 . Case and its use in pronouns 
 
 rr. Agreement in subject and predicate—generalizing unit 
 
 12. The relative clause and complex sentence 
 
 13. The noun clause 
 
 14. Pronouns and their antecedents and agreement 
 
 15. Conjunctions and the compound sentence 
 
 16. Tense 
 
 0D ONT AM SW 
 
 * Nos. 7, 8, and 9 represent thin units requiring little or no assimilative ma- 
 terial, 
 

 
 MATHEMATICS AND GRAMMAR 219 
 
 17. Auxiliary verbs 
 18. Verb phrases 
 
 The assimilative material on each unit is: (a) analysis of 
 sentences selected in such wise that they will focus on an under- 
 standing of the unit set up for teaching; (0) the interpretation 
 of usage principles as they apply to the unit. For instance, in 
 Unit 14, the appropriate assimilative material is a great variety 
 of sentences in which the antecedents of pronouns, both relative 
 and personal, are traced. Likewise, the correction of instances 
 of bad usage in which the pronoun does not agree with its ante- 
 cedent is set up in abundance. Assimilation is approaching com- 
 pletion when the pupil can unerringly identify the antecedent in 
 case after case and can also unerringly detect and correct in- 
 stances of bad usage. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 THE TEACHING CYCLE 
 
 HE unit objectives being clearly in mind, we need to 
 seek and to analyze the teaching and study procedure 
 
 by which the successive understandings can be estab- 
 lished. An effective procedure involves much more than a teach- 
 ing method as that term is commonly used. 
 
 Teachers in schools of education and normal schools, super- 
 intendents and their staff officers in city-school systems, are 
 frequently in receipt of letters inquiring what method is used 
 for the teaching of reading or writing or science or perhaps mod- 
 ern language. There are sometimes enumerated in the writer’s 
 thought such vaguely descriptive phrases as the “word-and- 
 sentence method,” the “phonetic method,” the ‘“‘blank system of 
 penmanship,” the “heuristic method,” the “direct method,” the 
 “natural method,” the “grammatical method,” the ‘‘supervised 
 study method,” the “socialized recitation method,” and so on 
 at great length. Pedagogical history is full of ephemeral meth- 
 ods attached to the names of places in which they have flour- 
 ished or to textbooks which have “swept the country.” Not in- 
 frequently the question is made a political issue and communi- 
 ties are agitated by the ridiculous question, ‘‘Shall we allow such 
 and such a ‘method’ to be used in our schools?” As if the matter 
 could be settled wisely by popular vote! Or the writer of such 
 letters may have a mind which is blank on the subject of meth- 
 ods but convinced that if somebody will name a method all will 
 be well. 
 
 Now, this general attitude toward the problem of teaching is 
 evidence of another mental stereotype like the ground-to-be- 
 covered and time-to-be-spent stereotypes. This one we may call 
 the ‘‘method-to-be-followed stereotype.” Its essence is in the 
 
 220 
 

 
 THE TEACHING CYCLE 221 
 
 notion that if the teacher can find the specifications for the right 
 method he can follow it in his teaching and nothing remains to 
 be done but to grade the pupils according to their success in 
 achieving the appointed tasks. The logic of the matter is that, 
 if ground-to-be-covered and time-to-be-spent are lawfully deter- 
 mined and the method-to-be-followed is properly appraised, 
 educational results must follow in proportion to the inherent and 
 unmodifiable general ability of the pupil. Nothing could be 
 more remote from a sound educational point of view. 
 
 It is true that there are right and wrong methods of teach- 
 ing, methods under which learning is easy and economical, and 
 methods under which it is difficult and uneconomical. A given 
 method will tend to produce a given learning product and an- 
 other will tend, other things being equal, to produce a different 
 product. For instance, nobody would today contend that the 
 alphabet method of teaching reading will ever produce reading 
 ability in the most direct, effective, and economical manner. The 
 grammatical method of approach to the teaching of a foreign 
 language yields one kind of product, and the direct method quite 
 another. Heuristic teaching of science or mathematics tends to 
 mental confusion in the pupil and direct expository teaching 
 tends to lead to clear understanding, but a good teacher will get 
 better results with a method which in itself has a wrong tenden- 
 cy than will a poor teacher with a method which has a right ten- 
 dency. There is gradually being built a body of verified princi- 
 ples touching the application and results of teaching methods to 
 which we may properly apply the designation “methodology,” 
 or the science of method. But it does not follow that a method, 
 be it never so well established in principle, can forthwith be ap- 
 plied to any situation and the teacher rest content that he has 
 done his part. On the contrary, there is much more than a meth- 
 od involved in teaching. In the end, success depends upon the 
 teacher and upon his skill in applying an elaborate fund of spe- 
 cial knowledge to the solution of teaching problems. No method 
 has ever yet been evolved and no book written, nor in the nature 
 
222 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 of the case is it likely that such ever will be produced, which will 
 enable anybody to follow a routine course in the assurance that 
 certain results must follow. 
 
 As soon as we turn to our task of analyzing the problem of 
 establishing the appropriate understandings under the science 
 type, we encounter a diversity of factors. It at once becomes 
 plain that no mere routine can be set which will operate itself. 
 
 The factor which first attracts our attention is that of direct 
 teaching in which method bulks large. Method bulks large, but 
 the teacher’s personality, vigor, and control technique bulk 
 larger. 
 
 The moment we attempt to apply a systematic procedure to 
 our teaching we are confronted with the need of a process of 
 testing. It is not enough to teach; it is necessary to find out 
 whether or not our teaching has registered. Teaching method 
 ceases to have any importance at all and the teacher becomes es- 
 sentially a skilful weigher and interpreter of evidence. 
 
 Unless our pupils are not in need of teaching, we shall find 
 that in numerous instances our teaching has not in fact regis- 
 tered, perhaps not at all or at best not as it should. The factor of 
 corrective teaching thus presents itself. To omit this factor 
 throws us back on one or all of the routine stereotypes to which 
 we have paid our respects so many times. Thoroughness of 
 teaching depends upon adequate corrective teaching. Again, 
 teaching method in the ordinary sense gives place to skill in 
 studying the individual pupil, and to acumen in criticizing the 
 teaching which we have administered in the particular situation. 
 
 As we have seen, teaching is only the handmaid of study. In 
 time, teaching should become unnecessary and the learning 
 process should become thenceforth wholly a study process. 
 Hence a large part of the teacher’s energy and thought and time 
 must be bent upon the selection of study material, upon the fo- 
 cusing of such material on the unit, upon directing the study of 
 pupils, and upon developing in them methods of study. Here, 
 the teacher is again a student of the individual pupil and above 
 
— as ee ee er 
 
 | 
 
 
 
 THE TEACHING CYCLE 223 
 
 all perhaps a student of the subject which is being taught and 
 studied. Nobody can teach that which he does not himself 
 know. Emphasis has been placed, and wisely so, upon the sec- 
 ondary teacher’s need of training in education as his technolog- 
 ical subject. The present author would feel little justification for 
 his book if he were not profoundly convinced of the truth of the 
 principle. But this emphasis should not be allowed to induce us 
 to minimize the importance of a rich and progressive compe- 
 tency in the academic aspect of the subject being taught. The 
 latter is especially vital in the selection of units to be taught and 
 in the organization of study material. The teacher cannot organ- 
 ize units unless his mind can sweep over the whole great expanse 
 of his subject and judge between what constitutes the significant 
 and comprehensible material of intelligent attitudes and what is 
 merely detail which contributes little or nothing. He cannot or- 
 ganize and focus study material unless he has at command 
 broadly intellectual resources which enable him readily to apply 
 to the unit being studied the needful wealth of material which 
 illuminates and makes significant the understanding sought. 
 
 Finally, there must be provided not only opportunity for 
 genuine and adequate pupil reaction but a constraint which 
 compels the immature pupil to react to and thus make his own 
 the attitude which the unit implies. — 
 
 Hence, we are compelled to set up a systematic technique 
 which is calculated to keep before our minds in the routine of 
 teaching all of the elements of the teaching process which we 
 have enumerated. Nevertheless, the systematic technique thus 
 adopted will not operate itself. At the best, it only gives us a 
 plan for reducing to an appropriate system what would other- 
 wise be confusion. Successful teaching again depends upon the 
 personality, intelligence, professional insight and skill, learning, 
 and diligence of the teacher. A technique-to-be-followed would 
 be no better than any other stereotype. 
 
 1. In the teaching of any unit there is first of all, then, to be 
 considered the preliminary appraisal of the present experiential 
 
224 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 background of the pupils with respect to the unit itself. The 
 procedure thereafter to be followed will be determined very 
 largely indeed by the disclosures of this step. 
 
 2. At the beginning of a course, and of each unit in the 
 course, especially in the lower levels of the secondary school, 
 there must be awakened in the pupil’s mind normal learning cu- 
 riosity, which is the chief constraint upon which the teacher has 
 to rely for pedagogical purposes. If the connection between the 
 new unit and what the pupil already knows is made sure, mo- 
 tivation based upon curiosity will normally be established. De- 
 vices for “making the subject interesting,” on the one hand, and 
 constraint which is mere obedience to the teacher’s will, on the 
 other, will seldom serve the purpose. Nevertheless, unless the 
 whole spirit of the school is focused upon convincing pupils that 
 they must learn and that learning depends upon themselves, the 
 operation of even normal curiosity is likely to be blocked. The 
 blasé offspring of the well-to-do home who has been waited upon 
 since infancy and the young hoodlum of the city streets are alike 
 in abnormal attitudes toward what the school has to offer. Both 
 may require vigorous remedial treatment before the learning at- 
 titude can be established. Between these extremes are often a 
 large number who have been so surfeited with cheap juvenile 
 literature and moving-picture experiences that normal child cu- 
 riosity has been blunted by an excess of purely impressionistic 
 experiences, and the conviction that learning effort is a serious 
 matter even in childhood has never had any opportunity to be- 
 come established. 
 
 3. Until learning self-dependence has been achieved, and by 
 our definition of the secondary school that does not occur until 
 toward the end of the period of secondary education, the pupil is 
 more or less dependent upon direct teaching at the hands of the 
 instructor. In the primary school he is wholly dependent. He 
 cannot in substance be told at the beginning of a unit, ‘Here is 
 a pleasant pool; plunge in, swim across, and I will pass to the 
 other side and see how you have enjoyed it when you come out.” 
 

 
 THE TEACHING CYCLE 225 
 
 On the contrary, the essential understanding must be estab- 
 lished in broad terms by direct expository teaching at the outset. 
 
 4. Learning is a change in attitude, or the acquisition of a 
 new ability. In subjects which belong to the science type, the 
 new attitude is one of understanding or comprehension. The 
 change is an inward affair which can be achieved in the most 
 thoroughgoing and economical manner only by the pupil himself 
 as he works over in a long study period an adequate body of as- 
 similative material focused upon the unit. Adaptation is a form 
 of growth, and growth requires time and feeding. One of the 
 notable outcomes of experimentation is the disclosure that pu- 
 pils require a surprising amount of assimilative experience be- 
 fore the adaptation takes place. Herein is the chief opportunity 
 in this type of teaching for direct learning by all and especially 
 by the pupil who is fundamentally of the direct-learning sort. 
 Here, too, is the most noteworthy occasion for the essential 
 break with the meager textbook assignment, memoriter daily 
 lesson procedure. Under the process of supervised and guided 
 assimilative study is the possibility of developing a student who 
 is started on his way to self-dependence and the status of really 
 educated manhood or womanhood. 
 
 5. Finally, a systematic technique must provide for every 
 unit of learning a period in which the pupil is led to react as ef- 
 fectively as may be to the content of his learning. As we have 
 seen, it is this reaction which seems to accomplish the final es- 
 tablishment of the new attitude. 
 
 We may then proceed to the setting up of the outlines of 
 systematic technique applicable to each unit in a science-type 
 subject. For this purpose, the steps which we enumerate and in 
 part develop below have been found convenient. 
 
 I. EXPLORATION 
 
 This is essentially the pre-test stage. In it the teacher en- 
 deavors to ascertain what is the present experiential background 
 of the pupils as it is related to the new unit. The process may 
 
226 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 take the form of a written test, an oral quiz, a class discussion, 
 depending upon the circumstances of subject matter or of school 
 conditions or of the particular pupil group to be considered. 
 
 The step is further the opportunity for establishing the ap- 
 perceptive sequence between the present experience of the pu- 
 pils and the new unit. Since it calls to mind related content and 
 focuses such content upon what lies before, it has a powerful 
 tendency, in the hands of a skilful teacher, to arouse curiosity 
 and so to set up genuine motivation. 
 
 The proper effect is thus to orient the teacher with reference 
 to the presentation of the new unit and to orient the class with 
 reference to the new learning. In the earlier levels of the secon- 
 dary school, a single class period of thirty minutes will ordinar- 
 ily suffice. At the later levels, especially in the physical and 
 social sciences, several periods of fifty minutes each may often 
 profitably be spent. 
 
 II, PRESENTATION 
 
 This step is the teacher’s supreme opportunity for effective 
 direct teaching. It is not undertaken until the teacher is sure 
 that exploration is complete. In it he develops once for all in its 
 major essentials the understanding which the unit implies, and 
 he keeps on teaching by re-presentation until all pupils give evi- 
 dence of having made the appropriate adaptation or until he has 
 definitely segregated the problem cases. 
 
 This step and the preceding should complete the stimulus 
 member of the learning cycle. When the presentation has been 
 completed, motivation should have been established and the new 
 unit, to use the language of commerce, should have been “‘sold” 
 to the class. More than that, the class should be in an intelligent 
 attitude toward the new unit which will serve as a point of de- 
 parture for the study activities by means of which they make the 
 hew understanding their own by process of direct learning. 
 
 Presentation, to be effective, requires complete control tech- 
 nique, and few audiences young or old can yield close attention 
 

 
 THE TEACHING CYCLE 227 
 
 for any considerable length of time. The teacher must learn to 
 concentrate his material and throw into his presentation his 
 whole personality. An effective presentation on any unit which 
 is teachable can be made in not exceeding twenty minutes. In 
 the lower secondary school, less than that is desirable. The con- 
 tent of the assimilative material which can later be focused on 
 the unit has nothing to do with the time required for presenta- 
 tion; the objective is an understanding and not a body of con- 
 tent. 
 
 Immediately following the presentation is the presentation 
 test. The primary purpose of the test is to make sure that the 
 presentation has registered, but it serves a very useful purpose 
 in the general process of developing study ability, since making 
 the pupil conscious during the process of presentation that he is 
 immediately afterward to be tested has a tendency to train him 
 in the ability to listen effectively, that is, to assimilate the con- 
 
 tent of spoken discourse. 
 
 Re-presentations on a unit may require several additional 
 days, but the number of re-presentations required will depend 
 upon: (a) the effectiveness of control technique; (0b) the prog- 
 ress of training in assimilative listening; (c) the degree to which 
 the teacher possesses a convincing personality which he is will- 
 ing to exert. Normally, the number of re-presentations required 
 in the successive units of a course diminishes, and the number 
 required in the later levels of the secondary school is less than 
 those required in the earlier levels. 
 
 Til. ASSIMILATION 
 
 It will be observed that down to this point there has been 
 nothing like a lesson assignment. The pupils have met in the 
 
 | classroom each day and each day’s meeting has represented 
 
 their work for that day on the school subject which is being 
 
 _ studied. A great deal has been accomplished in establishing the 
 
 foundations upon which the new attitude can be built, and they 
 have received effective training in the direction of one of the 
 
228 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 most important learning habits. This daily meeting in the class- 
 room for the purpose of learning there will continue, and there 
 will be no outside work except that which is the result of the 
 pupil’s own awakening of interest. 
 
 For several days now, or several weeks in the physical and 
 social sciences, the classroom is turned into a study-room and 
 the pupils use the assimilative material of the unit for purpose 
 of: (a) direct individual learning of the unit itself, and (6) pro- 
 longed training in the art of study. The materials used in study 
 are various and not a single text, although a well-selected basal 
 text is often serviceable provided it does not become a mere les- 
 son-learning crutch. The teacher’s function becomes that of a 
 persistent and industrious seeker after new and better material, 
 of a supervisor and director of study, an unremitting student of 
 individual pupil difficulties and corrector of the same. The per- 
 son who is steeped in lesson-hearing often feels lost in this pe- 
 riod. There seems to be nothing to do but to sit quietly or to 
 walk quietly about the room keeping order. It is a dull business 
 to which surcease is sometimes found in interrupting the study 
 of the class for lecturing. Ennui can perhaps be killed that way. 
 The teacher must learn a different order of things, and it is the 
 purpose of the following chapters to show how the new order 
 can be learned. The teacher who has once learned will find that 
 the long assimilative period of supervised study fills up his 
 busiest days. 
 
 Now, not all the pupils will enter the assimilation period at 
 the same time nor will all leave it at the same time, albeit faith- 
 ful application of control technique and of the mastery formula 
 will be found greatly to reduce the spread of the rate at which 
 pupils learn. The pupils will be all together during exploration 
 but during presentation the teacher will be satisfied with the 
 learning of some much earlier than with the learning of others. 
 These more rapidly successful learners will be released from 
 presentation either to take up assimilation at once, to secure 
 additional time to work on some subject in which they are not 
 

 
 THE TEACHING CYCLE 220 
 
 so successful, or to work on some voluntary extra project in 
 which they are beginning to exhibit the rise of sustaining interest 
 and the dawn of self-dependence. Similarly, some individuals 
 will master the assimilative process earlier than others, although 
 it will not necessarily be the same individuals on every unit. Ex- 
 tra work in another subject and the extra voluntary project are 
 both available for the purpose of constructive utilization of time 
 which would otherwise be wasted and a temptation to dawdling. 
 The class is together again in the organization period. 
 
 The process of taking up the slack time which originates in 
 inevitable differences in the learning rates of pupils is discussed 
 more at length in chapter xxx. 
 
 Exploration and presentation constitute the chief opportu- 
 nity for operating the stimulus member of the learning cycle; 
 the assimilation is itself the period in which the assimilation 
 member of the cycle is achieved. The two following periods, or- 
 ganization and recitation, together constitute the reaction 
 member. 
 
 IV. ORGANIZATION 
 
 When the teacher is duly confident that assimilation has 
 taken place, the class is again brought together for organization. 
 Without notes, books, or documents of any kind, the pupils now 
 proceed to gather up all their material and construct an outline 
 in which the argument is developed in logical and convincing or- 
 der. This outline may take the form of a series of topical sen- 
 tences which carry the argument, or it may perhaps better be 
 in the regular syllabus form. In the organization, the pupil is 
 forced to assemble his thought content and to focus it upon a 
 clear expression of his understanding of the unit. He is not now 
 absorbing but giving forth, no longer acquiring the new attitude 
 but expressing it. In a unit in mathematics or grammar, the or- 
 ganization may be very brief; in the physical, biological, and 
 social sciences, it is necessarily of considerable length. A full 
 class period will usually be required, and frequently two periods. 
 
230 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Now the organization is not a test, except indirectly and in a 
 subsidiary sense. A class is tested for understanding during the 
 assimilation period. The outlines which the pupils submit in or- 
 ganization are chiefly performance. Of two who have equally 
 valid understandings of the unit one will submit an outline 
 which is full and adequate and the other will present an incom- 
 plete and incoherent paper. One will make an adequate effort 
 and the other will not, or perhaps one has learned how to organ- 
 ize his material while the other has not learned. The mastery 
 formula is applied, and the pupil who turns in unsatisfactory 
 work has his production turned back to him to work over until 
 it is satisfactory. Success in establishing the learning attitude 
 here depends not nearly so much upon the pupil as upon the 
 teacher. Indeed, it is not too much to say that it depends entire- 
 ly upon the latter. The teacher who unremittingly requires satis- 
 factory performance gets the appropriate results. He who lets 
 poor work slide and uncritically consoles himself with the 
 thought that the work is perhaps the best of which the pupil is 
 capable gets poor results or, it may be, none at all. 
 
 The organization period is further one of the chief opportu- 
 nities for training the pupil into that intellectual coherence and 
 integrity which perhaps best manifests itself in the coherence 
 and clarity of the pupil’s English writing. Its central purpose is 
 not, however, training in English composition but rather an es- 
 sential part of the learning process as applied to the establish- 
 ment of the new attitude implied by the science-type unit being 
 taught. The final step in such establishment is the recitation. 
 
 V. THE RECITATION 
 We have already commented upon the common experience 
 of teachers who realize that they have never acquired genuine 
 insight in a subject until they have taught it. The recitation is 
 a means of enabling pupils to acquire, at least in part, the kind 
 of experience which comes to the teacher through teaching. 
 By the time the pupil has reached this stage in the study of 
 
THE TEACHING CYCLE 231 
 
 a unit, he has presumably acquired the thorough understanding 
 sought, he has assimilated a large body of material and has or- 
 ganized therefrom the content of his understanding. The class 
 is now brought into a social group for the purpose of giving ex- 
 pression to the individual understandings of the pupils in the 
 form of continuous discourse directed to the class. 
 
 The ideal form of recitation is a series of oral presentations 
 in which each pupil attacks the unit as did the teacher in his 
 presentation to the class, taking the front of the room for that 
 purpose. In the ordinary class group of thirty or more this pro- 
 cedure would require too much time. Accordingly, on each unit 
 only as many pupils are selected for oral recitation as experience 
 shows can conveniently be managed. The remainder of the class 
 make written recitations. The selection of pupils for oral reci- 
 tations is changed from unit to unit so that the entire class in ro- 
 tation has opportunity in this form of recitation several times 
 during the course. 
 
 Like the organization, the recitation is not a test of under- 
 standing but rather a part of the learning process. In the organ- 
 ization the pupil is forced to arrange the material out of which 
 his understanding has been built up, in logical and coherent 
 order. In the recitation he reacts to his understanding in dis- 
 course. Again, he progresses in the development of the power of 
 setting forth an actual intellectual content in language forms 
 which is perhaps the final expression of intellectual coherence 
 and integrity. 
 
 A successful individual oral presentation, with the class dis- 
 cussion which it provokes, requires from fifteen to thirty min- 
 utes. The number of class periods which can be devoted to this 
 aspect will depend upon the teacher’s tact in sensing the point at 
 which the class is becoming stale. Two days in the physical and 
 social sciences is a fair allowance; less in grammar and mathe- 
 matics, and of course less in the elementary school than in the 
 high school and junior college. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 
 
 three principal purposes: economy, the establishment 
 of apperceptive sequence, and orientation. 
 
 One of the author’s students reports a case in a social science 
 class in which the exploration revealed the fact that a pupil had 
 studied the Industrial Revolution no less than five times. Im- 
 agine the destruction of any normal budding of interest in com- 
 pelling that pupil to pursue the subject for the sixth time in a 
 class which was otherwise very vaguely aware of the meaning of 
 the term] 
 
 Another reports the case of a pupil in algebra who attained 
 a perfect score on the pre-test of the unit “Factoring.”’ He had 
 not attained a passing grade on algebra as a whole in the pre- 
 vious course and so was repeating. Nevertheless, if compelled 
 to go through the lesson-learning experience on that unit once 
 more, one or all of several things would happen. There would be 
 the needless load of one pupil in an already overlarge class. The 
 pupil would be likely to acquire an inclination to dawdle in the 
 boredom of threshing over old straw. More important than all 
 else, he would be likely to acquire a pronounced and perhaps 
 permanent resentment at what to him was the incomprehensible 
 injustice and folly of the school. 
 
 There is apt to be found in every class, if the teacher will 
 carefully and critically look for them, one or more pupils who 
 work “in advance of the class.” Such are probably instances of 
 nascent self-dependence in learning power. They have not ar- 
 rived at the full self-dependence implied by the termination of 
 the secondary period, because they have not acquired the full 
 intellectual background and social maturity which makes it pos- 
 
 Peo pring can perhaps be conceived as having 
 
 232 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 233 
 
 sible for them reliably to seek and to work at their own prob- 
 lems. Skilful exploration makes it possible to identify and to 
 encourage such pupils and, what is more important, to furnish 
 the class as a whole with concrete illustrations of what education 
 really means. Furthermore, when such pupils are allowed, with 
 the approval of the teacher, to expand their programs of study 
 by means of extra projects, definite progress is being made in 
 their cases in the direction of sound and full intellectual matur- 
 ity. Finally, we are thus furnished with a means of identifying 
 and selecting the potential scholars and scientists and intellec- 
 tual leaders of the next generation which is infinitely more re- 
 liable than any possible test of native brilliancy. 
 
 If the course is organized in units, such pupils as those 
 whom we have used in illustration can be excused for a whole 
 unit. If they are believed to be responsible in the use of free 
 time they can be released from class altogether. Otherwise, they 
 can be allowed to bring other work to the classroom for the time 
 being. The effect on repeaters may well be very happy indeed, 
 for the encouragement which comes from recognition of genuine 
 success in having learned is well calculated to generate an en- 
 tirely new volitional attitude toward school and toward learning. 
 In some cases, skilful recognition of the true educational situa- 
 tion may well result in a new learning activity which will restore 
 the lost class standing. 
 
 As the unitary organization of the course becomes more ef- 
 fective with the lapse of time, and as the procedure in the sci- 
 ence type in the secondary period as a whole becomes more defi- 
 nitely established, there should be fewer pupils who are repeat- 
 ers and at the same time fewer who have already covered ground 
 which the new unit contemplates. Nevertheless, so long as pu- 
 pils are admitted from other systems, skilful and open-minded 
 exploration will nearly always reveal individuals of the type to 
 which reference has just been made. On the other hand, t 
 
234 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 number of pupils who show self-dependent study indications 
 should be steadily on the increase. 
 
 Such economy as we have discussed of course applies to the 
 individual pupil and to his progress through the school, to the 
 reduction of retardation and to the reduction of the time re- 
 quired for general education. There is another type of economy 
 which arises out of the stimulus to more efficient course and 
 curriculum organization and pedagogical procedure afforded by 
 the revelations of adequate exploration. Let us illustrate. 
 
 The exploration on a given unit may reveal, as it frequently 
 does reveal, a very inadequate background as applied to that 
 particular unit. The disclosure should not be taken necessarily 
 to imply a reflection upon the character of the pupils’ previous 
 learning in school or upon the quality of the teaching which 
 they may have encountered. The presumption is that an addi- 
 tional unit should be introduced or that the order of units should 
 be changed or that in some other way a better apperceptive se- 
 quence should be organized. Thus does the character of proced- 
 ure from year to year improve in the light of intelligent experi- 
 mental teaching. 
 
 On the other hand, a series of explorations properly inter- | 
 preted serves in part as a functional distance test on the actual- 
 ity of earlier masteries. Understandings which the class is pre- 
 sumed to have mastered in earlier courses may turn out not to 
 have been in fact acquired. This is apt to be the case in the 
 physical sciences with reference to earlier arithmetical learning 
 or in history with reference to earlier geography and perhaps 
 earlier history. Again, such a disclosure justifies no hasty con- 
 clusion that earlier teaching has been neglectful or incompetent; 
 later teachers may get the same kind of disclosures with refer- 
 ence to the content of their own courses. It does admonish us 
 first of all to reconsider the diligence and effectiveness of earlier 
 teachers, but it is further a warning to study the whole earlier 
 procedure not only in its technique but in its method and in the 
 placing of study matter in the programs of studies. 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 235 
 
 _ Exploration will perhaps more often make it clear that, 
 while the class as a whole has a sufficient background for the 
 new unit, individual pupils need some preliminary instruction in 
 details. This is especially likely to be the case with the vocabu- 
 lary of the new unit. 
 
 The exploration serves an essential and constructive pur- 
 pose in the learning process as applied to the new unit in the de- 
 velopment of apperceptive sequence and in thus making possible 
 the establishment of motivation. For this purpose, the teacher 
 asks many oral questions calculated to provoke class discussion 
 touching the whole region of pupil experience of which the new 
 unit is an extension and interpretation. For instance, in the 
 “Survey of Civilization” course, for the junior high school, the 
 second unit is ‘““The Civilization of Egypt.” Now, it would be a 
 stupid teacher indeed, during the year 1923-24, who would not 
 have devoted a period or two at the beginning to a class discus- 
 sion of the doings at the tomb of Tutenkhamon. It would be a 
 torpid class which would then fail to exhibit some curiosity con- 
 cerning the unit to which they were being introduced. It is not 
 of course always possible to find so vivid a capital of ready- 
 made interest from which to start, but if no background can be 
 found either in the pupils’ previous learning in school or in their 
 out-of-school experience or both, then one of three things is true: 
 either the teacher is inadequate, or the new material is not a 
 unit, or the unit is badly misplaced. 
 
 In the earlier part of the secondary period, it is essential that 
 not only that part of the pupil’s apperceptive mass which has 
 been acquired in school shall be brought into sequence with the 
 new unit but also that part which is the result of his life out of 
 school. Otherwise, his schooling is bound to be a bookish affair 
 of the extreme lesson-learning variety. In the later years, how- 
 ever, especially in the senior high school and early college, there 
 should be a sufficient organized intellectual background to make 
 connections with the common life obvious and unnecessary. 
 
 We adults are very much inclined to take for granted the ex- 
 
236 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 periences of childhood and youth in the light of our own expe- 
 riences, and to assume that pupils will sense the connection of 
 new book content with what they already know. Some pupils do 
 sense the connection, and we set them down as “bright,” deplor- 
 ing the stupidity of the mass of humanity as it appears in the 
 schools. A more reasonable interpretation is that the few not 
 only have acquired the requisite experiential background but 
 that they happen to sense the connection between the new mate- 
 rial and significant elements in that background. One frequently 
 encounters alert and sensitive girls to whom, in their own lan- 
 guage, school science is ‘“‘all Greek.”’ The truth of the matter 
 seems to be that the textbooks which they have used and the 
 teaching which has been applied have all been founded upon ex- 
 periences which are boy experiences and not girl experiences. 
 The utility of adequate exploration here is to call to the surface 
 in consciousness all varieties of experience upon which appercep- 
 tive sequence may be established in the different members of a 
 class. The effect is greatly to decrease the chance character of 
 the learning on the new unit and likewise the number of pupils 
 whose education is an affair of lessons learned. 
 
 Finally, out of exploration comes the orientation of the 
 teacher himself with reference to the presentation of the new 
 unit and its subsequent management. It gives the teacher, or 
 should give him, a sense of the point of view from which the new 
 unit should be attacked with this particular class or section, and 
 a sense of the points which must be safeguarded with respect to 
 the needs of individual pupils. Even lecturers who deal with’ 
 adult and presumably educated audiences are frequently cha- 
 grined because their statements have been given an absurdly 
 wrong meaning by some of their hearers. The reason is of course 
 to be found in the principle that we all of us read meaning into 
 statements in accordance with our own content in consciousness 
 upon which the statements impinge or which they evoke. How 
 much more is this likely to be the case in the teaching of children 
 and young people who are still in the process of accumulating 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 237 
 
 and organizing experience! It is a commonplace of parental and 
 teaching experience to hear the exclamation, ‘“‘You never know 
 what is going on in their topsy-turvy heads!” Now the public 
 lecturer cannot very well conduct an exploration period at the 
 beginning of every discourse, although some of us might well ac- 
 complish a rough equivalent by estimating our audiences better 
 than we do. In teaching in the secondary period, however, it is 
 well within the power of the teacher to ascertain what is going on 
 in their “topsy-turvy heads” before adding anything to the con- 
 fusion. 
 
 If the teacher should feel obliged after exploration to list 
 the intellectual content which he has discovered under such cap- 
 tions as Roman numeral I, capital A, major subdivision Arabic 
 I, minor division (a), and so on, he might present the appear- 
 ance of great scientific thoroughness but he would find himself 
 hopelessly inhibited and formal in his presentation. He may in- 
 deed find it very useful, before embarking on his management 
 of the unit as such, to have prepared an extensive set of notes on 
 the exploration. Nevertheless, if he has faithfully and with in- 
 terest conducted this step in the teaching he will find himself 
 possessed of a sense of the right point of view which will carry 
 him effectively through a strong presentation. 
 
 How then, more specifically, should the exploration be con- 
 ducted? In general, by either one, or preferably both, of two 
 procedures, a written pre-test and an oral quiz and class dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 A written pre-test, provided it is skilfully prepared with due 
 understanding of the use which it is designed to serve, is the 
 more exact basis of procedure. If the exploration stops there, 
 however, it is likely to be a routine and formal affair. The pre- 
 test should be extended enough to explore the intellectual back- 
 ground of the whole class upon the unit as a whole and so con- 
 structed that it tests understanding as well as informational con- 
 tent. It should contain test items so simple that they are likely 
 to be reacted to properly by a majority of the class and others 
 
238 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 so searching that they are likely to be answered by none except 
 pupils who may properly be released from study of the unit. 
 There should be no time limit. The class should be properly 
 motivated. They may be told, for instance, “We are going to 
 study for some days [or perhaps weeks] about . It will 
 be interesting to find out how much you know about it already. 
 Perhaps some of you understand so well already that 
 you will not need to study at all in this course. Perhaps others 
 know almost nothing about it. Well, that won’t matter; we 
 should like to see what you all do know. So do your best.” 
 
 A critically important-matter is the form which the items of 
 the pre-test take. The purpose of the test at bottom is to dis- 
 close the extent of the pupil’s present essential intellectual con- 
 tent with reference to the unit and his present grasp of the un- 
 derstanding which the unit implies and not his memory for 
 details, on the one hand, nor his ability to write a good examina- 
 tion paper, on the other. 
 
 In mathematics and grammar, the pre-test, of course, deals 
 wholly with grasp of principles or understanding, and it can 
 therefore be formulated with the greater assurance. It should 
 not, however, contain items which presume familiarity with the 
 specific assimilative material which the teacher proposes to use 
 in the study period. In the case of the unit “Factoring” referred 
 to above, for instance, the test items may well cover the ground 
 of the essentials of the unit. From a question like “What are the 
 factors of 6?” which tests the pupil’s fundamental notion of fac- 
 toring itself, to questions like “Write the factors of the expres- 
 sion a? + 6b? + 2ab — x? + 2xy — ¥’?,” which will disclose the 
 pupil’s ability to apply a principle of factoring in algebra to a 
 simple concrete situation. In general, there should be more than 
 one item dealing with a particular principle so that we may avoid 
 as far as possible misfire questions (questions the purport of 
 which does not register in the mind of the pupil), on the one 
 hand, and mere superficial errors, on the other. For instance, 
 there may be three or four questions like the first above. If the 
 
 
 
 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 239 
 
 pupil reacts correctly to three of the four, or two of the three, 
 we may reasonably conclude that he has the fundamental notion 
 and that, if we were to point out to him that he is wrong on one 
 or two of his responses he would see his error and correct it. On 
 the other hand, if he is right on one and wrong on the others, we 
 must conclude that he is hazy on the point at issue or that per- 
 haps his right answer was only a chance answer. The test fo- 
 cuses upon disclosures of the pupil’s present intellectual content 
 and not upon the relative value of his performance with the test 
 material. 
 
 In the physical and social sciences the written pre-test is not 
 nearly as simple a matter, for here we need to test informational 
 background as well as understanding. It is furthermore difficult 
 to avoid the complications of mere performance with the test ma- 
 terial—the examination situation. The underlying principles re- 
 
 ferred to in the last paragraph, however, apply. Our chief reli- 
 ance is upon the true-and-false or the best-answer forms of the 
 test material. Let us consider the history unit entitled “The 
 Westward Movement” by way of illustration. The following will 
 illustrate the kind of pre-test which can advantageously be used 
 and some of its items. 
 
 There are several questions on this paper and under each ques- 
 tion several answers which might be given. Some of these answers 
 are good ones and some of them bad. Check the answers which you 
 think are good with \/ and those which you think are bad with x. 
 
 1. What is meant by the term ‘““‘Westward Movement in United States 
 History’’? 
 a) The trappers in the Rocky Mountains 
 b) The settlement of Kentucky 
 c) Reclaiming the dry lands 
 d) Excursions to the Yellowstone Park 
 e) The founding of Chicago 
 f) The founding of Buffalo, N.Y. 
 g) The founding of Portland, Me. 
 h) Making homes on the prairie 
 
240 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 2. Who were some of the great men in the Westward Movement? 
 a) John Adams 
 b) General Grant 
 c) Andrew Jackson 
 d) Henry W. Longfellow 
 e) John C. Calhoun 
 f) La Salle 
 g) Daniel Boone 
 hk) Buffalo Bill 
 i) Cyrus W. McCormick 
 j) James J. Hill 
 3. Why did people move West? 
 a) Because land was cheap 
 b) To find gold in California 
 c) Because the government sent them to fight Indians 
 d) Because it was hard to find jobs in the East 
 e) To found new homes 
 f) To hunt buffalo 
 g) To see the country 
 kh) To get better farms 
 4. What nationalities settled the West? 
 a) Italians 
 6b) Swedes and Norwegians 
 c) Descendants of the original colonists 
 d) The Irish 
 e) The Polish 
 f) The Germans 
 
 Four questions are listed by way of illustration of the appro- 
 priate type of question. The pre-test as a whole should run to 
 perhaps eight or ten. 
 
 A similar conception of the pre-test will apply in general sci- 
 ence, in physics, chemistry, biology, in the social sciences other 
 than history, in short in all subjects in which content is varied 
 and extensive. 
 
 In evaluating and drawing conclusions from the pre-test, the 
 central question is, “What is the test disclosure touching the pu- 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 241 
 
 pil’s intellectual content and background?” Not, “How does he 
 compare with other pupils?” And not, “What is his score?” As 
 we read the test papers and ponder over their meaning, we shall 
 probably be able to sort them into two groups, or possibly three. 
 
 The pupils whose papers fall in the lowest group check the 
 items correctly and incorrectly in about equal proportions, check- 
 ing some of the absurd proposals as good answers and some of 
 the good answers as wrong. We conclude that we have no ground 
 for supposing that they have any substantial background for the 
 unit at all. 
 
 A better group is composed of those who check the answers 
 preponderatingly right but with several false estimates. They 
 avoid checking as rights the absurd responses, but they do not 
 show the discrimination which a competent knowledge of the 
 unit presumes. In Question 1, they check c) and f) wrong; in 
 Question 3, they check 0) right, and in Question 4 they check f) 
 wrong. The fair conclusion is that their background for the study 
 of the unit is adequate, and the teacher realizes that he may pro- 
 ceed with some confidence. 
 
 Perhaps one or two check discriminatingly every one of the 
 answers proposed, and in the subsequent oral discussion reveal 
 an abundance of the essential knowledge required. After some 
 further individual questioning the teacher concludes that these 
 pupils may be released on the unit. 
 
 Neither the written pre-test nor the oral discussion on the 
 unit in the subjects which have an extensive content is alone 
 ideally sufficient. The written pre-test tends to become formalis- 
 tic, it is almost impossible to make it cover the requisite ground, 
 and it is unlikely to yield any substantial motivation. On the 
 other hand, the exploration by oral quiz and discussion is wholly 
 lacking in elements of precision as applied to the individuals of 
 _ which the class is composed. The oral discussion may yield ap- 
 parently brilliant results in the class as a whole when in fact the 
 chief contribution comes from a few pupils. Conversely, the 
 teacher who stands before the class and directs his oral quiz from 
 
242 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 point to point in terms of the responses received is much more 
 likely to cover the whole ground with respect to the intellectual 
 content of the particular group before him, and the play of per- 
 sonality in this kind of exploration is more likely to arouse curi- 
 osity touching the new unit than is the case with the written pre- 
 test. 
 
 The crux of oral exploration is the provoking of individual 
 contributions through suggestive questions. For instance, on the 
 unit ‘“The Civilization of Egypt,” to which reference has already 
 been made, an initial question would probably be, “I wonder how 
 many of you have seen anything in the papers about the tomb of 
 Tutenkhamon?’” There will be likely to be a vigorous show of 
 hands. The teacher then remarks, “Well, A, you may tell us 
 about it.” A’s response will be likely to call forth contributions 
 from B, C, D, and others. When that topic has been talked out, 
 other questions follow touching perhaps the sojourn of the He- 
 brews in Egypt, the geography of the land, what may be known 
 of modern Egypt, and so on. Without allowing any one or two 
 pupils to monopolize the period, the teacher thus keeps on until 
 the well is pumped dry. 
 
 The question may well be raised, What is to be done with the 
 individuals who exhibit minds which are substantially blank with 
 reference to any content on the new unit? In the first place, such 
 pupils have a previous history and the effect of the exploration 
 may be to carry farther the process of identifying them as prob- 
 lem cases and diagnosing their difficulties. On the other hand, 
 certain pupils may show no problem-case characteristics; they 
 have exhibited the same results on all exploration periods and 
 yet have in due time arrived at mastery. Such pupils work at a 
 disadvantage, but as long as they find their way the teacher need 
 not be greatly concerned except to keep them in mind and guide 
 them during assimilation to as much of the needful background 
 material as will serve their purposes. Still others, especially in 
 mathematics, show no background, their school experience has 
 been a jumble of non-learning and the get-by attitude. They have 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 243 
 
 exhibited the same characteristic on one or two previous units 
 and have come through to mastery uncertainly and with diffi- 
 culty. They are problem cases of the experiential type which are 
 treated more fully in chapters xvi and xxxi. The appropriate 
 treatment is either to turn them back to an antecedent course 
 conducted on mastery principles or to assign them to a remedial 
 group. It is uneconomical in the highest degree to hold them in 
 the regular class group. 
 
 Exploration having been completed, in perhaps a single day 
 in mathematics or in two or three days in subjects with a more 
 extensive content, the teacher turns to his supreme opportunity 
 in presentation. 
 
 PRESENTATION 
 
 There should be a definite break between exploration and 
 presentation. Ordinarily, the exploration will be brought to a 
 close on one day and the presentation will be deferred to the next. 
 There is no assignment between the two days. The class meets 
 the teacher with minds in the attitude established by the explora- 
 tion, with apperceptive mass brought to the focus of conscious- 
 ness and organized, and with curiosity aroused. The teacher ap- 
 proaches the task of imparting in its major essentials in a single 
 period, if possible, the understanding which is the unit. In brief, 
 through direct, convincing oral presentation he teaches the unit 
 itself. The process can perhaps be made clearer through con- 
 crete illustrations, and for this purpose let us take first a unit in 
 mathematics, perhaps multiplication at about third- or fourth- 
 grade level. Owing to limitations of space, we can give but the 
 
 _ barest outline. 
 
 
 
 If there are seven children in each of the five rows of seats in this 
 room, you know how many there are in the room. There are 7 times 5 
 [writes] children in the room or 35 in all. Now perhaps there are 35 
 children in each of 8 rooms in this building and we should like to know 
 _ how many there are in the building as a whole. There would be 35 
 times 8 [writes] children in the whole building, but you do not know 
 q _ yet how to multiply 35 by 8 and I am going to show you. We shall put 
 
244 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 35 on the board and put the 8 under the 5 and draw a line in this way 
 [illustrates]. Now we say that 8 times 5 is forty. We put down the 
 o under the 5 and the 8 and save the 4 [writes]. Next we say 8 times 
 3 is 24 and the 4 we saved makes 28. So we put down the 28 in front 
 of the o [does it]. And we see that there are 280 children in the 
 building. 
 
 She works two or three others in this simple form and then 
 takes a step in advance. 
 
 The Roosevelt School is a big building which has 24 rooms and 
 there are 32 children in each room. This is the way we find out how 
 many children there are in the Roosevelt School. We set down the 32 
 and under it we place the 24 like this [illustrates]. Now we say 4 
 times 2 are 8 and put down the 8 under the 2 and the 4. Next we say 
 4 times 3 [points] are 12 and put down the 12 in front of the 8 
 [points] and we have 128. Now we begin with the 2 in 24, this 2 
 [points]. We say 2 times 2 [points] are 4 and we put down the 4 un- 
 der the 2 in 24. Then we say 2 times 3 are 6 and we put the 6 
 down here in front of the 4 [points]. Our work so far looks like this 
 [illustrates]. Now we draw a line and add 128 and 64 in this way 
 [does it]. Now we have 768. We call 128 and 64 the “partial prod- 
 ucts” and 768 the “whole product” or just the “product.” So there are 
 768 children in the Roosevelt building. 
 
 The teacher works out two or three examples of each of the 
 types which we have used, introducing in the second type factors 
 which involve some carrying. She then proceeds to the heart of 
 the matter with an example like 978 times 467, which she treats 
 in the same manner, and works several more like it until she 
 senses that the class has probably caught the idea. By this time, 
 the thirty-minute period is perhaps at an end and the class is dis- 
 missed without assignment. The following day the teacher works 
 one or two more of the last type and assigns similar examples to 
 be worked as a presentation test. Perhaps the presentation has 
 required less time and there is opportunity for test on the first 
 day, and this is desirable if it is possible. 
 
 Now observe that no questions have been asked, no arith- 
 

 
 EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 245 
 
 metical theory announced, and no rules set up. The teacher has 
 simply taught to the point at which she senses that the root of 
 the matter has registered in the minds of the pupils, and then she 
 tests to see if she is right. She lingers on no details. The proc- 
 esses exhibited by the simpler examples are involved in the more 
 difficult type. If she were to linger on the details of the simple 
 forms, she would set up inhibitions to the effect that all these 
 steps are very difficult when, as a matter of fact, the unit itself 
 once mastered carries along with it its details. 
 
 Such is the type of presentation in mathematics and gram- 
 mar throughout the secondary period, from the simple units of 
 arithmetic in the elementary school to the calculus of the junior 
 college. 
 
 Presentation in a science or in a history is somewhat different 
 in its outward aspects from that used in mathematics, but its 
 fundamental nature and pedagogical purpose are the same. For 
 purposes of illustration, a presentation in junior high school ele- 
 mentary science is offered. The unit was ‘Sending Messages by 
 Electricity.” The phraseology is adapted from a stenographic 
 report. 
 
 SENDING MeEssAGES BY ELECTRICITY" 
 
 The idea of using electricity for communication is old. You re- 
 member that one of the early discoveries in electricity was static elec- 
 tricity and you remember that if we take a pith ball, hang it to a 
 string and then bring a charged body close up to it, the ball is attract- 
 ed over to the charged body. Now the earliest methods of communi- 
 cating by electricity that we know of took place about the middle of 
 the eighteenth century and what they tried to do was this: They got 
 a long wire and around the wire they put insulation of some descrip- 
 tion. They would bring a charged amber rod over here [draws on the 
 board] and over here [points] they would have a little ball. What 
 
 * As one reads the presentation, he can readily see from point to point where 
 the later assimilative material will fill in and round out the pupil’s understanding. 
 For the convenience of the reader, such points have been indicated by *. The 
 teacher will, however, vary both the assimilative material and the presentation 
 itself to suit the needs of a particular class and of individuals in the class. 
 
246 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 would happen is that the current would flow through the wire and at- 
 tract the pith ball to it. They had a wire for every letter of the alpha- 
 bet. They would bring the amber up to a certain wire and the pith 
 ball would fly over and say “This is A” and so on until a word had 
 been spelled out. That was very slow. 
 
 Since that time we have had a great many better instruments for 
 communicating by electricity. We have the telegraph, the telephone, 
 the electric bell, the buzzer, the wireless telegraph, and the wireless 
 telephone. Now every system of communication has four require- 
 ments. 
 
 The first requirement is a source of electricity. The source can be 
 a cell, as in the case of an electric bell or a telegraph where the mes- 
 sage is sent a short distance and a powerful current is not needed. Or 
 it may be a dynamo, if a powerful current is required, as in the case of 
 the wireless.* 
 
 The second requirement is a means of carrying the current. This 
 means is a wire in the case of the telegraph or telephone or electric 
 bell.* In the case of the wireless it is the ether with which all space is 
 filled. Waves are set up in the ether and these spread in all directions 
 until some of them strike the aerial of the receiving station. 
 
 The third requirement for a system is a transmitter. The purpose 
 of the transmitter is to complete the circuit and start the current 
 going. 
 
 In an electrical bell, this is the bell [demonstrates]; the cells here 
 are the source of current; here is the push-button.* When I push 
 down on the button, I release the electrons so that the current of elec- 
 tricity can go through the wire.* The push-button acts as the trans- 
 mitter and completes the circuit. In the telegraph system we have an- 
 other device. This we call the “telegraph key” [demonstrates]. The 
 current comes from the cell, passes through the key and along the 
 wire* to this [demonstrates], which is called the “sounder.” The tele- 
 graph key does the same as the push-button; it completes the circuit 
 and when the current goes through the wire you get this [sound of a 
 click]. The clicks which come from the sounder are arranged into a 
 code which is called the Morse alphabet.* Each letter of the alphabet 
 has a combination of clicks which stand for it and so a message can 
 be spelled out.* 
 
 In the telephone, the transmitter is really much the same but still 
 

 
 EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 247 
 
 somewhat different. The transmitter of a telephone is a moving dia- 
 phragm something like this [demonstrates].* Waves of air are made 
 by the source of sound such as the voice.* You all know that sound 
 itself is due to vibrations. I can illustrate that in this way. Here is a 
 tuning fork. I can set it in vibration and you hear a sound. That is 
 middle C. If you look closely, you can see the fork vibrating. Every 
 note has its own peculiar number of vibrations and the sound of the 
 voice is only a succession of notes which we learn to recognize as 
 words.* Now when one talks into the transmitter of a telephone [dem- 
 onstrates] what actually happens is this: The vibrations set up by 
 the voice strike the diaphragm here [demonstrates| and make it vi- 
 brate much as the tuning fork did,* only it does not vibrate to one 
 single pitch like middle C but rather copies all the many different vi- 
 brations in our voices.* Now the diaphragm is so connected elec- 
 trically that it makes the current in the wire vary as the vibrations 
 vary.* So there are set up in this way a lot of electric waves which 
 make a sort of electric current copy of the voice. You will find out 
 later in detail just exactly how that takes place.* The current passes 
 through the receiver at the other end and makes that reproduce the 
 vibrations just as they entered the transmitter and so we hear a sound 
 just like what set the diaphragm to vibrating and that sound is the 
 voice speaking. 
 
 In the wireless telegraph, we use an induction coil like this [dem- 
 onstrates]. You see I can make a spark. Now that spark sets up a 
 certain kind of waves in the ether called “oscillations.” It is some- 
 thing like this [illustrates]. We can make the oscillations vary as we 
 wish just as we could make the sounds with the telegraph key vary. 
 So we can send a set of signals out into the ether just as we sent them 
 along the wire with the telegraph key. Our aerial is so arranged that 
 it will catch these oscillations and vary an electric current in such a 
 way that we get a sound to match every sound which was started from 
 the distant station where the spark was made. 
 
 The next requirement for sending messages by electricity is a re- 
 ceiver. 
 
 In the electric bell, the bell itself is the receiver. See this electro- 
 magnet [demonstrates]. When the current is sent through the wire 
 and through the coils of the electro-magnet, the magnet attracts the 
 
248 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 clapper and the bell rings.* When the push-button is released, the 
 bell stops. 
 
 In the telegraph receiver you have the same thing. When the key 
 is closed in the distant station, the current flows along the wire and 
 through these electro-magnets.* They become magnetic and this part 
 [demonstrates] flies down and makes the sound [click]. When the 
 key is released, it is pulled back by the spring.* So the receiver, you 
 see, will make just the same sounds the key makes. 
 
 In the telephone receiver you have the same thing as in the bell 
 and the telegraph sounder. Here is the electro-magnet* and here the 
 movable diaphragm. [Demonstrates with a dissected receiver.] The 
 current flows through the coils of the magnet from the distant trans- 
 mitter.* You remember that the vibrating diaphragm in the trans- 
 mitter made the current vary in strength.* When a strong impulse 
 comes through the magnet it attracts this diaphragm in the receiver 
 strongly and a weak impulse attracts it weakly.* So the diaphragm in 
 the receiver copies exactly the vibrations in the diaphragm of the 
 transmitter and this diaphragm in the receiver makes sound waves in 
 the air which strike the ear just like the sound waves made by a voice 
 in the same room and we hear what our friend who is speaking into 
 the distant transmitter says.* 
 
 The receiver for a wireless is too complicated for us now. Perhaps 
 somebody will choose it some time for an extra project. 
 
 So there are four requirements for a system of electric communi- 
 cation: 
 
 First, there must be a source of current. 
 
 Second, you have to have some means of carrying the current. 
 
 Third, you must have a transmitter or some device for regulating 
 the current strength. 
 
 Fourth, you must have a receiver and the receiver must be cap- 
 able of changing electric waves into sound waves so that they affect 
 the ear. 
 
 It will be observed that the presentation is a sketch and not 
 a finished picture. Detail is reduced to the minimum. The in- 
 structor is not concerned to present the unit in precise terms. 
 The reader who is versed in the subject will note that there are 
 various statements which would fall short of satisfying the spe- 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 249 
 
 cialist, but the essence of the matter is that they are true as far 
 as they go and that they serve to convey to pupils at the junior 
 high school level a valid notion of the unit, to set up in them an 
 intelligent attitude toward that aspect of their environment 
 which is the use of electricity as a means of communicating mes- 
 sages. A complete account of the nature of current flow in the 
 wire, for instance, would not only throw the presentation out of 
 its proper focus but would be likely to throw the minds of the 
 pupils into confusion by giving them a broader scope than they 
 could assimilate. It would be attempting to cover two units at 
 once. 
 
 It will be noted that the teacher is presenting the unit ‘“‘Send- 
 ing Messages by Electricity.” He is not teaching the construc- 
 tion of the telephone or telegraph. With the unit in mind, it is 
 easy for him to pick out the essentials which emphasize the idea 
 of message-sending. He is not easily diverted into the pathway 
 of mere unrelated knowledge accumulation nor does he wander 
 into the refinements of appliance construction. 
 
 The two concrete illustrations which we have given will 
 serve as examples of all presentations in the science type. Of 
 course the second of the two is illustrative of a much wider field. 
 To it will conform all presentations in the physical, biological, 
 and earth sciences, in economics, sociology, and politics, and in 
 history. We might go farther and exhibit illustrations from each 
 of these fields but this chapter is already becoming long and we 
 have still a considerable distance to travel. Rather let us turn to 
 some important practical precepts touching the conduct of pres- 
 entation. 
 
 It will be noted that the instructor did not indulge in an at- 
 tempt to present the unit by asking questions about it. In other 
 words, he did not attempt to develop understanding by “making 
 the pupils think” when they had little or nothing to think about. 
 He relied not at all on the “heuristic” method. That was over 
 and done with in exploration. He relied rather on straight ex- 
 pository explanation of a definite body of related concepts. 
 
250 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 There is little hope of effective presentation unless the teach- 
 er applies effective control technique. The teacher from whom 
 this presentation was taken commonly shows close to I00 per 
 cent group attention. If the teacher allows a part of the group 
 attention to wander, he will need to re-present, not once but 
 many times for that reason alone. We have already set forth 
 the principles under which group attention is secured and held 
 (see pp. 130-133). Of these principles we shall reiterate two. 
 
 The first of these is the exertion of that indefinite and vague 
 but no less real thing called “personality” in the teacher. All of 
 us have it, in varying degrees perhaps, but equal to the demands 
 of the situation in all except the upper regions of the secondary 
 school, but we are not all of us willing to exert it. It is easier to 
 follow the pathway of least resistance and hear lessons. Effec- 
 tive teaching requires exertion: effective presentation requires a 
 great deal of exertion. At no point is the issue more sharply 
 drawn than in the presentation. On the other hand, it is a rare 
 individual who, being indoctrinated with the notion that he has 
 a personal force which he can exert if he will, fails to do so. 
 
 The other of the two principles which we must reiterate in 
 connection with the establishment of the high group control re- 
 quired by presentation is complete mastery of the unit by the 
 teacher himself, a familiarity which goes beyond anything re- 
 quired of the pupils. If the teacher stumbles and halts or if he 
 is confined to notes or to frequent references to a text, group at- 
 tention will quickly evaporate. If, on the other hand, he is a 
 master of the unit, if he is so thoroughly familiar with his sub- 
 ject matter that he can free his mind largely from its details and 
 hold his class in the focus of consciousness, he is likely to make 
 a good presentation and to exert substantially perfect group 
 control. Hence, there is implied not primarily mastery of the 
 subject itself, although that should not be minimized, but com- 
 plete familiarity with those aspects of the subject which consti- 
 tute the content of the course being taught. There is further 
 implied full preparation on subject matter before presentation is 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 251 
 
 attempted. It is not difficult for each of us to recognize the dif- 
 ference in our teaching between a day on which our subject mat- 
 ter has been duly pondered beforehand and one on which we 
 have met our classes without such meditation, albeit our knowl- 
 edge is fundamentally the same on one day as on the other. 
 
 A teacher sometimes remarks, ‘Oh, I can never lecture that 
 way,” and again, “Public-school teachers as a class could never 
 make these presentations.” The author thought so himself until 
 a group of fifth-grade public-school teachers suggested the pres- 
 entation and convinced him that it could be done. In fact, every 
 time a teacher makes an explanation to a class he makes a pres- 
 entation. If a teacher cannot explain, he cannot teach. However, 
 every teacher who knows his subject matter well enough to teach 
 it, and who is willing to make the exertion required, will find that 
 he can train himself into the faculty of good presentation. It is 
 
 an art and, like all such, it is learned only by practice backed 
 
 up by the desire and the vision of success. 
 
 It is not sufficient to expound principles or subject matter 
 without thought of their registration in the minds of the pupils. 
 To do so would indeed be merely to lecture. Presentation im- 
 plies that the teacher is not merely expounding but that he is 
 also following the minds of his class in order to sense, as far as 
 he can, whether or not the pupils are “taking it in.” In other 
 words, rapport testing must be going on throughout even the 
 most intimate phases of the teaching process itself. The teacher 
 is not teaching until he can sense whether or not the class is get- 
 ting his message as he teaches. Now in the presentation this in- 
 volves explaining and going back for further explanation on this 
 point or that until the consciousness comes that the class is going 
 along with the teacher. The illustrative presentations which we 
 have offered show little or none of this, but in the ordinary rou- 
 tine there will be much of it. In mathematics, the teacher will 
 keep on working illustrative examples until he senses that the 
 point has registered. In science or history he will repeat a point 
 which he is making with further and better illustrations. The 
 
252 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 guidance is found in the faces of the pupils, for there is in most 
 cases a tendency for faces to light up as a point becomes clear. 
 Without good rapport testing, other testing becomes formalistic 
 and inconclusive. Reliance on rapport alone, however, amounts 
 to only little more than guesswork. Hence, when the teacher 
 feels reasonably confident that his presentation has registered, 
 he proceeds to his presentation test. 
 
 PRESENTATION TEST 
 
 It should be noted that the test has not for its purpose the 
 grading of pupils but solely the purpose of ascertaining whether 
 or not the presentation has registered and with what pupils it has 
 not registered. 
 
 In mathematics, throughout the whole secondary period, the 
 most convenient method of administering such a test is to send 
 the class to the boards with typical examples, one to each pupil, 
 all of about the same degree of difficulty, and none of them with 
 any problem feature calling for the exercise of special ingenuity. 
 
 Similarly in grammar, if the unit has to do with sentence 
 structure, the class is given typical sentences illustrating the 
 principles taught, and they are directed to identify the signifi- 
 cant parts. If the unit deals with such matters as tense, agree- 
 ment, and the like, the class is given a series of true-and-false 
 test items. 
 
 Now, the issue of the test is, Has the pupil apparently caught 
 the notion? Does the pupil’s response so indicate? The papers 
 are not scored for there is no particular need of comparing one 
 pupil with another. On the tests in which each pupil is given a 
 single example, those who correctly apply the principle taught 
 are counted successful and the others not. On the series of true- 
 and-false items, the principles already discussed in the adminis- 
 tration of the pre-test are applied. In the end, the teacher sorts 
 the responses into two groups, the one composed of those who 
 have satisfied him that they have caught the major essentials 
 taught in the presentation, and the other composed of (1) those 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 253 
 
 who have not satisfied him and (2) those who have satisfied 
 him that they have not caught the notion at all. 
 
 In the extended-content subjects, two methods of adminis- 
 tering the presentation test are open. On the one hand, a series 
 of true-and-false or best-answer items can be set up for the class, 
 the issue in all of the several groups of items being clear and 
 simple and of about the same order of difficulty. On the other, 
 each pupil may be asked to write a presentation test paper ex- 
 plaining to the teacher what the teacher has explained to the 
 class. 
 
 If the first form of test is used, the issue is deciding on the 
 principles already described in the pre-test and to which refer- 
 ence has just been made in the case of grammar. If the second 
 form is used, the teacher sorts the papers as before, placing in 
 one group those which satisfy him that the pupils have grasped 
 the main idea, and in the other both those which do not satisfy 
 
 him and those which satisfy him that the writers have not grasped 
 
 the central thought. The first form of test has the merit of some- 
 what greater precision, and in it the element of performance 
 testing is at the minimum. Conversely, it tends to become for- 
 malistic and to tempt the teacher subconsciously to make his 
 presentations more a matter of content than of understanding. 
 The second form has the defect of combining a test of perform- 
 ance with a test of comprehension, that is, it tests both the pu- 
 pil’s ability to express himself and his understanding of the 
 presentation. On the other hand, the second form gives greater 
 latitude to the pupil, and the group of papers as a whole is there- 
 fore likely to throw more light on the result and to prove more 
 illuminating to the teacher. It is perhaps well to use both forms, 
 varying as the teacher passes from unit to unit, or to use one 
 form on the presentation and the other on re-presentation. The 
 teacher is concerned wholly with getting the most light and the 
 best light on the effect of teaching. On the whole, the author pre- 
 fers the second form of test, admitting all its defects. 
 
 In the first place, pupils who are accustomed to its use are 
 
254 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 thereby trained to become better and more effective listeners. 
 Again and again, adults have been tested under the same condi- 
 tions as a class of high-school pupils on the same presentation 
 and with the same opportunity to write the test paper. Almost 
 invariably the adults’ papers are among the poorest in the class. 
 The children have been trained to assimilate oral presentation 
 and to express themselves concisely and comprehensively, and 
 the adults have not been so trained. 
 
 Again, as in recitation later in the unit teaching, the written 
 expression is a valuable means of focusing and organizing in the 
 pupils’ minds the preliminary learning. It is further a valuable 
 means of training in English writing which, we contend, is in- 
 separable from the mastery of elements of understanding. In the 
 end, we test a complex of understanding and expression, but 
 this is well, since in effect we say to ourselves, “Our purpose here 
 is to so present this unit that the pupil will not only understand 
 but will express his understanding.” 
 
 RE-PRESENTATION 
 
 In the early part of a course, or in a school which is first at- 
 tempting to teach to the mastery level, in a class which is com- 
 posed of pupils who have been brought up on the lesson-learning 
 tradition, there are few units, indeed, in which the presentation 
 test shows no occasion for re-presentation. In a school which 
 has been free to try out mastery teaching under the best obtain- 
 able conditions, the early units in a new course frequently re- 
 quire three reteachings before the teacher has succeeded in es- 
 tablishing his presentation and in segregating his problem cases. 
 Such is the pathway of thoroughness. Toward the end of the 
 course, few pupils require more than one reteaching, and the 
 presentation registers with the majority on the first attempt. 
 Such is the product of thorough training. 
 
 With the test material in hand, the teacher’s first task is to 
 study it, to identify the weak points in the presentation, to note 
 wherein and why it failed to register with this particular class on 
 this particular unit. He will also note the peculiarities of indi- 
 
EXPLORATION AND PRESENTATION 255 
 
 vidual pupil response as part of his basis for future corrective 
 work. It is perhaps worth while to enumerate some of the points 
 with respect to which a presentation is likely to have been inef- 
 fective, though it should not be understood that the list is by any 
 means all inclusive. 
 1. The control technique was poor 
 2. The teacher undertook to make his presentation without first thor- 
 oughly saturating himself with his subject matter 
 3. The presentation was not well organized—the few points which 
 tell the story clearly in mind and clearly developed 
 4. It attempted to sketch into the picture too much detail 
 5. It failed to connect up with the pupils’ present stock of ideas on 
 the unit as revealed by exploration and consequently went over 
 their heads 
 6. The teacher’s tone and personal attitude were listless and uncon- 
 vincing 
 Finally, the teacher will consider the unit itself from the 
 standpoint of presentation and note his conclusions for revision 
 of the unit in the next organization of the course. One of the 
 tests of a unit is the practicability of presenting it. 
 The question which at once arises in the reader’s mind, is 
 doubtless, Shall a re-presentation be made to the whole class 
 
 _ when only a part of the class exhibits failure to grasp the notion 
 
 which the presentation sought to impart? 
 The following description is a rough picture of the probable 
 
 _ result in some of the earlier presentations in a course. Perhaps 
 _ athird of the papers will manifest clear understanding; a third 
 
 _ will exhibit a hazy approach to understanding; and a third will 
 
 _ reveal no evidence of understanding at all. On a second presen- 
 _ tation to the class as a whole, some of the papers which were in 
 _ the second and third groups in the first test will often be supe- 
 
 : 
 ; 
 
 , 
 
 ~ 
 
 ‘ 
 : 
 . 
 
 ‘ 
 
 . 
 | 
 ; 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 _ rior as performance to any of the papers which were in the first 
 
 group on the first test. Conversely, some of the papers which 
 were good on the first test may, on the second, raise doubts in 
 the teacher’s mind. We may probably, however, now release a 
 part of the class and proceed to re-present a second time to the 
 
256 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 remainder. There will remain still a few whom we suspect may 
 be problem cases, and these are taken in an out-of-class period 
 for individual work. Some of them respond; others are definite- 
 ly identified as problems. On the whole, if any considerable pro- 
 portion of the class, say 25 per cent, fail to exhibit evidence of 
 clear learning on a presentation test, it is safe to conclude that 
 it will not harm the majority of the class to take re-presentation. 
 While those who have actually caught the notion clearly and dis- 
 tinctly will not get it any more distinctly on the reteaching, the 
 teacher can be more confident that he made no mistake on his 
 first estimate if he tries-it again. If only a very few failed to 
 catch the idea on the first presentation, they will be dealt with 
 on the individual basis. 
 
 In the period of two days to a full week which the explora- 
 tion and presentation have occupied, it may transpire that a ma- 
 jority of the class has not the intellectual background and train- 
 ing which the unit requires. One of two conclusions can be 
 drawn. Perhaps, as we have seen, the unit is strangely out of ap- 
 perceptive sequence or it may perhaps not be a unit. It is more 
 likely to be true that the class is not ready either for this unit or 
 for the course. In this case the organization of a slower section 
 will not mend matters. A different course calculated to fill the 
 intellectual gaps is called for and the administration should 
 sanction the organization of such a course, no matter how much 
 such action interferes with the orderly sequence of credits and 
 the routine bookkeeping of the school. Similarly, an identified 
 remedial case at this stage is seldom a subject for transfer to a 
 slower section. Remedial treatment is indicated. The slow 
 learners who are not remedial cases are, however, more likely 
 to appear in the assimilation period. 
 
 When exploration and presentation have been successfully 
 accomplished, motivation has been established and the lights 
 have been turned on. The process may be likened to giving the 
 student a prolonged airplane view of a city which he is required 
 thoroughly to investigate. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 ASSIMILATION 
 
 T the end of the presentation period, the classroom is or- 
 A ganized as a study-room in which day after day the 
 pupils carry on the process of study which constitutes 
 
 the assimilation stage in the learning of a unit. 
 
 When we consider the ever present problem of training chil- 
 dren and youth for citizenship in a nation which has political in- 
 stitutions like our own, our first list of objectives is likely to 
 include “ability to form independent judgments,” or some other 
 expression which implies the ability to form and hold individual 
 opinion in the place of the habit of accepting opinion ready- 
 made from the press and the propaganda of the day. Such ability 
 is no other than that of the student. If we can train up a genera- 
 tion of students, we can educate a generation which will be capa- 
 ble of formulating a public opinion, even in the midst of the 
 complexities of the modern world, and not otherwise. It cannot 
 be done by mere process of presenting both sides of unsettled 
 questions to immature youth. That simply generates loose think- 
 ing and arrogance in the self-assertive, and bewilderment in the 
 sober-minded. As a youth of the latter type remarked, ‘““They 
 lead you into a dark hole and blow out the candle.” The assimi- 
 lation period in the science type is the chief opportunity which 
 the school affords for the development of pupils into students. 
 
 When the pupil hands in his successful presentation test, he 
 simply proves that he sees the unit in its bold outlines as the 
 teacher sees it. That is the acceptable and necessary first step. 
 He must go on now and assimilate the new unit into that com- 
 plex of attitudes toward the world which constitutes his intellec- 
 tual self. In brief, he makes the new understanding his own by 
 prolonged contact with the assimilative material. The process 
 
 257 
 
258 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 may perhaps be given a more concrete meaning if we consider 
 the analogy of nutritional assimilation, although analogies must 
 not be pushed too far. 
 
 In the latter, the pupil is engaged in a process of physical 
 growth just as in his learning he is engaged in a process of intel- 
 lectual growth. In both cases, nature’s purpose seems to be to 
 provide for his survival and for his proper contribution to the 
 evolution of the race into higher forms. In his physical growth, 
 he ingests his food and drink, breaks them up and builds their 
 elements into his physical self. He does not store away in undi- 
 gested form the bread whith he eats, to be used as he has need 
 of it. He is modified day by day, becomes a stronger and more 
 capable individual, but he does not become less an individual. 
 In his intellectual assimilation, he ponders over new material 
 and new principles. They find places in the body of his atti- 
 tudes toward the world and he becomes, to some extent, a modi- 
 fied and more capable individual in that he can better interpret 
 the complex affairs in which his life is passed. He does not store 
 away the new principles as objective content in memory to be 
 used when needed. 
 
 We can pursue the analogy farther. The pupil sometimes 
 eats unwholesome food, and his bodily organism is thrown out 
 of adjustment for the time being. Likewise, he sometimes cher- 
 ishes ideas which are not true, and his attitude toward the world 
 becomes perverted and warped. He may take in food which is 
 not in itself harmful but which does not nourish, and he ceases 
 to grow. Likewise, he encounters much in his learning which he 
 does not assimilate, and he ceases to grow intellectually. Per- 
 haps that is the case with a great many people. 
 
 The meaning and significance of assimilation can perhaps be 
 made clearer by noting the difference between individuals who 
 have assimilated their learning and those who have not. 
 
 We sometimes encounter a mechanic, or even a technologist 
 possessed of a university degree, who exhibits the characteristics 
 
 of non-assimilation. He talks the jargon of his trade perhaps ~ 
 
ASSIMILATION 250 
 
 even more volubly than his more soundly accomplished confrére, 
 he successfully meets all ordinary situations which he can inter- 
 pret by the book, but he brings no ingenuity to bear. You take 
 your case to him, he gives you a ready opinion, performs a bit of 
 work, and perhaps the operation is a success. Subsequently, you 
 find that he ignored a perfectly simple factor affecting this par- 
 ticular case. The whole laborious and expensive treatment was 
 unnecessary and it may have been dangerous. He is the product 
 of the shop, and has learned to do what other men have told him 
 to do and to understand his principles as they have been taught 
 to him. As a-practitioner in a scientific field, he is forever quot- 
 ing what he calls ‘‘the authorities.”” The opposite type of worker 
 studies the job, whether it be a defective-plumbing fixture, a 
 problem in accounting, or a congested jaw, in terms of the par- 
 ticular situation in which it is found. He uses few words and 
 makes an economical use of principles, but he applies the sim- 
 plest possible treatment and it works. The onlooker concludes 
 that he is possessed of common sense, but common sense is 
 simply the endowment which actual assimilation of the requi- 
 site principles has given him. He does not proclaim that a for- 
 mula is true because the authorities say it is true but rather that 
 the authorities say so because it is true. If he does not know, he 
 says so, while the other man takes refuge in his vocabulary. 
 This man has studied his principles and they have made him an 
 effective thinker in the field in which he works, but he applies 
 himself to the task and not his catalogue of principles. He has 
 assimilated his principles and the other man has not. 
 
 The author has for several years observed with interest two 
 kinds of papers submitted by university students. In the one © 
 kind, there is a meticulous account of what has been said by the 
 instructor in his lectures and an orderly and coherent report 
 upon a piece of investigation, but when it is all done with the 
 student has extracted no meaning which was not in the lectures 
 or in the books. In the other, there is apt to be a resumé of the | 
 principles taught, reinforced by a body of confirmatory new ma- 
 
260 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 terial and followed by a series of practical applications. We are 
 inclined to dismiss the contrast with the fatalistic verdict that 
 one student is “original” and the other is not. Such may, indeed, 
 be the case, but the originality consists in the fact that one stu- 
 dent has been accustomed to assimilate his learning and make 
 it his own and the other has been a mere receptacle for the no- 
 tions of other people. 
 
 The period of assimilation under a sympathetic and intelli- 
 gent teacher is the unique opportunity of the pupil who can 
 learn only directly and from experience. It is none the less to the 
 advantage of the other two types of learners whom we met in 
 chapter iv. The transfer type tends to avoid his tendency to be- 
 come a theorist; the lesson-learner is forced into a direct-learn- 
 ing situation and his tendency merely to memorize a bookish 
 product is inhibited. If we so order our technique of teaching in 
 the secondary period that all pupils are placed systematically in 
 the opportunity for assimilation on every unit in the science 
 type of learning and then guided therein as effectively as possi- 
 ble, we can accomplish a great deal in the direction of making 
 most humans self-dependent in their outlook on life. Such, it 
 would seem, is the fundamental requirement of training for citi- 
 zenship in a nation which is supposed to order its government on 
 the consensus of intelligent public opinion. 
 
 Effective assimilation and learning to study are mutually re- 
 lated. Opportunity for assimilation is opportunity for study, and 
 effective guidance in assimilation is training in the art of study. 
 Now the time-honored demand that pupils shall be taught to 
 study is much like the demand that they shall be taught to think. 
 Cut-and-dried rules for study, like similar rules for thinking, for 
 the most part get nowhere. Study is a language art and, as in all 
 such, consciousness of method inhibits rather than assists the 
 learning process. One student graphically expressed the princi- 
 ple when he said, “I spend so much time hunting for the central 
 idea that I forget what it is all about.” Like M. Jourdain who so 
 admired prose and was astonished to find that he had been 
 

 
 ASSIMILATION 261 
 
 speaking prose all his life, so the pupil who is surrounded with 
 the learning-to-study mystery may well be surprised to learn 
 that he has in reality been studying all his life out of school as 
 well as in school. For the practical pursuit which we call “study” 
 in the science type of learning, the most that is required is a mo- 
 tive, an objective, the needed tools of study, and material. Given 
 these, any normal pupil will study. The chief responsibility of 
 the teacher and the school is to provide the pupil with these ele- 
 ments, but that is often a task requiring the most thoughtful 
 scrutiny of pupil behavior. Beyond these elements, there are 
 occasionally needed bits of advice which help the pupil in the 
 direction of more economical and efficient study. The effective 
 content of most books written under such titles as The Ari of 
 Study is chiefly a body of principles which apply to one of the 
 tools of study, namely, reading. 
 
 If the exploration and presentation have been at all effective, 
 a motive for studying the new material has been established and 
 the pupils may have been made conscious of the objective, that 
 is, what it definitely is that they are now about to learn. As unit 
 follows unit and course follows course, motives should become 
 deepened and clarified, objectives should become multiplied, and 
 more of them will originate in the pupil’s own purposes. 
 
 Studying the unit is learning to use in study the tools which 
 have been acquired in their more fundamental aspects elsewhere. 
 Reading, mathematics, graphic illustration, English writing, are 
 perhaps the principal tools which the pupil learns to apply and 
 by learning to apply learns to study and by studying assimilates. 
 It is not a question of first acquiring the tools to perfection and 
 then learning to study to perfection and then studying. It is all 
 one process. The pupil learns to read geography, for instance, 
 by studying geography, and by learning to read he learns in part 
 not how to study, but studying. Every unit in a science-type 
 course, when effectively mastered, is an addition to the pupil’s 
 stock of study tools because it is an addition to his methods of 
 thinking. 
 
262 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 A large part of the teacher’s function in assimilation is the 
 assembling of the material of study and putting the pupil in 
 effective contact with his material. When he has developed into 
 a student, the pupil will have learned how to seek his own ma- 
 terial and will no longer need the teacher’s intimate guidance 
 and supervision. When a meager textbook is the only material 
 of study, it is not to be wondered at that the pupil does not learn 
 to study. He has no chance. 
 
 THE CLASSROOM 
 
 Let us then turn to a picture of the classroom in the science 
 type organized as a study-room for the assimilation period. 
 
 In the first place, the traditional conception of the classroom 
 as a place in which the class is to meet day after day, mainly for 
 the purpose of reporting on what they have prepared outside, 
 disappears altogether. Instead of that, the class appears from 
 day to day for its regular appointment in its study-room in pre- 
 cisely the same manner in which the teacher presumably retires 
 to his own study at home for certain hours during the day. It 
 will continue to do so until the assimilation period on the unit 
 has been completed. Now this implies several new conceptions 
 touching the classroom, its physical arrangement and its equip- 
 ment. 
 
 The formal arrangement of schoolroom seats and desks is 
 more or less a handicap, but still it will do. The ideal is an equip- 
 ment of simple tables with tops which have a sufficient area to 
 accommodate the charts with which the pupil is likely to have te 
 work. The seat is a substantial chair so constructed that it is not 
 likely to develop squeaks with use. An ideal arrangement of 
 schoolroom furniture necessarily requires somewhat more floor 
 space per pupil in attendance than is the case with the ordinary 
 type and arrangement of furniture. The excess space required 
 is, however, a small matter when compared with the lavish use 
 of space for corridors and other non-classroom purposes so com- 
 monly found. 
 
— 
 
 : 
 j 
 
 
 
 ASSIMILATION 263 
 
 In the laboratory sciences, laboratory exercises are clearly a 
 part of the assimilation period, while lecture-table demonstration 
 belongs to the presentation. Ideally, a lecture table, study desks, 
 and laboratory tables should be combined in a single room. Dur- 
 ing assimilation, pupils should be individually free to come and 
 go between their study desks and the laboratory tables. To sep- 
 arate the laboratory and the study-room means that either the 
 class must go to the laboratory as a unit or else an assistant 
 teacher must be employed for the laboratory. The maintenance 
 of a small lecture-room for demonstration purposes also runs at 
 cross-purposes with the technique to be employed, since, while 
 the class is together on the first presentation, groups of pupils 
 will be released to begin assimilation before the class as a whole 
 is released. Further, the maintenance of such a room for the ac- 
 commodation of the small class groups which are appropriate to 
 
 ‘science instruction in the secondary period seems to be a waste- 
 
 ful and rather purposeless attempt to copy the physical arrange- 
 ment which is perhaps needed in the medical school or for large 
 classes in other departments of the university. 
 
 However, the room arrangement is a minor matter. Given a 
 thorough teacher, an appropriate technique, and an adequate 
 equipment, much can be accomplished even in very illy adapted 
 rooms. , 
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 Except in the laboratory sciences, the ordinary classroom is 
 apt to be a bare sort of place. As long as it is used only for the 
 purpose of hearing recitations which have been prepared out- 
 side, nothing more is needed. The pupil does not, however, 
 study advantageously under such conditions. He requires a 
 workroom in which are collected the materials upon which he is 
 for the time being dependent. Pupils are not likely to learn how 
 to study if they have nothing to study. 
 
 In the first place, there should be on the walls charts which 
 show plainly the constants in use in the subjects for which the 
 
264 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 room is assigned. It is a waste of time in history to spend a large 
 part of a course in memorizing the purely chronological data 
 which help to form the framework within which the pupil thinks 
 and studies. A history-room should have charts for instant ref- 
 erence and constant reminder which exhibit such material. Simi- 
 larly, a physics-room should exhibit charts of the principal con- 
 stants, which are ordinarily found only in the appendix of the 
 text. There they serve only to encourage the lexicon habit. And 
 so with mathematics, grammar, economics, nutrition, chemistry, 
 and other subjects. In addition, the geographical subjects need, 
 of course, the appropriate wall-map equipment. 
 
 In the second place, the room should contain, not only the 
 few reference books required, but also the body of substantial 
 content material which the pupils will have occasion to use, 
 many books chosen from the school library and returned to the 
 library when no longer needed for classroom study. We cannot 
 be too emphatic in this connection in urging the use of suitable 
 and helpful books written in the foreign languages which the 
 school offers and which the pupils are studying. This is not only 
 one of the major functional opportunities for foreign language 
 but it is distinctly a contribution to the establishment of an effec- 
 tive study attitude for pupils to realize not only that a science is 
 not contained within the pages of a single text but that it like- 
 wise is not written exclusively in English. Of the same nature as 
 book material is periodical literature. Every classroom should 
 contain the regular numbers of the special periodicals dealing 
 with the subject being studied, which are not too technical for 
 the pupils to understand. Even the somewhat advanced tech- 
 nical periodicals should be on file for the use of the teacher and 
 the few pupils who develop special interests in the subject. 
 
 Finally, there is the matter of laboratory appliances. Labor- 
 atory material in the science type in the secondary school 
 should be limited to what the pupils can use. The use of such 
 material in the assimilation period is limited to the need of put- 
 ting the pupil within reach of experience which can best arise 
 
ASSIMILATION 265 
 
 out of physical contact with concrete appliances and observation 
 of the processes in their physical manifestation. Assimilation is 
 learning from experience, and in science the most illuminating 
 experience often arises out of the contemplation of processes at 
 work. The only justification for assigning a laboratory exercise 
 to be worked is an affirmative answer to the question, Will the 
 exercise proposed make better assimilative material than a 
 demonstration which the teacher can present or a certain series 
 of pages in the assigned reading? If the apparatus assigned for 
 use is so elaborate that the pupil is obliged to learn a difficult 
 task of manipulation, it is extremely unlikely that any particular 
 assimilative value on the unit itself will be contributed. There is 
 seldom, in the secondary period, any possibility of effective as- 
 similative use of high-powered microscopes, elaborate electrical 
 equipment, sensitive balances, extended arrays of reagent bot- 
 tles, and the like. These, for the most part, belong to the period 
 of specialization. | 
 
 Often an essential piece of assimilative experience, particu- 
 larly in the biological and earth sciences, can be found only in a 
 field trip, and the teacher must have vigor and executive ability 
 enough to arrange and carry out such trips. 
 
 While the laboratory motive should doubtless obtain in the 
 elementary school, there is little occasion at that level for pupil 
 laboratory exercises extended beyond the simplest which can be 
 set up on the desks of the classroom. If the test question for pu- 
 pil laboratory exercises suggested above is consistently applied, 
 the answer for most elementary, and indeed junior high school, 
 classes will be in the negative. 
 
 Such is the description of a study-room adequately equipped. 
 Equipment is very much more important than the physical ar- 
 rangement of the room, but lack of adequate equipment is not 
 an obstacle which blocks the possibility of teaching under mas- 
 tery principles. Even though there is nothing available other 
 than a single textbook, a thoroughly earnest and sincere teacher 
 can secure results which are much more real than is possible un- 
 
266 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 der the daily lesson-assignment procedure. The assimilation will 
 be brief and perhaps meager but it will be none the less assimila- 
 tion contributing to understanding and somewhat to ability to 
 study. Further, as the years go on, equipment will accumulate. 
 
 The classroom being arranged as a study and the proper 
 equipment provided, it is useful to look into the rooms and view 
 classes at work. 
 
 CLASSES AT WORK 
 
 In the first room we visit, every pupil is at work on his own 
 individual problem. Some are struggling still in the early stages. 
 Others are going steadily and prosperously forward. Two or 
 three have completed assimilation on this unit and are working 
 on special voluntary projects. One has completed and is utiliz- 
 ing the study period for work on another subject in which he is 
 finding difficulty. The teacher tells us that still another has been 
 released for a few days for additional class work as a visitor in a 
 language-arts course in which he is a slow learner. Now and 
 then a pupil in a history class which we visit passes quietly to 
 the book tables, consults several books intently, selects one, and 
 returns to his seat. In a chemistry class, a pupil gathers up his 
 papers, makes a final rapid survey of what he has done, slips a 
 rubber band about them, and lays them aside. He then passes 
 to the laboratory table, selects and arranges apparatus, and be- 
 gins work on an exercise. 
 
 In one of the rooms, the teacher is passing quietly and rap- 
 idly about the room from pupil to pupil. As he stops at the desk 
 of one, evidently for individual instruction, he glances about the 
 room, notes a raised hand, and nods to the pupil. The pupil thus 
 recognized continues with his work and presently the teacher, 
 having set the first pupil right, proceeds to the desk of the sec- 
 ond, where a prolonged colloquy takes place. One after another, 
 other pupils gather about the desk, and presently the teacher an- 
 nounces to the class, “Several of you seem to be having trouble 
 with . I don’t wonder. Here is what is troubling you.” 
 In a few minutes, their faces say, “Oh, yes, I see,” and study 
 
 
 
ASSIMILATION 267 
 
 goes on. While the teacher is speaking, some of the pupils glance 
 up and listen for a moment, but most of these resume their study. 
 Evidently the point in question is not troubling them. 
 
 In another room, the teacher is sitting quietly at his desk. 
 Study is proceeding, apparently with few if any individual diffi- 
 culties. Presently the teacher nods to a pupil, the latter takes a 
 chair at the desk, and a prolonged interview follows. We note 
 that the teacher asks a great many questions. After the pupil re- 
 turns to his own seat, the teacher remarks to us, sotto voce, 
 “That is one of my problem cases. He is a slow worker and I 
 suspect a reading case. He is coming to me this afternoon for 
 some tests.” 
 
 In both these rooms, group attention is near 100 per cent, 
 but in the next room we visit the aspect is very different. The 
 teacher is sitting at his desk evidently in an irritated and nerv- 
 ous frame of mind, a pupil is seated by him, and a cue of others 
 reaches halfway down one of the aisles. Pupils here and there in 
 the room are dawdling. Evidently the teacher’s concern for con- 
 trol technique is nil. We become curious and ask the principal 
 who is with us to explain. “Yes,” he replies, “that teacher has 
 been visited, helped, coached, and reasoned with but nothing 
 seems to do any good. I have sent him to observe one of the 
 teachers you visited but without effect. I am afraid it isn’t in 
 him. He leaves at the end of the semester. We have another who 
 is going with him and perhaps you would like to visit that room.” 
 
 We accordingly enter another room. The teacher is seated 
 at his desk correcting papers. The pupils are in various atti- 
 tudes of unrest and idleness. Some of them are “‘visiting.”’ Oth- 
 ers are merely idling and occasionally glancing at the clock. One 
 girl is reading a novel. The teacher glances up for a moment and 
 calls out, “Freda, put that book away and go to work.” As we 
 leave the room, the principal remarks, ‘‘Well, that is better than 
 common; he is usually doing nothing at all. He leaves the build- 
 ing promptly at the close of school. Never to my knowledge does 
 any studying on his own account. His out-of-school hours are 
 
268 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 all spent either at a club downtown or else on the golf links. He 
 is simply plain lazy and this supervised-study idea he considers 
 just so much extra spare time. He used to be very popular with 
 a certain set of pupils because he was easy on his grades, but, 
 since we have given up grades, people like A and B whom you 
 visited are the popular teachers. And, at that, I don’t think it is 
 so much popularity as that the youngsters respect them and en- 
 joy their work.” 
 
 EXPLANATION, SUB-PRESENTATION, AND POST-PRESENTATION 
 
 The implication of our description of the class at work in the 
 assimilation period is that the period is wholly one of studying 
 books or other similar material or else work at laboratory exer- 
 cises, that the teacher’s direct oral presentation came to an end 
 in the presentation period. Not so. In spite of the fact that study 
 with books is indeed the dominant and essential characteristic of 
 the period, there are often occasions for the teacher’s direct oral 
 presentation within assimilation. We shall enumerate three 
 types of such occasions. 
 
 One of the teachers whom we visited had occasion to inter- 
 rupt study for oral explanation of a point which he found was 
 troubling enough of the pupils to lead him to recognize it as be- 
 ing of major importance. Let us call this procedure explana- 
 tion. Sometimes a great deal of it is required, but the teacher 
 needs to be on his guard not to fall into the temptation to talk 
 too much. The need of explanation is in itself evidence that the 
 assimilative material is either insufficient or not well focused or 
 perhaps lacking in clarity. The teacher should keep notes and in 
 the reorganization of the unit for the next course endeavor to 
 correct the fault. Other things being equal, more explanation is 
 required in the early.stages of the secondary period than in the 
 later. 
 
 Some units at high-school level are so extended that sub- 
 presentations are required. For instance, the unit in history en- 
 titled ““The Westward Movement”’ (see chap. xii) has four ma- 
 
ASSIMILATION 269 
 
 jor elements, in each of which a presentation is sometimes, but 
 not always, useful. The presentation deals with the unit as a 
 whole. Then each of these major elements is given a sub-presen- 
 tation within the assimilation period when the class as a whole 
 reaches the point. Some of the more successful students, how- 
 ever, pass over these points without taking the successive sub- 
 presentations, and some of the more mature classes need none. 
 While the principle of sub-presentation must be recognized, its 
 tendency to lead the teacher astray must also be kept clearly in 
 mind. 
 
 In the first place, the teacher who has a tendency to forma- 
 lize and routinize all procedure is in danger of making sub-pres- 
 entations to classes which are mature enough to carry the whole 
 sweep of the more extensive units. In that case, as in all similar 
 instances, formalism tends to inhibit the development of self-de- 
 pendence. 
 
 In the second place, the unwary teacher is likely to find that 
 overindulgence in sub-presentations has led him to destroy his 
 units and to substitute for them a series of non-sequential sub- 
 units. For instance, overinsistence on the major aspects of ““The 
 Westward Movement” may well cause the Westward Movement 
 as the significant understanding to disappear altogether. 
 
 In the elementary school and the junior high school, a unit 
 which needs sub-presentations is probably too extensive any- 
 way. In the junior college, students should be sufficiently ma- 
 ture to be able to take the whole sweep of any unit on the main 
 presentation. Perhaps we may say that, in general, the sub-pres- 
 entation units are characteristic of the senior high school. 
 
 There sometimes occurs a unit in which a body of principles 
 learned can advantageously be pushed to a farther limit, all 
 within the same unit, by the use of what we may call post-pres- 
 entation. An illustration can be found in the second unit in ele- 
 mentary arithmetic (see chap. xiii, p. 200). The fundamental 
 unit is addition and subtraction, and addition and subtraction as 
 applied to denominate numbers is pedagogically part of the unit, 
 
270 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 but this last part does not present itself naturally in the assimi- 
 lation period. A young pupil does not see how to handle denom- 
 inate numbers without specific teaching. Hence, when assimila- 
 tion as applied to the fundamental unit is nearly complete, the 
 teacher announces to the class in substance, ‘“Now, if we needed 
 to add or subtract numbers like 5 gallons, 3 quarts, 1 pint; and 
 6 gallons, 2 quarts, and 1 pint, it is just like what we have al- 
 ready done, and I am going to show you how.” Then follows a 
 post-presentation within the assimilation period. The result is 
 economy in the learning process, for the carrying and borrowing 
 principle is much more suggestive in denominate numbers than 
 in the decimal system, and economy in time. Of course the mate- 
 rial thus handled can always be set up as a separate and addi- 
 tional unit, if the teacher does not feel able to carry the class 
 with her throughout post-presentation. If the whole pedagogical 
 unit is thus taught through the agency of post-presentation, the 
 assimilation process continues. Assimilation testing is applied to 
 the unit as a whole, and so are the two steps which make up the 
 reaction member of the learning cycle. 
 
 The use of post-presentation is subject to the same dangers 
 as are explanation and sub-presentation. The teacher who over- 
 indulges in this aspect of technique may well find herself “carry- 
 ing the class on her back” to the utter inhibition of the develop- 
 ment of the will to learn, perhaps the most common bane of 
 school work. In general, post-presentation should be used only 
 when the nature of the unit itself calls for it, not when the teach- 
 er merely thinks that “They don’t seem to understand very 
 well.” The condition suggested by the quoted remark may well 
 be cause for reconsideration of the whole teaching procedure on 
 the unit and return to presentation itself. It is not occasion for 
 post-presentation. 
 
 THE SUPERVISION OF STUDY 
 
 The assimilation period is obviously one of supervised study. 
 
 Now the terms “supervised” and “directed” as applied to 
 study have certain unfortunate connotations. The essence of 
 
ASSIMILATION 271 
 
 supervised study is the provision of right opportunity for study 
 and training in study habits and not the supervision of study if 
 by supervision is meant compelling the pupils to study according 
 to the teacher’s preconceptions or according to formal rules. As 
 we have seen, the conditions of study are motives, objectives, the 
 needed tools, the material. Supervised study has chiefly to do 
 with the tools and the material. It is further concerned with the 
 development of that volitional basis for study which we call the 
 “power of sustained application.” 
 
 The study tools ——The study tool par excellence is reading. 
 In fact, that form of study which consists in learning from books 
 is in the main simply intensive and extensive reading. We may 
 well utilize this principle as our point of departure. 
 
 Let us assume that our pupils when they were at second- or 
 third-grade level did in fact acquire the primary reading adapta- 
 tion, that is, that they became able to read the thought of the 
 printed page without focal consciousness of words and other iso- 
 lated elements. We are likely to find some even in the senior 
 high school and junior college who have not done so, and these 
 we shall consider later, together with other problem cases. Pu- 
 pils who have arrived at the reading adaptation and who have 
 read abundantly and extensively have usually still to learn the 
 art of reading intensively, which may be defined as “getting the 
 thought and all the thought.” 
 
 The teacher of reading recognizes the principle and pro- 
 vides for specific instruction in intensive reading at the regular 
 reading period. Such a plan of campaign must rest on the ex- 
 pectation of transfer of training. If we continue this process of 
 general training in intensive reading, we shall undoubtedly se- 
 cure progressively higher scores on tests given for the purpose 
 of measuring the ability which is being developed. But shall we 
 _ get a transfer to intensive reading ability in arithmetic, geog- 
 raphy, history, science, and soon? Weshall get varying amounts 
 of transfer in different pupils depending upon the chance that 
 the pupil has developed wholly or in part a generalized adapta- 
 
272 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tion, that is to say, that he has come to see that this power which 
 he is acquiring applies to everything he reads. Chance is the ne- 
 gation of scientific procedure. If we adopt here as our specific 
 objective generalized ability in intensive reading, we shall suc- 
 ceed only if we use materials from every sort of reading which 
 the pupil has to use. Intensive reading in mathematics is one 
 thing, in geography another, in natural science a third, and so 
 on. In each, the ability is in part conditioned on the concepts 
 peculiar to the subject. Learning geography, for instance, is in 
 large part learning to read in geographical terms, with the geo- 
 graphical vocabulary, and within the field of geographical con- 
 cepts. Evidently, then, the use of reading periods for training 
 pupils in the art of intensive reading implies practically that all 
 the content subjects, including literature, shall be taught in the 
 reading period, a palpable absurdity. Hence, let us turn the 
 problem about and look at the other side. Instead of training 
 pupils in intensive reading in a reading class, let us utilize inten- 
 sive reading as the most important aspect of study in the assimi- 
 lation period in science-type subjects throughout the school and 
 recognize the principle that development of intensive reading 
 ability is simply development of one form of study ability. 
 
 We may then imagine ourselves at the beginning of the as- 
 similation period in arithmetic, or in an extensive content sub- 
 ject, in the early elementary part of the secondary period. One 
 of the first things to do will be to select a series of problems from 
 the arithmetic, or a passage from the basal text in another sub- 
 ject, and focus upon it a series of written questions touching the 
 content and requiring intensive reading. The pupils, with books 
 open before them, find the answers from the text and write them. 
 The items of the test are then scored right and wrong, and the 
 scored test paper of. each pupil is returned. The teacher now 
 takes the book, and the scores and a period of instruction some- 
 thing like the following takes place: 
 
 ‘‘Nobody could find the answer to Question 7, and yet the 
 book says plainly . You all see it now. 
 
 
 
ASSIMILATION 273 
 
 “Fred answers Question 11 in this way [quotes], and yet the 
 book says just this. Fred did not read carefully. 
 
 “George and Henry and Mabel didn’t find the answer to 
 Question 5, but everybody else did. So it must be that these pu- 
 pils could have done so if they had read carefully enough, for 
 you see how plainly it says 
 
 “Now, we are all going to try again and see how much we 
 can improve our scores.” 
 
 The training effect is much the same as that of the sustained- 
 application profile described in chapter ix. The pupil is made 
 acutely conscious of what is required of him, he is shown where- 
 in his failure consists, and he is induced to improve his score. 
 But that is not enough. Improving his score in the subject which 
 he is studying will in most cases result merely in improving his 
 score unless the pupil is convinced that he has thus learned an 
 art which is of great value to him in all his study both now and 
 henceforth. Several other similar tests on other material are 
 given during the assimilation period and the results compared 
 with those of the first test, which was set before the period of 
 training began. And so the process is continued throughout the 
 elementary school, perhaps throughout the junior high school, 
 and very possibly well into the senior high school and junior col- 
 lege. If systematic teaching is new in the school, certainly noth- 
 ing should be taken for granted touching the abilities of senior 
 high school and junior college pupils. 
 
 Even before the end of the elementary-school period, cer- 
 tain pupils will show intensive reading ability fully up to the re- 
 quirements of the course in which they are studying. Such pupils 
 are then released from training. The effect of such release is 
 threefold. It saves time and energy. It gives us a definite and 
 positive piece of evidence bearing upon individual-study superi- 
 ority. More important than either, it is another experience 
 among many which help the pupils all to realize that learning is 
 an inward growth and not merely satisfying the teacher with ac- 
 ceptable performance. The pupils who are released from train- 
 
 
 
274 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ing at, let us say, fifth-grade level may need, however, to be 
 brought under training again when they reach the more mature 
 and exacting material of the high school. Early test results and 
 failure of certain pupils to improve under training may set off 
 the early problem cases and throw some preliminary light on the 
 correct diagnoses. 
 
 Such specific, systematic training in intensive reading ability 
 is the foundation of training in study ability, but as time goes on 
 and more extended reading material is used for study purposes, 
 pupils will probably need to be given many bits of advice as to 
 methods of reading extensively. Such training is, however, lan- 
 guage-arts teaching and it must conform to the principles of that 
 type (see chap. xxiv). The important consideration is that the 
 pupil must not be made focally conscious of details of method. 
 He should not, for instance, be told first to look for this and then 
 for that. Instruction must be directed to the reading in its exten- 
 sive aspect, and pupil consciousness must be focused upon the 
 reading as a whole. For instance, in their extensive reading, pu- 
 pils may be told first to read a whole chapter and let the general 
 drift manifest itself; then to read it again and perhaps a third 
 time until the understanding seems to come to them clearly and 
 they begin to feel a sense of familiarity; finally, to note rela- 
 tively obscure passages and to read them intensively. The 
 objective is to train pupils not in reading intensively material 
 which is in its nature extensive but rather to train them in thor- 
 oughly reading extensive material. 
 
 To give advice touching extensive reading is not enough; we 
 must ascertain whether or not the advice has taken effect. For 
 this purpose, much the same sort of test is employed as in the 
 case of intensive reading. A passage is chosen, preferably from 
 a book in the hands of the pupils, to which extensive reading is 
 appropriate. A set of questions is prepared calculated to bring 
 out the salient points which the passage read is intended to elu- 
 cidate. The passage chosen is long enough and the questions 
 asked are numerous enough so that no pupil is likely to read the 
 
ASSIMILATION 275 
 
 whole passage and react correctly to all the test items in the time 
 allowed. The time allowance is of any convenient length, not too 
 long to destroy the value of the test—say, from two to five min- 
 utes, depending upon the level in the school career at which the 
 test is given. Instructions are given somewhat in the following 
 manner. 
 
 “We are going to try to find out how well you can rapidly 
 read a passage in one of your books and still catch as much of 
 the meaning as possible. For that purpose we shall use a passage 
 beginning at on page of [naming the book]. Let 
 us find the place now. Have all found it? 
 
 “Very well. Now when I give the signal, begin to read and 
 read about as you usually do with this book until I give the sig- 
 nal ‘Stop.’ Then mark a circle around the last word read and 
 lay the books aside.” 
 
 This part of the test is carried out, the test questions, which 
 have already been distributed and have been lying face down on 
 the desks, are taken up and the questions answered. The pupils 
 are then instructed to count words read and write the numbers 
 on their test papers. The papers are then scored, the results dis- 
 tributed in much the form indicated later for assimilation test- 
 ing, and the exhibit placed before the class. The teacher thus 
 has, first, an extensive reading test; and, second, a rate test on 
 extensive reading. Each pupil has a concrete exhibit of his 
 achievement, and he thus becomes aware of his shortcomings 
 and their nature. The process of training now begins. 
 
 “T think that perhaps it would be interesting tomorrow,” 
 says the teacher, “to see how much we can improve our scores 
 on this same test.”’ This procedure tends to accomplish two 
 things. In the first place, when the scores of the retest are com- 
 pared with those of the original and with those attained on sub- 
 sequent fresh test material, the pupils who have a lesson-learn- 
 ing tendency are noted. Second, the pupils enter upon the retest 
 with a consciousness of the nature of specific deficiencies and 
 secure practice in improving performance with respect to those 
 
 
 
 
 
276 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 deficiencies. They acquire an experience of improvement. The 
 class is then told that a new test will be given within perhaps a 
 week, and the intention is to see how much improvement there 
 will be. The process is repeated at intervals throughout the as- 
 similation and should similarly be done in other courses which 
 are using extensive material. Certajn comments touching testing 
 of this character are perhaps not out of place. 
 
 There are three variables in the test, namely, extensive read- 
 ing in itself, rate, and holding in memory long enough to react to 
 the test items. The test is therefore not a good one for precise 
 scientific investigation, unless the investigator can make due 
 allowance for the presence of these variables, particularly the 
 first and last. On the other hand, in the study process, it is just 
 this complex of the three variables which is used and which 
 therefore becomes the appropriate objective of training. The 
 three variables together are an index of assimilative capacity in 
 extensive reading. 
 
 As in all testing, the results of which are used as guides in 
 corrective teaching, the teacher is less concerned with the test 
 scores than with analysis of the test results. It is the latter which 
 gives us our best light upon the pupil and his needs. Here, for 
 instance, is a pupil who reads very rapidly and partly for that 
 reason makes a high score. Another reads slowly and similarly 
 makes a low score. If now we compare the two in terms of the 
 number of words read per test question correctly answered, we 
 find that the second has a better record. In still another case, 
 the pupil has read very slowly but he has answered correctly 
 every question within the scope of the ground he has covered. 
 Number I needs to be told not to read less rapidly but to im- 
 prove his assimilation of what he reads. Number II should hold 
 fast to his assimilative ability but try to read more rapidly. 
 Number III is probably reading intensively, and he should be 
 made aware of the difference between the two kinds of reading. 
 
 In selecting material for the different and successive tests, 
 care must be used to find passages which are comparable in diffi- 
 
ASSIMILATION 277 
 
 culty. If we were conducting critical and precise investigations, 
 we should need some objective standards on this issue. We are 
 not conducting such studies, however, but rather training nor- 
 mal children in study capacity. If the teacher uses good judg- 
 ment in selecting passages, and especially if he uses the same 
 book, he is not likely to go far wrong. 
 
 In order to cover the very extensive reading required in the 
 assimilative process, the pupil must be able to read with opti- 
 mum rapidity. Otherwise he will be severely handicapped in his 
 rate of learning. The essential point is the optimum rate for the 
 individual pupil and not the maximum rate. Pupil temperament 
 enters critically here. Some are phlegmatic, and all of their ac- 
 tivities are carried out in a slow and deliberate fashion. Others 
 are nervous, quick-motioned, and their activity is always at high 
 speed. Others still are capable of working at good rate but are 
 inclined to loiter. Now pupils who are in reality naturally slow 
 and deliberate workers cannot ordinarily be speeded up without 
 more or less disastrous effects. Further, they are quite likely to 
 make up in thoroughness and assimilative capacity what they 
 lose in their slow rate. It is, however, with the loiterers that we 
 are particularly concerned. 
 
 Accordingly, it is well to administer early in the assimilation 
 period, in an early unit, one of the standard reading tests in 
 silent reading which has a rate component. The loiterers will 
 thus become detected, and training of the type described above 
 may be set up. It may well be that we shall find the greater part 
 of a class reading below the standard rate, and in that case we 
 shall need of course to see that every teacher in content subjects 
 is carrying on a training campaign. In the cases of individual 
 pupils, we are likely to find instances in which the pupil reads at 
 standard rate but is still a loiterer. The author knows of no 
 ready objective means of distinguishing between such pupils and 
 those who are really reading up to the rate set by their normal 
 reactive tendencies. Nevertheless, the observant teacher can 
 usually form a shrewd judgment by noting the pupil’s general 
 
278 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 activity in periods of unsupervised behavior and comparing him 
 with others both in that respect and in his tested rate of reading. 
 Reading is the fundamental and most important study tool, 
 but it is not the only one. Perhaps next in order is handwriting. 
 The presentation test, the assimilation period, the written 
 recitation, in fact all school work in which pupil reaction is im- 
 portant, rests heavily upon rate and legibility of handwriting. 
 Within certain limitations, it is relatively easy to develop the 
 handwriting skills in a handwriting period, but the skills thus de- 
 veloped transfer to handwriting in general only as the individual 
 pupil acquires a handwriting ideal, and this is a matter of 
 chance, apart from systematic mastery development. The ines- 
 capable conditions of schoolroom work require that this general- 
 ized adaptation must be set up in the growing pupil through 
 training in every situation in which he has occasion to use hand- 
 writing. If the teacher is concerned with handwriting only in the 
 handwriting period or if only a special handwriting teacher is so 
 concerned, the pupil, in all but the chance cases, relapses into his 
 naive performance when the specific constraint is removed. 
 Hence, every teacher in every period in which handwriting is 
 used, until the required skills have been permanently estab- 
 lished, must be a handwriting teacher. This does not imply that 
 the handwriting drill must be carried on in the content subjects. 
 That is constructive work which belongs properly to the hand- 
 writing period. It does mean, however, that the teacher in other 
 periods must heed such matters as handwriting position and 
 penholding, and above all must accept from each pupil only his 
 standard performance. The appropriate attitude for the teacher 
 to take when a slovenly paper is handed in is the following: 
 “Frank, my boy, this is the way you write when you try [ex- 
 hibiting a good paper]. Now look at this paper and see how dif- 
 ferent it is. The purpose of your practice in handwriting is to 
 teach you to write well whenever you write at all. It is of no use 
 for you to give me a paper like this for I shall always turn it 
 back to be done over again.” Frank’s rejoinder is likely to be, 
 
 ——— 
 
ASSIMILATION 279 
 
 
 
 “But, Miss , if I try hard on my handwriting, I can’t 
 think what to write.’”’ The answer is, “Yes, I understand how 
 that is, but that is one of the things you have to learn to do. You 
 will soon learn to write well and be able to think all the time you 
 are writing.” 
 
 In the establishment of good handwriting habits, legibility is 
 of course the primary consideration, in the sense that rate which 
 is gained at the expense of legibility is of little value from any 
 point of view. Rate is, nevertheless, in itself the practically 
 valuable product from the point of view of use as a tool. One en- 
 counters cases in which rate is abnormally slow; the pupil re- 
 quires an incredible amount of time for putting in writing the 
 simplest passage. Some of these are the problem cases which re- 
 quire remedial reconstruction of the fundamental writing adap- 
 tation. As to the others, much the same procedure is used which 
 has been described in the case of rate in reading. The pupil is 
 not pushed beyond his natural reactive rate, but stimulus and 
 guidance are applied to bring him up to his normal rate. 
 
 A third fundamental tool in study is the application of the 
 mathematical concepts and processes which the pupil has learned 
 in arithmetic or in other mathematics. There seem to be two 
 considerations involved here. In the first place, application to 
 situations found in science, the home economics courses, and 
 shop are good functional tests of the reality of the learning prod- 
 ucts assumed to have been established in mathematics courses; 
 and, second, the courses last named are parts of the total situa- 
 tion in which the pupil masters his mathematics. Let us consider 
 the last point first. 
 
 If the school holds that all mathematics must be finally and 
 definitely mastered in the mathematics period or department, 
 then it must arrange to have all subjects in which mathematics is 
 used taught by the mathematics department, an evident impossi- 
 bility. The alternative is to have mathematical applications 
 taught by all the departments in which mathematics is used, as 
 well as by the mathematics department. Now the practical prob- 
 
280 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 lem most commonly met here is much the same as that met in 
 reading, handwriting, and composition. Pupils become so thor- 
 oughly and fundamentally obsessed with the lesson-learning at- 
 titude and the idea of satisfactory class performance that they 
 do not generalize their learning. This is mathematics. This prin- 
 ciple the pupil has learned; he can apply it to any problem which 
 the mathematics teacher proposes. And yet if the same principle 
 and problem appear in physics or the shop he stands helpless. In 
 brief, a part of the mathematics learning product is apparently 
 the volitional adaptation in terms of which the learner makes the 
 effort to use the principle wherever it is needed. The teacher’s 
 attitude should be, ‘You have learned that principle for I have 
 talked with Mr. and he tells me that you have. Now you 
 must use it when you need it. Your trouble is not that you do 
 not know; you do not make the effort to apply.” The pupil’s re- 
 joinder is likely to be, ‘But, that was in mathematics [or even it 
 was last month] and this is physics. It is not ‘fair’ to ‘mark’ me 
 on mathematics in the physics class.”’ One sees at once that the 
 pupil has not acquired the whole of the mathematics learning 
 product. He has learned a principle as mathematics, but he has 
 not learned it as a usable implement for interpreting the world 
 of reality outside of the mathematics classroom. No doubt the 
 mathematics teacher thought he had done so, but subsequent ex- 
 perience shows that he had not. The mathematics teacher may 
 even have had good evidence of mastery, and yet the evidence 
 may appear in the event to have been inconclusive. 
 
 Now the mathematics department of the high school, and 
 the elementary-school teacher in the arithmetic period, have a 
 heavy responsibility for generalizing the teaching, as they go 
 along through the course, by convincing the pupil that what is 
 learned in mathematics is not only usable but must be used con- 
 stantly in the school and in life outside the school. Likewise, as 
 we have already seen (chap. xiii), the assimilative material in 
 the mathematics unit must be so selected from the pupil’s actual 
 experience, including his school experience, that his learning will 
 
 
 
ASSIMILATION 281 
 
 be capable of generalization. None the less, the teachers in other 
 than mathematics periods or departments have an equal respon- 
 sibility for contributing their essential part to the establishment 
 of the generalization when such is necessary. If they confine 
 themselves to deploring the failure of the mathematics teaching, 
 they will not only fail to do their part but they will exert a posi- 
 tively detrimental influence in convincing the pupil anew that 
 his education depends upon the teacher entirely and on himself 
 not at all. In the senior high school and junior college especially, 
 the attitude of the teacher may well be, ““You are presumed to 
 have mastered this elementary arithmetic or algebra or geom- 
 etry. You cannot make progress in this course without such 
 mastery. I am not going to teach you over again. I advise you 
 to secure a text and reteach yourself.” 
 
 On the other hand, the use of mathematical principles in 
 other periods and departments must be viewed as being in part a 
 functional test of the mathematical learning products. It will 
 not do merely to assume, when the pupil has reacted correctly to 
 all mastery tests which can be set by the mathematics teacher, 
 that all subsequent responsibility rests upon the teachers who 
 use the principles. As we have seen, much responsibility does 
 rest there. Nevertheless, transfer failure always raises questions 
 touching the organization of the mathematics courses, their as- 
 similative material, and the thoroughness and intelligence of the 
 teacher’s own application of his teaching and testing technique. 
 Year by year, loyal acceptance of the functional tests on the 
 part of the mathematics department, scrutiny of the results, re- 
 consideration of the course organization, of the material, and of 
 the teacher’s efficiency, will do much to found mathematics 
 teaching in the school upon a permanent and effective basis. 
 
 A study tool which is often overlooked is that of graphic rep- 
 resentation. The pupil who has the ability to sketch rapidly and 
 correctly the appliances and to picture correctly the processes 
 found in the physical, biological, and earth sciences is in posses- 
 sion of a tool which is of immense assistance in establishing ef- 
 
282 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 fective assimilation and sense of reality. Precisely the same 
 principles which apply to the use of reading, handwriting, and 
 mathematical principles and processes in study apply to the use 
 of drawing. Precisely the same type of co-ordination between 
 different subjects and different departments is required. If the 
 pupil has been effectively taught the art of graphic representa- 
 tion so that it will function outside of the drawing period and 
 the art department, he will tend naturally to make large use of 
 the ability in his study of science-type units. If he has been ef- 
 fectively taught and does not use the ability, it is the business of 
 the teacher who is teaching him how to study to see that he does 
 use his ability in the situations in which its use is serviceable. If 
 he has not been effectively taught in drawing, it is still important 
 that the supervisor of study shall not only show him how to use 
 such ability as he has but shall give the class simple lessons in 
 such drawing as is needed and useful. 
 
 Finally, an essential tool of study is the effective use of Eng- 
 lish writing. We have had, however, and shall have occasion to 
 study its use in other connections (see especially chaps. xv, xvii, 
 and xxvi), and hence need only to note here that it is such a tool. 
 It is, in fact, of much more significance in other parts of the 
 teaching cycle than in assimilation. 
 
 In our consideration of the tools of study, the use and devel- 
 opment of which is a large part of the teacher’s duty in super- 
 vised study, it is constantly apparent that effective study is in 
 large part a function of school co-ordination and integrity. 
 Hence the supervision of the school as a whole has a very large 
 part to play in the development of study capacity in the pupils. 
 If each department in a school which is concerned with the gen- 
 eral education of youth is going its own way, absorbed in its own 
 problems, with scant concern for the process of education as 
 such, the effect will be seen in ineffective study habits perhaps 
 more than in any other one respect. 
 
 Training pupils in their use of the tools of study, co-ordinat- 
 ing and focusing such use upon the study of units in subjects 
 
ASSIMILATION 283 
 
 _ which belong to the science type, is the principal practical task 
 _ of the teacher in supervised study, particularly in the elemen- 
 | tary school and in the junior high school. Next perhaps in order 
 | of importance is putting the pupil in contact with the materials 
 } of assimilation. 
 
 The materials of study —Of such materials the most obvious 
 | are of course to be found in books. If the pupil has learned only 
 to master a basal textbook, he has in the main been taught only 
 | how to read intensively. He will rarely develop into intellectual 
 . - self-dependence along that line. He must be made aware of the 
 _ vast resources outside of the textbook, put in contact with them, 
 
 and shown how to use them. | 
 
 | For such purposes, guide sheets are furnished. These are es- 
 sentially lists of references to reading material which expands 
 the content of the basal text and focuses upon a broader under- 
 standing of the unit. In the elementary school, as early as the 
 fourth grade, these guide sheets may be in the form of questions 
 not unlike the “seek further” questions sometimes found at the 
 end of chapters in textbooks; only each question is accompanied 
 _ by one or more references. The pupil is required to keep a note- 
 _ book in which he records his answers. Thus he takes the first 
 steps in research and the art of note-taking. Later, the question 
 _ form is dispensed with and the guide sheet contains simply ref- 
 - erences on the unit, which the pupil is expected to find for him- 
 self. Later still, at senior high school level when pupils have 
 been trained from the beginning of the secondary period, no 
 _ guide sheet is furnished. The pupil has now become a student, 
 _ possessed of sufficient intellectual self-dependence to use the re- 
 - sources of a well-stocked study-room, if not the school library 
 _ itself, even if he has not yet arrived at the stage at which he can 
 _ formulate his own problems and pursue them to a successful 
 solution. 
 
 . But the books on the study-room book tables are not the 
 _ only materials of the assimilation period. There is apt to be a 
 _ wealth of material discoverable outside the classroom, and if the 
 
 
 
284 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 pupils are invited to bring in all the material touching upon the 
 unit which they can find, there will not only appear in the class- 
 room an abundance of newspaper clippings, pictorial illustra- 
 tions, science and history realien, additional book material 
 loaned from home libraries, and the like, but, what is more im- 
 portant, there will be established in the pupils a useful aware- 
 ness that not all the needful material of learning is found in the 
 textbook or even in the school. 
 
 In the physical and biological sciences, particularly in the 
 senior high school and junior college, laboratory exercises be- 
 long to the assimilation period and are an important part of the 
 teacher’s concern in supervised study. Here the teacher becomes 
 essentially a foreman. 
 
 Laboratory exercises which are carried on independently of 
 any effective supervision are pretty apt to be perfunctory at the 
 best and dawdling periods of loafing at the worst. In the early 
 part of a first course in laboratory science, several explanatory 
 class exercises in the mere manipulation of apparatus are usual- 
 ly necessary. Beyond that, individual pupils need to be watched 
 in this respect and shown the right way of doing things instead 
 of being allowed to perform in a bungling and wholly childish 
 fashion (see also chapters on the practical-arts type). 
 
 Laboratory exercises imply laboratory notebooks, not the 
 kind in which everything is prearranged for the pupil so that he 
 has nothing to do but enter the data which are called for by the 
 blank spaces, but preferably notebooks of ample and convenient 
 size made up of blank pages and so arranged that pages of co- 
 ordinate paper and the like can be inserted as needed. When the 
 pupil has worked out his exercise, made his notes on slips of 
 paper, and finally written up the exercise in his own way without 
 the stereotyped conclusion “From this we learn, etc.,”’ he brings 
 the book to the teacher, who accepts it as a creditable and sig- 
 nificant piece of work or else rejects it and sends the pupil back 
 to re-write or perhaps to go over the whole exercise from the 
 beginning. 
 

 
 ASSIMILATION 285 
 
 Effective supervision of laboratory study depends more per- 
 haps than does anything else in the assimilation period upon 
 good arrangement of the classroom. The teacher who is obliged 
 to walk from one end of a large room to the opposite end, and 
 perhaps to travel around a long chemistry table, in order to pass 
 from one pupil who needs guidance to the next is badly handi- 
 capped in the supervision of study. Perhaps the best arrange- 
 ment of laboratory tables is the |_] in which the teacher’s super- 
 vising position is inside and the pupils’ study desks somewhat in 
 front of and away from the arms of the |]. What applies to the 
 laboratory in physical and biological science applies also to lab- 
 oratory work in certain courses in household arts, and to the 
 drawing tables used in a well-furnished course in mathematics. 
 
 Concentration.—Supervised study is further concerned with 
 training which goes to the root of all effort, namely, ability to 
 work whole-heartedly and continuously, that is to say, sustained 
 application. In chapter ix we have seen the bearing of this prob- 
 lem and the process which is calculated to lead to its solution. It 
 only remains to note that while sustained application is critical 
 of learning power throughout the school, it is required in the 
 assimilation period in science-type subjects more vitally than 
 anywhere else. Our treatment of the problem in chapter ix is es- 
 sentially a part of our exposition of the principles of supervised 
 study. 
 
 THE PROBLEM CASE IN SUPERVISED STUDY 
 
 Problem-case work is a volume by itself. We shall have oc- 
 
 - casion to discuss it at some length, in its relation to the whole 
 Matter of teaching in the secondary period, in Part IV (see 
 _ chapter xxxi). It will perhaps be useful to note here some of its 
 
 special applications to the problem of supervised study in the 
 
 assimilation period. 
 
 In a very true sense every pupil is a problem if we expand 
 the term to include the teacher’s concern for every individual, 
 but in the use which we make of the expression “problem case”’ 
 
 in this volume we have in mind only those pupils in whom there 
 
7 
 
 is some obstacle to the normal functioning of the learning proc- — 
 ess. It is a rare class indeed in which there are no such cases, 
 but faithful and effective mastery teaching, from the beginning 
 of the school career, with its emphasis upon reteaching, upon 
 corrective teaching, and upon remedial case work, and effective © 
 organization of the school for this purpose, must greatly reduce — 
 the percentage of such cases found from year to year as the class 
 progresses through the school. | 
 Soon after the pupils enter upon supervised study in the first — 
 unit of a course the teacher begins to survey the class and to — 
 note the evidences of individual problem situations. 
 First of all, perhaps, he notes the cases of markedly poor 
 sustained application and sets them aside for attention. A brief 
 explanatory talk to the class may set the process of improve- — 
 ment at work, but in a day or two the real problems will have 
 developed and then the process of profiling, pupil interviews, and — 
 training begins. 
 Next in order he notes the pupils who are making slow prog- — 
 ress in assimilation, and the following questions arise. We shall — 
 consider them somewhat in the appropriate order of attention. 
 1. Reading cases-—-The pupil may never have actually 
 learned to read. He is not merely lacking the reading adapta- 
 tion; he cannot read at all, in the sense of being able to get the 
 thought from the printed page. He comes perhaps from a school — 
 in which attention has been exclusively upon oral reading and, 
 since he can pronounce words in discourse, he has slipped 
 through. One of the standard comprehension tests will ordinarily — 
 disclose the situation. It is useless for this pupil to go on with 
 the course. He is removed and sent to the remedial room to be © 
 taught to read. These cases are rare above the elementary-_ 
 school level, but they are sometimes found even in the junior col- 
 lege when the student has originated in a lesson-learning routine - 
 type of school system. Cases are not unknown in which pupils’ 
 have contrived to learn enough by listening to others thus to get 
 along a goodly distance indeed in the pathways of the schools. 
 
 286 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
— - 
 
 ASSIMILATION 237 
 
 The pupil may be a decipherer. That is, he gets the thought 
 of the printed page in a slow and laborious fashion. His reading 
 is much like that of the person who has only a “translation 
 knowledge” of an ancient language. He can puzzle out a passage 
 and get the thought but he reads slowly and assimilates slowly 
 or not at all. As we have seen, effective assimilative ability im- 
 plies the ability to assimilate as one reads, and this in turn im- 
 plies ability to look through the printed page to the discourse 
 beyond without focal consciousness of the words. The net result 
 of deciphering is abnormally slow study and many repetitions 
 after the assimilation tests. Such pupils can usually be identified 
 by observation of the eye movements. For this purpose the pu- 
 pil is given a passage to read, silently, and after he has been 
 reading for a few minutes the teacher takes a position such that 
 he can observe the movement of the eye without gazing directly 
 in the pupil’s line of vision. It will at once be seen that the eye 
 movements can be detected. Now the normal reader’s eye fixa- 
 tions across the ordinary 12-mo. page are something like this: 
 
 z 2 S 4 5 
 2 t 3 4 5 
 
 The numerals indicate the order of eye fixations. 
 
 Movements of slight confusion especially at the beginning of 
 a line may occur, but in general the fixations proceed regularly 
 across the page and they will be from four to six or perhaps 
 seven or eight. The decipherer’s movements are more like the 
 representation given below. There are many more fixations and 
 more confusion as the eye moves backward and forward, to bring 
 individual words into focus. 
 
 —— i | OS 3 owe Oe 0G 0 GES 0 ee 0 ES Se 
 
 Burs wet A ORO ON (Sento Tae 4 673116, 55.27 19 
 
288 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The illustration given does not exhibit the whole story, for 
 the regressive movements take place not only within the line but 
 backward to preceding lines. The regressive movement within 
 the line is detected by noting a slight hesitation in the jerky 
 movement of the eye as it rolls across the page. In the upward 
 regression, the eye hesitates and rolls upward. Now this upward 
 movement seems to be what differentiates the decipherer from 
 the pure word-reader who is getting no meaning but is simply do- 
 ing silent oral reading. We assume, however, that the latter 
 characteristic has been eliminated from the problem through the 
 comprehension test. It should be noted here that we are con- 
 trasting typical situations and not merely counting eye move- 
 ments. The normal reader will, for instance, occasionally show — 
 an upward regressive movement, but his case is typically differ- 
 ent from that of the pupil who is evidently blundering his way 
 through by constant regressions. 
 
 In studying decipherers two important considerations are to 
 be noted. 
 
 In the first place, we are all decipherers on that kind of in- 
 tensive reading which is used on discourse like mathematical 
 problems and legal documents, in which the meaning value of 
 single words is paramount. Hence the test material must be 
 simple and relatively familiar discourse which calls for extensive 
 rather than for meticulous intensive reading. 
 
 In the second place, the teacher must establish rapport, that 
 is, he must wait until the pupil is in a normal attitude. Testers 
 frequently force children into acutely self-conscious attitudes 
 and in that way ruin the value of the test disclosures. A good 
 tester is one who understands children and is accustomed to 
 deal with them. 
 
 The decipherer requires remedial work with quick percep- 
 tion devices, but he is not necessarily excluded from the class. 
 Training in a remedial group in mild cases can be carried on sim- 
 ultaneously with progress in the science type. 
 
 2. Experiential (intellectual) deficiency.—This type of 
 
ASSIMILATION 289 
 
 problem is the pupil who has not the requisite apperceptive 
 background, that is to say, he is not prepared to take the course. 
 After a few years of systematic teaching, these pupils should be 
 limited to those who have come in from other school systems. 
 They are usually the result of non-mastery promotions. Effect- 
 ive work in the exploration, with individual conference work, 
 should identify some of the cases, but some will slip through to 
 the assimilation period. In studying the problem cases, after 
 sustained application and bad reading habits have been elimi- 
 nated as causes, individual experience with the pupil may very 
 probably reveal intellectual deficiency as the cause. The teach- 
 er’s attitude should be, “Are there certain obvious and funda- 
 mental needs in the background of this course of which this 
 pupil is plainly ignorant?” Not, “Can this pupil satisfy me that 
 he knows enough to take the course?” For the most part, such 
 pupils are promptly located in the course in which they belong 
 and not left to fail and repeat and fail again in this course. 
 Sometimes simple cases, if the pupils are relatively mature, can 
 be located in the elementary course, either in the same or an- 
 other department, and allowed to carry both the elementary and 
 advanced courses simultaneously. 
 
 3. Learning perversions——Pupils who have been accus- 
 tomed to the lesson-learning technique without supervised study 
 and individual case work are apt to have developed practices 
 which either obstruct learning or even inhibit it altogether. The 
 instances are legion, and a volume could be devoted to the sub- 
 ject. We can only enumerate a few typical instances by way of 
 illustration. 
 
 a) The first of these is the lesson-learner type which we 
 studied in chapter iv. Ordinarily these pupils have a hard time 
 of it under mastery teaching at first, but they usually become 
 adjusted without special corrective work. Extreme cases do, 
 however, occur of which the following contributed by one of my 
 students is an example: 
 
290 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 A little girl whose intelligence tests placed her two years in ad- 
 vance of her chronological age was inferior in history. Her mother 
 said she knew the child tried because she brought her book home eve- 
 nings and an older sister helped her by reading the lesson aloud and 
 letting her say as much of it as she could. 
 
 In such a case, the home persistently inhibits the adjustment 
 which the school might otherwise make. It is one thing to break 
 down the lesson-learning and rank-in-class attitude in the pupil 
 and quite another to break it down in the parent. And yet in 
 many cases like the one just cited, corrective work must be ap- 
 plied to the parent instead of to the pupil. In the laboratory 
 schools, progress is frequently obstructed by parents who insist 
 on having tutoring done. Sometimes, after being remonstrated 
 with by the principal, the process is continued surreptitiously, 
 so ingrained is the conviction that education consists in superi- 
 ority to other pupils and in performance satisfactory to the 
 teacher, rather than in a transformation in the pupil himself. In 
 general, lesson-learning itself generates innumerable perversions. 
 
 6) A problem-case pupil will sometimes have hit upon 
 strange ways of doing things, which apart from individual case 
 work escape detection and the pupil is eventually adjudged a 
 non-learner. An illustration is found in the following case taken 
 from Miss Lange’s study above quoted (see chap. ix, p. 141). 
 The child in this instance was a remedial case in arithmetic. The 
 case study revealed the fact that in adding a column of figures 
 she would total the right-hand column and then instead of carry- 
 ing properly would add the total to the tens column and so go on. 
 A simple matter, and yet the pupil had been passed along from 
 year to year with this defect in her learning tools. 
 
 Not infrequently, especially in arithmetic and elementary 
 algebra, a pupil invents a valid but unworkable method in a 
 process. The ingenuity exhibited is often remarkable, but the 
 child’s invention is ordinarily so cumbersome as to inhibit calcu- 
 lations altogether as soon as they become at all complicated. In 
 
 a ~~, 
 
t 
 i 
 hy 
 4 
 ,) 
 ; 
 + 
 9 
 i 
 if 
 
 
 
 ASSIMILATION 291 
 
 the end, the pupil is adjudged stupid and incapable in mathe- 
 matics when the truth of the matter is exactly the reverse. 
 
 c) A third defect perhaps uncommon, but still probably 
 ever present, is that of the direct learner who not only will not 
 learn from daily lessons but who has to be convinced of the real- 
 ity of book notions before he will learn at all. The first case cited 
 on page 59 of chapter ix is probably an instance of the type. 
 Another is the following: 
 
 A pupil of the direct-learner type, who makes a success of 
 his school work in general, encounters the kind of permanent 
 obstacle in algebra described below. 
 
 So long as algebra consists in manipulation and the solution 
 of problems, he learns without difficulty, except that he has a 
 tendency to seek new lines which, while they are in themselves 
 valid, do not conform to the plans sanctioned by the teacher and 
 by effective mathematical procedure. He solves equations pros- 
 perously as long as the only quantities encountered are the un- 
 known and the numerical expressions which stand for valid re- 
 ality in his mind. The crisis comes when expressions like a, b, 
 and c are used which he is told stand for any numbers whatso- 
 ever. Now most pupils will accept the convention and go on. 
 This pupil balks and says, “If they stand for numbers, why 
 don’t you use numbers?” No amount of explaining by the teach- 
 er registers. There he stands. Teachers’ explanations in his 
 mind are apparently plausible devices for making the worse 
 cause appear the better. The only thing which will convince this 
 pupil is an experience with a laborious arithmetical calculation 
 and then an experience with the great economy made possible by 
 generalizing the calculation through the use of algebraic meth- 
 ods. After all, perhaps that is the only form of assimilation 
 which really convinces any of the class. And yet algebra is of 
 minor use as a usable intellectual tool unless the particular diffi- 
 culty encountered by this pupil is mastered. 
 
 4. There are several other probable causes lying behind 
 problem cases which have no special application to assimilation 
 
292 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 in the science type. They are of general application in all types 
 
 and as such are treated at length in Part IV. Of course the de- 
 
 fects which we have noted above are found in other types of 
 
 teaching but they are peculiarly apt to create problems in sci- 
 
 ence-type work. Other classes of cases are merely enumerated 
 
 here. They are: 
 
 a) Health cases—import obvious from the name 
 
 b) Psycho-physical cases—usually defective vision or hearing 
 
 c) Emotional cases—a variety of personality disorders ranging all the 
 way from a “grouch” against the teacher or adolescent shyness to 
 positive psychopathic disorders 
 
 d) Mental deficiency—positively low grade and inadequate general 
 mental powers. The teacher is prone to fix upon this cause among 
 the first, when as a matter of fact there are comparatively few out- 
 and-out mental deficients 
 
 €) Volitional—usually some form of volitional retardation (see chap- 
 ter xxi) 
 
 In general, the teacher who has the educational point of view 
 will discover relatively few problem cases and will work at these 
 with interest, fidelity, and diligence. By the end of the course, 
 he will have restored some of them, perhaps all, to complete ad- 
 justment in the learning situation with which he is dealing. The 
 lesson-hearer will discover many problem cases and will desire 
 to assign them all to remedial classes. 
 
 ASSIMILATION TESTING 
 
 The final mastery test, as far as the present teaching of the 
 unit is concerned, comes in the assimilation period. Neverthe- 
 less, the teacher and the school administration should recognize 
 the principle that testing is never finished and that remote func- 
 tional tests in later courses and other activities will very prob- 
 ably throw much light on the reorganization of courses, correc- 
 tions of the technique, and revaluation of the teacher’s efficiency. 
 Here, as elsewhere, the test is for the purpose of discovering 
 whether or not reteaching and corrective teaching need to be 
 
ASSIMILATION 293 
 
 done and what needs to be done, and not for the purpose of grad- 
 ing the pupil. 
 
 As soon as assimilation is fairly under way and the problem- 
 case campaign for the unit has been launched, the teacher be- 
 gins to estimate the progress of the different pupils toward genu- 
 ine mastery of the unit. No definite rule can be given. If the 
 supervision of study from day to day has been alert and faithful 
 and the teacher has kept in contact with the individual pupils 
 through the questions which they have raised, the suggestions 
 which they have made, and through individual conference with 
 them, he will sense that A, C, and M are approaching the full 
 understanding for which the unit stands. If, on the other hand, 
 he merely notes that the pupils have completed the assigned 
 reading, and the prescribed round of exercises, he has no evi- 
 dence at all touching mastery. He has merely evidence touching 
 ground covered and performance accomplished which may or 
 may not be related to the inner adaptation which mastery pre- 
 sumes. 
 
 This following the mind of the pupil to the point at which 
 the teacher senses adaptation is an instance of that procedure 
 which we have called “rapport testing” in connection with its 
 use in presentation. It is subjective and uncertain and insuffi- 
 cient, but without it objective testing becomes wasteful and for- 
 malistic. It is especially useful in the identification of early mas- 
 tery. Without it the teacher will be likely to defer the assimila- 
 tion test proper until some of the pupils have become stale in the 
 long assimilation period. For those who have not mastered and 
 are nowhere within reach of mastery, the administration of the 
 assimilation test will not only waste time but the results are the 
 more apt to be deceptive. No test is conclusive of the adaptation 
 sought. The most that tests can do is to give the teacher the 
 best possible basis for judgment, but in the end decisions are 
 matters of the teacher’s judgment and not precise revelations. 
 Two tests of different sorts are better than one, and an objective 
 test following the teacher’s rapport testing is very much better 
 
204. THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 than an objective test applied before the teacher has any idea 
 whether or not learning has taken place, provided that in the end 
 he does not allow his subjective opinion to override the plain 
 revelations of the objective results. 
 
 The essence of the objective assimilation test is that it shall 
 focus upon the unit just as exploration, presentation, and assimi- 
 lation have focused upon the unit. There is, however, one other 
 type of testing which is commonly employed, the implications of 
 which should be understood. We have in mind the scored per- 
 formance test intended to spread the class. 
 
 The performance test, as applied to unit testing in the sci- 
 ence type, consists of a series of test items all of them focused 
 upon understanding and not upon assimilative material, and so 
 arranged that all members of the class will be likely to react cor- 
 rectly to one or more of the items and that nobody will be likely 
 to react to all. Now, even under the assumption that all have 
 mastered, the class will tend to distribute itself symmetrically 
 and possibly according to the law of chance distribution. The 
 scores revealed are not evidences of mastery but rather evi- 
 dences of what the several pupils can do with mastery if indeed 
 they have it. In other words, a performance test of this sort is 
 only another form of general intelligence test. As such it is use- 
 ful when we wish to secure data on the individual pupils. It is an 
 excellent device for the study of general intelligence and for the 
 comparison of intelligence in one subject with that in another. 
 But it is not a test of mastery. By the very assumption on which 
 it is founded, some pupils will score who have by no means mas- 
 tered, and we have no means of judging how much of a high 
 score is traceable to general intelligence and how much to mas- 
 tery. 
 
 The assimilation test proper is then one in which all ques- 
 tions are of about the same degree of difficulty and so stated that 
 pupils who understand the unit will be likely to react correctly 
 while those who do not understand will be likely to react incor- 
 rectly. Theoretically, a single test question might suffice if it 
 
ASSIMILATION 295 
 
 were not for the practical possibility of mere chance being re- 
 sponsible for the right response. The greater the number of 
 questions, the less opportunity there is for chance to affect the 
 total result. On the other hand, every pupil should have oppor- 
 tunity to finish the test. If a time limit is imposed, the test tends 
 to become a performance test or a general-intelligence test. It 
 should be remembered that we are not concerned here with the 
 question of how A compares with B but with the much more 
 vital question of whether A and B have both mastered. 
 
 The most serviceable form has been found to be that of the 
 best answer. The ordinary written examination form may be 
 used, but it will introduce another performance element, namely, 
 proficiency in English exposition. The test used is like that al- 
 ready described in the case of exploration (see chap. xv, p. 239). 
 Fundamentally, each question in such a test sets up a choice be- 
 tween three answers, one of which is obviously right to anybody 
 who understands, but not to one who does not understand; one 
 of which is wrong, and one is irrelevant. A more searching form 
 is a test question in which two answers are exactly wrong, two 
 are in general true, and one to a pupil who thoroughly under- 
 stands is clearly the best answer. The pupil checks the best an- 
 swer thus, —, and marks those which are wrong with crosses. It 
 should perhaps be noted that we have much better evidence of 
 the pupil’s state of mind when he marks both the right answer 
 and one or more wrong answers than when he marks the best 
 answer alone. The teacher then considers the result. In a given 
 pupil’s paper each response is checked by the teacher either 
 right or wrong. Table LX will help to make the matter of admin- 
 istration clear. The Roman numerals across the top of the ex- 
 hibit stand for the questions. 
 
 The teacher now proceeds to consider the results. Plainly, 
 the class as a whole is still vague on the unit. 
 
 Before setting the test, the teacher was confident that Pupils 
 2,3, 8, and 15 had mastered. The test confirms his opinion with 
 
296 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 reference to Pupil 3 and upsets his opinion with reference to 
 Pupil 15. 
 
 Now he notes that only one pupil reacted correctly to Ques- 
 tion 3. Hence he suspects a “misfire,” that is, that the purport of 
 the question did not register as he had intended. He studies the 
 question, thinks he detects the cause, and after questioning some 
 of the pupils his suspicion is verified. The question is corrected 
 and the paper is filed for future use, perhaps with another sec- 
 tion or in a later course. This decision puts Pupils 7 and 8 in the 
 
 ~ TABLE IX 
 
 ASSIMILATION TEST RESULTS I 
 
 
 
 XI | XII | Score 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ital la ee ee ee Te Lx 
 
 eel ESCs Seb ae Pct 
 IXEIXXXE EEE LEX |e 
 
 — 
 
 x 
 isielito tot 1. fee Te) 
 Ph ISP ee a lee hoe 
 
 KX KK KKK KK KKK! KK 
 ee ae a ee ae ae ig 
 UE EXKIX TEX IX I XX | 
 
 SOC C56 FC AS ee 
 
 Ps Oe bE te OC et 
 SEE Tae eo dt lee aie | 
 
 mastery group, and he had not previously suspected that Pupil 7 
 belonged there. He is still doubtful about Pupil 2, and further 
 individual conference does not clear up the doubt. Pupils 9 and 
 II are apparently problem cases, and Pupil 4 is known to be 
 simply slow in comprehension. The latter comes through confi- 
 dently in the end. 
 
 The three pupils who have mastered are now released from 
 assimilation for voluntary project work or work in other sub- 
 jects, and the teacher proceeds to further assimilation with the 
 remainder of the class. The test has been revealing in its nature 
 and, as he reflects, he notes several points which can be cleared 
 
ASSIMILATION 207 
 
 up by explanation, notes that some pupils are not strong in in- 
 tensive reading, and that all need further assimilative experi- 
 ence. It should be noted that his redirection of assimilation is 
 critical. No corrective teaching is otherwise done. Simply to tell 
 the pupils to read some more or to work some more exercises is 
 largely to waste time and set up a cramming attitude. 
 
 After a day or two of further assimilation, or perhaps longer, 
 a similar test is given. The results are disclosed in Table X. 
 
 The class as a whole has evidently mastered. The teacher 
 
 TABLE X 
 
 ASSIMILATION Test Resvutts IT 
 
 
 
 VI 
 
 
 
 VII | VIII} [x 
 
 
 
 Le Es eS ee ee 
 Pap aah ae 6 a ie 
 ed be et bay es cre oe JE 
 CDR oats bo ee ak (ee 
 11 Se 1 Sa let oe 
 RS oy oe ek Bad 
 jo i-1. eX eet 
 Poli git to 4a Iota 
 ee ie xe Tt 
 la Dah tat te Seer ae 
 ae Ses ee ee 
 
 
 
 has still some doubt concerning Pupils 5 and 6, but he notes that 
 both had revealed substantial progress on the previous test, his 
 rapport testing had given him considerable confidence in their 
 learning, and he observes that both failed on the same question. 
 A brief individual conference reveals the fact that both had 
 failed to catch the import of this question, and that the pupils 
 have, in fact, a clear understanding. Pupils 9 and 11 are evi- 
 dently clear problem cases, and they are set aside for remedial 
 study and teaching. Except for them, the teacher has good 
 ground for judging that assimilation is complete. 
 
 Now the unit test might quite as validly have been con- 
 ducted by extended individual oral cross-examination. The ob- 
 
298 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 jections are purely practical, in that the process would require 
 too much time if it were thoroughly done and in that it would be 
 difficult for most teachers, without training in the art of cross- 
 examination, to frame oral questions as skilfully as is possible in 
 the case of the written test. 
 
 The inclination of some teachers who are new to mastery 
 teaching, and in whom the preconceptions of the passing grade 
 are still strong, is to select arbitrarily a passing score, let us say 
 ro or 1r when the full score is 12, and adjudge mastery for all 
 pupils who attain such a passing score. The effect has all the bad 
 implications which attach to the passing grade elsewhere and 
 which we have discussed in chapter v. A full score on the unit 
 test is good presumptive evidence of mastery, better in propor- 
 tion as the test is well devised. At any rate, it is the best evidence 
 we can secure. But a lower score, taken in connection with a 
 careful consideration of the test itself and viewed in the light of 
 other evidence, may be as good evidence as a full score, as for 
 instance when a pupil reacts correctly to the greater part of the 
 questions with none wrong. In general, if a pupil fails on only 
 one question, there is good ground for further inquiry. If the 
 test results show numerous “wrongs” on the same question and 
 the teacher detects wherein the question was a misfire, the cor- 
 responding scores can be eliminated and the results considered 
 apart from those of the faulty question. Hence it is always well 
 to have a list of test questions sufficiently long to make it possi- 
 ble to eliminate one or more and still keep a good test. Judg- 
 ment is in the light of all the evidence, only the teacher must be 
 faithful to the evidence. It will not do to conclude, in the face of 
 very inconclusive evidence from the test, “Oh, well, I just know 
 that A, B, and C understand, so we will pass on.” 
 
 A test of this sort will yield a great deal of negative evidence, 
 that is, no evidence that the pupil has mastered, as well as posi- 
 tive evidence that he has not mastered. Hence, it may often 
 happen that the pupil is turned back for further assimilation 
 when in fact he has mastered. As in the somewhat similar 
 

 
 ASSIMILATION 299 
 
 case of re-presentation, we cannot be too sure of mastery. In 
 the long run these pupils profit. The chief consideration which 
 needs to be borne in mind is the possibility that emotional 
 problems in the form of resentment will thus be set up in them. 
 If, however, the notion of educational rivalry and appraisal by 
 rank-in-class has been pretty well stamped out, this danger will 
 be minimized. 
 
 The formulation of good unit test questions is something of 
 an art. While one who has made them would scarcely say that 
 their maker must wait on inspiration, it is true that they cannot 
 be written out of hand. Perhaps the most convenient procedure 
 is to keep a file of possible test questions on each unit and to add 
 to the file as new suggestions present themselves. Questions may 
 then be chosen from the file and grouped into tests as class needs 
 dictate. Those which have proved effective may be preserved for 
 future use and the defective ones rejected. 
 
 Assimilation testing, apart from its primary use to the teach- 
 er, is a very serviceable stimulus to the pupil. It not only tends 
 to convince him that he does not yet understand, but it gives him 
 a means of checking up on his failure and in the end an experi- 
 ence of what mastery is. 
 
 Testing is a part of the teaching process. Just as no system 
 of technique and no method will take the place of the teacher’s 
 insight, acumen, diligence, and fidelity to professional duty, in 
 exploration, presentation, and the supervision of study, so will 
 effective testing depend upon the same qualities. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 
 
 T is during the period of assimilation that the greatest scat- 
 if tering of pupils in progress toward mastery takes place. 
 
 The class is brought together for organization. During the 
 assimilation period without corrective teaching, if we could 
 measure accurately and precisely differences in progress, the 
 class would probably be found to distribute itself much in ac- 
 cordance with the normal distribution surface, for a multitude 
 of chance factors are at work in determining the rate at which 
 learning takes place. No such precise measurement is, however, 
 available, and it would be of little service if it could be found. 
 What is actually found toward the end of assimilation, in a 
 school which has become accustomed to mastery teaching and 
 fairly successful in its application, is a situation somewhat like 
 the following. 
 
 A comparatively small group of pupils, but one which be- 
 comes constantly larger, has been released for some time for 
 work on extra voluntary projects or similar enterprises. The 
 length of such release varies a great deal, the progress made on 
 the several projects also varies, and the number of such projects 
 accomplished during the course varies. Generally speaking, 
 most projects which are really worth while are worked upon 
 over the release periods of several units and in the pupil’s un- 
 assigned time as well. 
 
 The bulk of the class varies but little in its progress during | 
 
 assimilation. The teacher is somewhat more confident of mas- 
 tery in some than in others, some have gone back for restudy 
 more than have others, but in general they arrive at the end of 
 assimilation at about the same time. By carefully testing the 
 rate of progress without corrective teaching, Beauchamp found 
 
 300 
 
 | 
 : 
 | 
 
 
 
ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 301 
 
 that pupils in this group would keep nearly together over a pe- 
 riod of several weeks. A given pupil would forge ahead for a 
 few days and then give place to another. If corrective teaching 
 had been done, some of the relatively slow workers would have 
 been synchronized with the relatively rapid workers and the 
 spread within the group contracted. The corrective work on the 
 two girls in sustained application reported in chapter ix is a case 
 in point. 
 
 A third group is composed of the problem cases. The cor- 
 rective cases have perhaps had considerable teaching out of 
 class, and the remedial cases have been assigned to other sec- 
 tions or remedial classes. In either case, most slow or problem- 
 case pupils who are allowed to take the organization at all reach 
 that point with the second of the three groups. 
 
 The question will doubtless suggest itself, Why not let each 
 pupil take the organization as he comes to it and then either 
 release him from recitation or let him recite individually? There 
 are several good reasons for the contrary course. 
 
 Such a procedure simply results in a breakneck race through 
 the school in which performance is exalted to the place of educa- 
 tion. The notion of school work as being simply a series of tasks 
 to be performed and belief in the brilliant student as the one who 
 accomplishes such tasks most rapidly are both raised to the pin- 
 nacle of educational absurdity. Such pupils arrive at the grad- 
 uation point possessed of little but skill in accomplishing schoo! 
 work, infant prodigies who are promoted to higher institutions 
 without the proper products of normal educational growth. 
 Therein, they come in contact with people who belong to an en- 
 _ tirely different level of social maturity, and the result is apt to 
 _ bean unhappy one. It may be disastrous in the extreme. No op- 
 portunity is afforded them for discovering and developing gen- 
 uine interests and solid self-dependence. An individual who 
 might have become a leader of genuine and useful devotion to an 
 intellectual pursuit becomes merely an arrogant and conceited 
 
302 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 exhibitionist in a world which ever accords a singular admira- 
 tion to mere brilliancy. 
 
 Per contra, such pupils are now and then released from a 
 unit or from a course when the evidence points to the principle 
 that they have in fact acquired the adaptation which the unit 
 or the course implies, but they are released in order that they 
 may devote themselves to other studies upon which their time 
 can more profitably be spent. Such other studies are not neces- 
 sarily accumulated as credits for earlier graduation, although 
 even so the evidence touching the individual may be such that 
 early graduation is seen to be the best thing for him. 
 
 The recitation is an eminently essential member of the 
 learning and teaching cycle, and one of the essential features of 
 recitation is its social character. It is worthless without an au- 
 dience, and the class group is the appropriate audience. Fur- 
 thermore, if the learning process as applied to the unit has been 
 successful in the best sense, the recitation will disclose many 
 different points of view touching the bearing and significance of 
 the unit, all of them correct and all of them helpful. The rapid 
 learner not only should contribute his point of view, which is 
 likely to be valuable because of his extended study, but he 
 should come into an attitude in which he can learn from others 
 who are less brilliant but who have nevertheless somewhat to 
 contribute. Organization is essential to recitation. The pupil 
 who has been pursuing his own interests for a week, or perhaps 
 two or three weeks, is inevitably more or less out of touch with 
 the sequences of thought contained in his earlier study. Hence, 
 it is helpful to him to come back into the main stream of the unit 
 before the recitation period. Accordingly, organization is better 
 attached to recitation than to assimilation. 
 
 ORGANIZATION 
 
 When the teacher is convinced that assimilation has taken 
 place in the class as a whole, organization is announced. For this 
 purpose the class assembles without books, notes, charts, or any 
 
 
 
ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 303 
 
 other helps. Their problem is now to gather up the argument of 
 the unit in outline form, with the essential supporting facts. 
 Once more, the organization is focused upon the central under- 
 standing and not upon the assimilative material. Hence in form 
 it is the outline of a coherent and logical argument and not mere- 
 ly an exhibit of facts. 
 
 The outline may take the form of a syllabus with the main 
 headings which carry the argument, the subordinate headings, 
 and the appropriate subheadings; or it may be an outline in the 
 systematic form of brief topic sentences. In either case, the class 
 must be taught how to make the outline, especially in a school in 
 which such teaching is new. Once the pupils have caught the 
 idea, however, they will organize very passably well and im- 
 prove as time goes on. 
 
 The notion of organization can be developed in the early 
 grades, certainly the fourth. The essential difference between 
 the organizations of the young children and those of high-school 
 pupils seems to be found in the principle that the young chil- 
 dren’s organization contains only the main heads of the argu- 
 ment while that of older pupils develops the subheads. Pupils 
 in the senior high school will often produce very lengthy syl- 
 labi running to several pages of paper. Indeed, there comes a 
 time when the older pupil needs to be trained out of a tendency 
 to prolixity. 
 
 In starting the younger children to organizing, the chief de- 
 pendence can be placed upon leading questions. Instruction is 
 somewhat after the following fashion. 
 
 “We have been studying about for a long time, and 
 now we want to bring the main points that we have come to un- 
 derstand together in a framework. 
 
 ‘You sometimes see in the first part of a book what is called 
 a table of contents. Here is an illustration [exhibits]. We are 
 going to make tables of contents for what we have studied. 
 
 “Now, at first [am going to ask some questions, the answers 
 
 
 
304 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 to which you all know, and the answers will be the main heads 
 of our organization.” 
 
 After a time the questions are omitted, and the training in 
 organization proceeds in this way: 
 
 “What is the first big point we have learned? Why, it is this, 
 is it not [writes]? 
 
 ‘‘And the second is this [ writes],” and so on. 
 
 In the fifth or sixth grade, the children should begin to make 
 their own organizations. Of course, the early organizations will 
 be very far from perfect. Irrelevant heads will be brought in, 
 and some of the children will make no serious effort to organize. 
 
 On each organization, the process of training is much like 
 that used in intensive reading. Several of the papers are taken 
 up and discussed. This point has nothing to do with the matter; 
 this one has. This paper is a good organization, because as you 
 read the points there comes into mind the meat of the argument. 
 Every point that John has made has a definite bearing, while 
 this and this point on James’s paper have nothing to do with the 
 story. There will be some children who do nothing at all, and it 
 is by no means easy to distinguish between those who have failed 
 to catch the notion and those who have simply made no effort. 
 In general, the latter will be in the majority. These people are 
 simply told that they will keep on trying, after school if need be, 
 until they produce something which is acceptable, and at least 
 an evidence of effort. After this period of reteaching, the papers 
 are turned back for perhaps a single second attempt. 
 
 Now there is no mastery involved in organization. It is a 
 matter of performance and growth, and from unit to unit only 
 what is judged to be the pupil’s best effort is accepted. As the 
 pupil progresses into the. junior high school, the process of defi- 
 nite instruction is minimized and the pupil is left to organize the 
 unit in his own way, only the inadequate papers and those which 
 the teacher thinks the pupil is capable of improving being turned 
 back for further effort. 
 
ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 305 
 
 Needless to say, uniformity in organization is neither neces- 
 sary nor desirable. Individual pupils will see the argument in 
 somewhat different lines, and this individuality is to be encour- 
 aged rather than suppressed. 
 
 Such is the organization in subjects of extensive content. In 
 arithmetic and grammar and the mathematics of the high school 
 taught as purely a logical subject, no organization of this sort is 
 practicable or necessary. The class goes from assimilation di- 
 rectly into recitation. When mathematics is taught as a content 
 subject, however (see chapter xiii, p. 215), the same procedure 
 is used which applies to physics or history. 
 
 The organization is not primarily a unit test, but a part of 
 the learning process. The element of performance is too large 
 for reliability as clear evidence of understanding. None the less, 
 it, like every other part of the pupil’s performance in learning, is 
 full of revelations touching the organization of the course, the 
 technique employed, and the pupil himself. We cannot use fail- 
 ure in organization as evidence of non-mastery in opposition to 
 the evidence of the assimilation tests, but we can draw conclu- 
 sions touching the guidance of individual pupils and the conduct 
 of subsequent units. 
 
 The organization is as fundamental to the pupil’s training in 
 English composition as is the recitation. The English Depart- 
 ment in the University High School is clear that no single step 
 in the school career has accomplished more in the direction of 
 composition training than has the organization in the science- 
 type subjects. The final step in the mastery of any understand- 
 ing is taken when we ‘write ourselves clear-headed”’ about it. 
 Then it is that previously unnoted haziness makes itself baldly 
 evident, and we become conscious that the understanding is our 
 own and not merely lip-service to another. The first step in gain- 
 ing such intellectual clarity is the logical arrangement of the 
 ideas which constitute our understanding. 
 
306 © THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 RECITATION 
 
 The organization requires perhaps two class periods, seldom 
 more. When the teacher has become satisfied with performance 
 at that stage, the class meets for two or three days for recitation. 
 
 The recitation is to all intents and purposes the reverse of 
 presentation. In the latter, the teacher presents the unit to the 
 class; in the former, pupils who have mastered the unit pre- 
 sent it, the class and teacher sitting as an audience. It bears no 
 likeness to the daily recitation. In the daily recitation on the 
 prepared lesson, the pupil has at the best only a meager account 
 which he has culled out of the book. In most cases he has only 
 a scrappy collection of details his control of which is uncertain, 
 and his delivery of which is helped out and bolstered up by the 
 teacher’s leading questions. In the mastery recitation, the pupil 
 has something of a coherent nature to present, he knows what he 
 is talking about, and at the best he is quite capable of delivering 
 an interesting lecture running to thirty minutes or more. At the 
 worst, he can at least stand on his feet and say something which 
 is pertinent to the learning product mastered. The daily recita- 
 tion is primarily a test; the mastery recitation is primarily a 
 part of the learning process. 
 
 At the end of organization, the teacher states that the 
 next two or three days will be taken for recitation. He an- 
 nounces that Mary, Clara, Mabel, Richard, and Donald will 
 deliver the “floor talks” on this unit. Perhaps he can include 
 eight or ten pupils instead of five. Before the next class meeting, 
 
 each of the pupils named arranges his recitation, decides what © 
 
 line he will take, and perhaps prepares notes for assistance on 
 the floor. If it is a science class, he may spend some time in the 
 classroom arranging apparatus which he wishes to use. If the 
 recitation is to be in social science, he places upon the board the 
 data to which he expects to refer. 
 
 When the class assembles for recitation, the teacher seats 
 himself among the pupils and the pupils who recite take suc- 
 cessively the teacher’s position. In other words, an audience sit- 
 
ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 307 
 
 uation is created. The pupil who has the floor proceeds much as 
 the teacher proceeds in presentation. He uses the blackboard 
 when he needs to, uses demonstration apparatus if that will help 
 to make his points clearer. He holds his audience because he is 
 conscious of endeavoring to convince them that his view of the 
 matter is a sound one or of trying to interest them in his presen- 
 tation. Interruption, either by the teacher or by a member of 
 the class, is viewed as discourtesy, and it is not allowed, unless 
 the pupil himself has said that he will be glad to be interrupted 
 for questions. 
 
 At the close of the pupil’s recitation, there is apt to be a pe- 
 riod of questions and discussion and contributions in which mem- 
 bers of the class will take part. This period should be kept per- 
 fectly natural and untrammeled by the teacher, except as far as 
 it may be necessary to keep order and due courtesy and to pre- 
 vent rambling. Especially should the teacher avoid that set 
 order in which the pupils are asked to “criticize.” Such com- 
 ment as may be called for touching the improvement of the reci- 
 tation technique should be made definitely, clearly, and con- 
 vincingly by the teacher. Perhaps there will be time enough in 
 the ordinary high-school class period for two or three such reci- 
 tations. In the elementary school they will be shorter and there 
 will be time for more of them, even in the short elementary- 
 school period. 
 
 The floor talk thus described is of course recitation at the 
 best. It is not ideal, if by ‘‘ideal” is meant the unattainable. The 
 author has heard many recitations of which the foregoing is an 
 inadequate rather than an overdrawn description. Both in the 
 laboratory schools and elsewhere, he has not infrequently sat 
 through a pupil recitation, the interest and charm of which 
 made him forgetful of his primary purpose of supervision and 
 critical observation. Such are of course the exception, but the 
 ratio which they bear to very poor recitations constantly im- 
 proves under skilful and faithful teaching. 
 
 The recitation, like the organization, is performance and 
 
308 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 not mastery. It is not a time for grading and evaluating pupil 
 achievement. A pupil who presents a superior recitation thereby 
 evinces no evidence of mastery of the unit, which is necessarily 
 better evidence than that shown by the pupil who is semi-artic- 
 ulate. The mastery evidence is settled in the assimilation test, 
 so far as the individual pupil and the present unit are concerned. 
 The pupil who produces a superior recitation shows that in one 
 way at least he can make a better use of mastery than his less 
 capable classmate, and that is a useful thing to know as a part of 
 his case history. Learning is applied to mastery of the unit and 
 not to proficiency in recitation. Nevertheless, steady perform- 
 ance improvement in recitation is desirable for two reasons. 
 
 In the first place, superior performance in the recitation pe- 
 riod undoubtedly makes for clarification of the learning 
 achieved. In that sense it is a sort of supplementary study tool. 
 
 In the second place, ability to stand before an audience, 
 think on one’s feet, and speak convincingly is in itself an emi- 
 nently desirable learning product. Continuous training in the 
 natural situations created by the recitation period over a long 
 series of units and succession of courses is bound to be much 
 more fundamental and effective, other things being equal, than 
 practice in the artificial situations available in a brief course in 
 public speaking. 
 
 With the purpose and function of the recitation period al- 
 ready in mind, the pupil will himself formulate an effective proc- 
 ess of training. The following suggestions based upon experience 
 are, however, offered. 
 
 In the first place, if the natural voiubility of children in the 
 primary period is not suppressed, beyond what is necessary for 
 the development of the primary social adaptations, one great as- 
 set is secured from the beginning. The ancient precept which 
 holds that children should be seen and not heard is undoubtedly 
 largely responsible for the development of a body of inhibitions 
 which produces the inarticulateness which is so typical of chil- 
 dren in schoolroom situations. The child who is extremely artic- 
 
ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 309 
 
 ulate on the playground becomes dumb in the artificial and need- 
 less restraint of the classroom. 
 
 In his oral recitation the pupil should not constantly be 
 made conscious of the manner of his speech. Like all the rest of 
 us, if he has constantly in mind how he is expected to speak, he 
 will say little. If the teacher sets a good model in presentation, 
 from time to time talks to the class before the recitation period, 
 showing them how the floor talks can be improved, and then ex- 
 ercises patience, the pupils will all tend to improve from year to 
 year. In the later years of the senior high school, it is easy to 
 note a marked contrast between pupils who have had practice in 
 oral recitation throughout their high-school careers and those 
 who have not had such practice. 
 
 The recitation critically observed is a good index of the char- 
 acter of the long period of study upon the unit, not a mastery 
 test but a revelation of the coloring of the pupil’s adaptation. 
 If study has been largely formalistic, without interest or en- 
 thusiasm or inward conviction and enlightenment, then the pu- 
 pils may react properly to the assimilation tests and yet reveal 
 a colorless and meager recitation. Such a disclosure is not a rea- 
 son for reteaching the unit, but it is an admonition to modify 
 and enthuse the conduct.of the next and succeeding units. 
 
 Sometimes it is worth while to try a series of floor talks over 
 again in the following manner. 
 
 A certain recitation observed by the writer was passably 
 good, but neither teacher nor class was satisfied. Toward the 
 end of the period the teacher interrupted the class and some- 
 thing like the following took place: | 
 
 “T don’t think any of us are satisfied. It seems to me that 
 these people can talk much better than this. What they have 
 said to us is far from convincing. 
 
 “They are too much concerned with how they appear when 
 they stand up before the class and how they are going to speak. 
 The result is that they have little to say and that is confused and 
 rambling. It sounds like an old-fashioned daily recitation. 
 
310 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ‘“‘Now prepare yourself this way: 
 
 “Have definitely in mind that your job is to convince the 
 class that such and such is the way to look at this unit. You have 
 about four or five points which you wish to make. When you 
 stand up before the class, have those points definitely in mind. 
 What you are going to say will come to you all right and how 
 you are going to Say it. 
 
 “Talk to the class and hold the class attention. If Fred over 
 there doesn’t seem interested, talk directly at him for a minute 
 and you will see what happens. Today, you all looked at me as if 
 you were trying to satisfy me. I am satisfied already that you 
 know the unit. I want you to get your own message across to 
 the class. You had a good point, Mary, when you called atten- 
 tion to . That was your own, but you talked to me as if 
 you weren’t quite sure and were wondering what I would say 
 about it. Never mind me, talk to the class. Especially talk to 
 James and Arthur, who are rather skeptical. Let’s try it again 
 tomorrow.” 
 
 The following day, the writer again visited the class and 
 heard a beautifully complete series of talks addressed to an in- 
 terested class, a useful and effective piece of public speaking ap- 
 plied to the argument of a unit in chemistry. 
 
 The recitation, like all the preceding steps, should be fo- 
 cused upon the unit as a piece of understanding and not upon 
 the content of the assimilative material. Here, as elsewhere, 
 when the unit is in the foreground of consciousness, the needful 
 bits of content drop into place almost automatically. Very 
 often, however, the pupil will offer a floor talk which is merely a 
 resumé of what he can remember of the assimilative material. 
 Instead of using selections from the latter to fortify and defend 
 his argument, he merely recounts items without reference to 
 argument. Of course this is merely a good daily recitation type 
 of talk. Patient instruction, after the nature of that used in the 
 illustration, will soon produce improvement. We encounter 
 many students in college, not to say in high school, who have 
 
 
 
 a, i 
 
 eo ., ee ee ee 
 
 ee 
 
 age eg ee es 
 
 ee EE il led 
 
4 
 
 ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 311 
 
 never in their lives had a glimpse of what the exposition in school 
 of a piece of understanding which is their own property really 
 means. The organization and recitation constitute the supreme 
 opportunity for the communication of such a vision. 
 
 It would obviously be desirable to give every pupil an op- 
 portunity for a floor talk on every unit. This is impracticable; 
 first, because there is not time enough; and, second, because the 
 class would often become very much bored. On the last point, 
 however, good recitations are not in fact wearisome. ‘The writer 
 has seen a class in physics listen attentively to sixteen in suc- 
 cession running over two days of double periods with an inter- 
 mission of ten minutes between the two halves of the period on 
 each day. Something may be said in favor of the need of train- 
 ing young Americans into habits of prolonged attention in the 
 listening attitude and out of the self-indulgence which requires 
 mental titillation from moment to moment. Nevertheless, from 
 five to perhaps eight floor talks on a unit are usually all that is 
 practicable in the senior high school. In subjects in which the 
 content is less extensive, and in the elementary school and junior 
 high school as we have seen, more can be had. To meet the need 
 in part, the pupils present their floor talks in rotation on the suc- 
 cessive units, while those who are not assigned floor talks present 
 written papers on the unit. 
 
 It is of course desirable that the floor talks should deal with 
 the unit as a whole, as did the presentation, but this is not al- 
 ways practicable. There are two serviceable variations. 
 
 In the first place, many units can be treated in their applica- 
 tions in such a manner that each application is in effect an expo- 
 sition of the unit. The long physics recitation noted above, was 
 handled in the following manner: 
 
 The unit was “Lenses.” There was available a cycle of ap- 
 
 _ plications: the microscope, the telescope, the camera, the stere- 
 
 opticon, and the human eye. Each pupil chose the application 
 which he preferred and developed from it the theory of lenses. 
 A large model of the eye was available, a camera and a stere- 
 
312 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 opticon, and these the pupils used. The other two applications 
 were demonstrated from board sketches made as the pupils 
 talked. 
 
 In other units, of which “The Westward Movement” in his- 
 tory is a good illustration, both the unit and its major aspects 
 are used for oral recitation, but in this case the unit should ap- 
 pear in each of the major aspects. 
 
 The written paper serves the purposes of the reaction mem- 
 ber of the learning cycle as well as does the oral recitation— 
 perhaps better—but it gives a different kind of training. At the 
 beginning of the recitation period, the class knows who are se- 
 lected for floor talks on the unit, and the others are free to begin 
 their written papers, preferably out of class time. 
 
 Now much depends upon the pupil’s attitude toward and his 
 conception of the written paper. If he looks upon it simply as 
 a task to be performed with the minimum of effort which will 
 satisfy the teacher, then the writing will serve no useful educa- 
 tional purpose. Hence, the pupils should be indoctrinated with 
 the notion that they are writing papers designed to enlighten and 
 convince others. The devices which the teacher uses for the es- 
 tablishment of this attitude are of course many, and they will 
 depend for their effectiveness upon the teacher’s clear percep- 
 tion of the purpose which the paper is intended to serve and 
 upon his ingenuity and resourcefulness. In the elementary 
 school, and often upward into the college, a typical device is to 
 have the pupils throw the paper into the form of a letter. An- 
 
 other device useful in the senior high school and college, and — 
 
 often earlier, is to say to certain pupils, “I wish you to write this 
 paper as an article for a technical magazine or as a chapter in a 
 book.” 
 
 The written paper should be utilized as an opportunity for 
 English composition. Instead of being allowed to dash off a pa- 
 per in the interval between other appointments, the pupils 
 should be convinced that the preparation of a paper is entitled 
 
 to a great deal of laborious effort. It is well, first, to write the — 
 
 ) 
 | 
 i 
 
ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 313 
 
 paper out rapidly with an eye in the main to organization. Then 
 the work is gone over carefully for treatment. This point is elab- 
 orated somewhat. That passage is repetitious of something 
 which has been said before and may be eliminated. The reader 
 will not understand this paragraph; it must be recast. Next, the 
 whole paper is examined critically for use of words. Here is a 
 word which does not mean what it is intended to mean. Here is 
 a personal pronoun which does not agree with its antecedent. 
 Here are inconsistent uses of tense. The paper is then copied 
 and finally proofed for bad spelling, bad punctuation, and the 
 like. The pupil should be taught to keep a simple and helpful 
 manual of English usage at hand for his own guidance. 
 
 Every paper which shows evidence of this kind of effort 
 should be accepted, however imperfect it may be, except upon 
 one issue. The pupil must apply the common usage which he has 
 learned. If the paper appears in slovenly handwriting when the 
 record shows that the pupil is capable of writing a legible hand, 
 if he repeatedly misspells “separate” and “occasion” and 
 “their,” and if he runs sentences together or makes lavish use 
 of an introductory “and,” then the paper should invariably be 
 turned back with the appropriate comment. 
 
 On the other hand, every paper which shows evidence of 
 hasty preparation, which is in effect simply in examination-pa- 
 per form, should likewise be turned back with patient and sym- 
 pathetic admonitions which convince the pupil that effortless 
 papers will simply not be accepted and that the categorical im- 
 perative is in full working order. 
 
 This implies a great deal of paper work on the part of the 
 teacher? Assuredly it does, and that is a vital part of the teach- 
 ing process. It is not merely a question of training in English 
 composition; it is also a question of the thorough teaching of 
 physics or chemistry or economics or history. 
 
 Size of class in science type.—Mastery teaching as applied 
 to subjects in the science type presumes small classes? It does, 
 
314 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 indeed. The size of classes at the level of the university proper, 
 when students have ceased to require constant and intimate con- 
 tact with the teacher, when they have learned how to study and 
 have definitely matured plans for study, is limited only by the 
 size of lecture-rooms. But even in the higher ranges of univer- 
 sity study, the number of students whom a single professor can 
 guide in their research is limited by the number whom he can 
 intimately know and follow. In the secondary period, however, 
 the teacher must be able to know the individual at every step. 
 In the science type especially, the exploration requires that the 
 teacher shall be able to form a just impression of the intellectual 
 background of every pupil. In presentation, he must be able to 
 sense from the presentation test papers the extent to which ev- 
 ery pupil has caught the central thought of the unit. In super- 
 vised study, he must be able to come intimately in contact with 
 the methods which each employs and the learning problems 
 which each presents. In the written recitation, he must be able 
 to read thoughtfully and critically the papers of perhaps three- 
 fourths of the class on every unit, and many of them two or 
 three times. 
 
 And this is not all. The teacher must meet several classes 
 each day, and that means several groups of individuals. There 
 must not be so many that the teacher cannot know well each in- 
 dividual who is under his instruction for the semester. Further- 
 more, something must be said of the size of the school itself. 
 The teacher meets his classes of individuals for a semester or a 
 year. If he meets the same pupils in several other courses during 
 their years in school, and gets to know them well in their extra- 
 curricular activities in the intervals between courses, his poten- 
 tial effect upon them.is immeasurably increased. When the 
 school is so large that a given teacher is obliged to remark in fac- 
 ulty meeting, “I think I had that boy in a course during his first 
 year,” the possible educational effect of the school upon the pu- 
 pil is too obvious to require comment. 
 
 
 
ORGANIZATION AND RECITATION 315 
 
 The conditions imposed .by the inherent nature of the edu- 
 cative process itself make the process expensive, but efficient 
 schooling which leads to actual educational products is immeas- 
 urably less expensive than inefficient schooling. 
 
 What, then, is the limit of class size imposed by the require- 
 ments of the science type? If precise answer is required, we 
 have none. Obviously, some teachers can effectively teach more 
 than others, and the same teacher can effectively handle a larger 
 number in one course in the science type than is possible in an- 
 other. In general, we find empirically that classes up to thirty 
 can be managed without serious difficulty. We have noted no 
 serious difficulty when the teacher meets ninety to one hun- 
 dred different pupils daily in a school of five hundred. We think 
 the school might be expanded 50 per cent on a five-year basis 
 and still avoid submerging the individual under a system of tests 
 and measurements without intimate personal contact. On the 
 basis of five hundred pupils, it is to be noted that not all the 
 teachers in science-type subjects become acquainted with all the 
 children in school, but most of the teachers do become ac- 
 quainted with most of the children. On the other hand, we have 
 tried experimentally to have elementary teachers meet two hun- 
 dred children daily in courses within the same year, and we 
 know as a result that it cannot be done if the teacher is to know 
 the pupil well enough to guide his educational growth. Per con- 
 tra, it should be said that a school which handles its program on 
 _ a daily-lesson basis, with appraisal of pupil progress by teach- 
 _ er’s estimates based upon performance and not upon learning, 
 _ should be able to handle one size of class and of school about as 
 _ well as another. 
 | We have devoted a great deal of space to the science type, 
 more than will fall to the lot of any other, and the fact has a 
 certain significance. In the first place, many of the principles 
 _ set forth will find a place in succeeding types. But more than 
 _ that, the subject matter which falls under this type constitutes 
 
 aa ce 
 
316 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the content of the greater part of that adjustment of the individ- 
 ual to environment which is education. If we include the prac- 
 tical arts as an offshoot and corollary of the science type, there 
 is found in the broad field thus covered all the adaptations which 
 constitute the stock of the individual’s intelligent and reasoned 
 attitudes toward his physical, biological, and social world. He 
 has still to acquire those adaptations which are not reasoned but 
 felt, and to this field we turn in our discussion of the apprecia- 
 
 tion type. 
 
 ; 
 A 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 THE APPRECIATION TYPE 
 
 our long consideration of the learning products which we 
 | Es as essentially intelligent attitudes or reasoned con- 
 victions, we have been dealing with a field which is in large 
 measure the outcome of a very recent period in human evolu- 
 tion. Prior to the rise of modern science, this area was not open 
 to educational use, simply because neither a scientific method of 
 thinking nor the disclosures thereof had yet appeared. In sharp 
 contrast, we now turn to a field of adjustments which have been 
 slowly worked out in the long racial quest for happiness and 
 peace of soul. Man has sought the good, the beautiful, and the 
 true and in large measure he has found them and is still finding 
 them. He has found them in nature, and in that which he con- 
 ceives to be above nature; and he has handed them down to 
 his posterity in music, in the pictorial and plastic arts, in litera- 
 _ ture, and in that code of personal obligations which he calls 
 “honor and religion.” Herein we find the second of the funda- 
 mental types of adjustment to his present world and to that ideal 
 world which man forever seeks which education leads the child 
 of the race to make. In adaptations which belong to the science 
 type the pupil reaches his learning product through reflective 
 thinking. The adaptations which belong to the appreciation 
 type he reaches by simple recognition of worth. 
 
 THE OBJECTIVE 
 
 The learning product can perhaps best be characterized as 
 “favorable attitude,” usually accompanied by emotional color- 
 ing. We are not primarily concerned here with the explanations 
 which philosophy may assign to the value which is appreciated. 
 These are the problems of the methodologist and of the curricu- 
 
 317 
 
318 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 lum-maker. Teaching is concerned only with the fact that there 
 are certain values which it must lead the pupil to accept and 
 adopt into his personality. Nor does teaching attempt to explain 
 those values to the pupil, at least in the present connection. To 
 do so is to get back into the science type and to generate a differ- 
 ent product from that which we are now seeking. 
 
 Our party is climbing a wonderful mountain peak, and, as 
 we pass above the timber line, the vision bursts upon us in all its 
 majestic grandeur. We gaze upon the scene in rapture and we 
 find a satisfaction whichis a present joy and afterward an ever 
 happy memory. The geologist in the party explains how the 
 mountain came to be and thus an added bit of our environment 
 comes to be understood, but his explanation alters in no way the 
 beauty which is there. The psychologist explains how we come 
 to feel the beauty, and again we are intellectually interested, but 
 the beauty itself is neither enhanced nor explained away. One of — 
 the party sees nothing but a “‘pile of rocks,” and remarks that he © 
 hopes we are near the summit and the expected food supply. — 
 Nothing that we can say induces in him an aesthetic thrill, nor — 
 do the explanations of our scientific friends. We recognize the | 
 graundeur and he does not. That is all there is to it. Perhaps if . 
 we were all elsewhere, in the presence of some other beauty, the — 
 relations would be reversed. There are small boys and girls in © 
 the party, and they go scampering up the mountain, rejoicing in : 
 the stimulus which comes from exercise in the open and the 
 spirit of adventure and from the eager competition as to who — 
 shall reach the top first. As the years go by and the children be- ; 
 come youths, more often does the beauty call them and less the ; 
 appeal of adventure. Now let some overanxious elder stop the — 
 children and demand that they shall pause to admire the scene; _ 
 not only do they decline to admire, but an inhibition is set up 
 which stops natural development along that line. Years after-— 
 ward, one of them will report, “I just hate climbing mountains;. — 
 father always stops me and makes me admire the scene.” In this 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE APPRECIATION TYPE 310 
 
 instance is contained pretty much the whole theory and practice 
 of the appreciation type. 
 
 The teaching objective is always a favorable attitude toward 
 particular values. Such attitudes cannot be forced; the teacher 
 cannot achieve his conquests by frontal attack. The ultimate 
 educational objective is an established preference for right val- 
 ues, which in common parlance we call “‘taste” or ‘‘good breed- 
 ing” or “culture.” It is perhaps well to recall, for purposes of 
 comparison, the similar ultimate objective in the science type, 
 which we have called “intellectual self-dependence,” the inclina- 
 tion and ability to study without the presence of the teacher, to 
 apply to experiences which are found in a complex environment 
 rational methods of interpretation. Like all other educational 
 products, the objective, both the present objective and the ulti- 
 mate objective, is a transformation in the individual who is the 
 subject of education. It is perhaps worth while to state the ob- 
 jective in terms of the tests which may in general appropriately 
 be applied. 
 
 Literature is the schoo! subject most commonly representa- 
 tive of the appreciation type. The objective is plainly a taste 
 for good reading, an inclination to devote one’s leisure in part to 
 that which has abiding value. Now two pupils have taken the 
 same literature courses in high school and college. Both have 
 about equally satisfied a succession of teachers with their class- 
 room performance. They can answer equally weil any set of 
 questions which may be asked relative to the content of courses 
 and the judgment of critics touching literary values. One of 
 them makes us aware of his genuine satisfaction in the best of 
 current literature and his occasional periods of interest in the 
 classics of some portion of the past. The other reads only the 
 Sunday newspaper and the current best seller which purveys 
 thrills without regard to the realities of life. Again, a certain 
 parent is concerned with the progress of her daughter at school. 
 She desires that the latter shall do well in her literature classes. 
 In consultation with the teacher, the mother discloses the fact 
 
320 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 that she watches over the pupil’s home reading and reads with 
 her daughter. “But,” inquires the teacher, “what do you read 
 yourself when your daughter is not with your” “Oh, after she 
 has gone to bed, I read books which I should be ashamed to have 
 her see.” Now, of these three people, the first pupil had at- 
 tained a real product in appreciation. The second pupil had at- 
 tained no product at all. The mother had attained only a sense 
 of values as symbolic of cultural status. Far from having made 
 some adjustment to the capital of values handed down to her by 
 her race, she had attained a perverted relation to the world of 
 reality which made her what is commonly called a “hypocrite.” 
 
 And so we might go on and illustrate from the fields of mu- 
 sic, the pictorial and plastic arts, and right conduct. We should 
 always find this threefold classification: the people who mani- 
 fest the attainment of the genuine adaptation through their un- 
 constrained behavior; those who manifest no adaptation at all; 
 and those who exhibit only the pretense of an adaptation which 
 they have not but wish they had. 
 
 When we reflect that the most immediate practical service 
 which education has to render is the adjustment of individuals 
 to life in a self-governing society, the tests of adaptation in the 
 field of moral behavior come to be of peculiar significance. As 
 long as conduct is controlled by mere habituation to precepts 
 set up by parental dictum or to the prescriptions enumerated in 
 the statutes or to the compulsion of public opinion, we have no 
 educational product, nor indeed have we a free man, fit to play 
 his part in a self-governing society. We have, instead thereof, 
 mere regimentation. As soon as the ordinary artificial restraints 
 and constraints break down, as they frequently do, the regi- 
 
 mented individual lapses into the control of his primitive in- 
 
 stincts. Debauchery and perhaps a “crime wave” ensues. Wise 
 parents and teachers have long recognized the test of a genuine 
 adaptation in a field of conduct when they raise the question, 
 Can the youth be trusted to do right because he prefers to do 
 right? 
 
 
 
THE APPRECIATION TYPE 321 
 
 Can the notion of mastery be applied to learning in the ap- 
 preciation type? It is as applicable here as elsewhere, but im- 
 portant distinctions must be noted. In general, we may say that 
 whenever the pupil has genuinely attained a favorable attitude 
 toward any value in appreciation he has attained a mastery, but 
 we cannot set up a series of such specific values to be mastered in 
 a given course by all pupils. In all the other types of teaching 
 we can do so, and our limitations are found only in our problem 
 cases. Even these, in most cases, yield to skilful investigation 
 and corrective or remedial teaching. In appreciation teaching, 
 however, all pupils are to a greater or less extent problems, and, 
 as we shall presently see, economical and effective development 
 depends quite as much on the arrangement and content of the 
 course of study as upon teaching procedure. If Pupil A fails to 
 catch a certain value this year, he may adopt it next year or two 
 years hence. Meantime, he will very likely achieve another 
 
 which Pupil B does not achieve. 
 | We cannot set up any particular series of units in an appre- 
 ciation course and hold that the pupil’s education consists in 
 mastering them, either in succession or as a whole. The essential 
 objectives of the type neither require nor admit this conception 
 of the content of education. The contrary is true of the science 
 type. There, the mastery of certain units is essential to the un- 
 derstanding of those aspects of the environment for which they 
 stand. If the pupil fails to understand the germ theory of dis- 
 ease, he achieves no intelligent attitude toward the nature of va- 
 rious maladies which afflict humanity, and to that extent his 
 behavior remains irrational behavior. Again, if he fails to learn 
 to read a foreign language, he cannot read that language. We 
 may be mistaken in the series of units which we select for a sci- 
 ence course and another set may be better, but the units selected 
 and organized have a vital relation to the pupil’s adjustment in 
 that field. On the other hand, neither the appeal of a Shakes- 
 pearean drama, nor of a story of Stevenson, nor of a Wagnerian 
 opera, nor of the Sistine Madonna, is essential to the cultivation 
 
322 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 of literary or artistic tastes. They constitute valuable assimila- 
 tive material out of which such tastes may arise, but none of 
 them may appeal to any pupil in a given year nor to all pupils in 
 a series of years. This does not imply that the high-school or 
 college course, in literature for instance, may not be divided into 
 convenient fields for purposes of cultivation, such as the drama, 
 the novel, the essay, the short story, but it does imply that no 
 one drama or novel or essay is in itself an objective. The peda- 
 gogical fallacy of mistaking assimilative material for the learn- 
 ing product is as applicable here as in the science type. 
 
 Each teaching type seems to have its peculiar inhibitions. 
 In the science type, the characteristic inhibition seems to be 
 the memorizing attitude. In language arts and pure practice it 
 is, in different senses, the focalizing of attention on isolated ele- 
 ments. In the appreciation type, the inhibition par excellence 
 arises when the teacher adopts the attitude, ‘Here is something 
 you should like and you must like.”’ Who has not had the expe- 
 rience? When the teacher adopts the attitude, ‘This book is in 
 the course, and if you desire credit for the course, you must read 
 it,’ the pupil may get the task done but he will rarely make the 
 book serve its educative purpose. He sets up the inhibition in 
 appreciation. If an educational institution sets up its program 
 of study on this basis and expects to generate an educational 
 effect, it deludes itself. You cannot say to the pupil, “You must 
 admire this work by the end of next week,” and achieve your 
 purpose. Rather, you adopt the course best calculated to insure 
 that the pupil will detest rather than admire. 
 
 Again, if a technique is organized which is appropriate to 
 another type, the objectives appertaining to the latter may be 
 secured but not the products in appreciation which are sought. 
 The mistake most often made here is to use some form of sci- 
 ence-type procedure in an appreciation course. A piece of lit- 
 erature, for instance, is analyzed for the sake of disclosing the 
 principles of literary craftsmanship which have been observed 
 in its construction. Again, it is studied for its historical setting, 
 
THE APPRECIATION TYPE 323 
 
 or for the biography of the author, or for the meaning of certain 
 passages. In any of these instances, the study is a science-type 
 procedure, and while we may secure an intelligent attitude to- 
 ward the author and his time and his style, we do not secure an 
 appreciation except by accident. This is not to assert that such 
 studies as we have instanced have no place in the secondary 
 school. Some of them are singularly useful in the assimilative 
 period of a unit in history. Others are useful, in an opportunity 
 course in writing, for older pupils who have developed an inter- 
 est in and a taste for writing. To some extent, the skilful teacher 
 in appreciation who has a due sense of proportion will utilize 
 some such elements in developing the appeal of a piece of pic- 
 torial art or music or literature in an appreciation course. In 
 general, however, such studies belong in the post-secondary pe- 
 riod, where they are utilized for training in literary criticism, 
 for the accumulation of literary erudition, and perhaps for the 
 building of the higher appreciations. 
 
 THE APPRECIATION TYPE IN EDUCATION 
 
 As we have already seen, the school subjects which belong 
 to this type are especially moral conduct, literature, music, and 
 the pictorial and plastic arts. In the cases of the last three, of 
 course we have reference to the impressional aspect. As a mat- 
 ter of expression, music is a language art and the other two are 
 practical arts. To the objectives found in these fields may be 
 added various others often found in connection with studies 
 which belong also in other types. For instance, training in citi- 
 zenship, as far as it implies civic obligation, connotes an objec- 
 tive in appreciation. So far as it implies intelligent attitudes, 
 specific courses in social science are called for. The scientific 
 attitude of mind, which we certainly associate with the study of 
 the sciences, is nevertheless a specific objective of the apprecia- 
 tion type. A youth may study the sciences for years and acquire 
 not only intelligent attitudes toward sundry aspects of the en- 
 vironment but a mass of erudition as well, and yet fail to achieve 
 
324 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the sense of value which the scientific attitude as such implies. 
 Again, he may achieve the latter as a working precept in physics 
 or chemistry and utterly fail to realize that it applies to political 
 action or educational administration. The attitude is a general- 
 ized ideal, and the student masters it as a product of apprecia- 
 tion or not at all. And so the test is the nature of the learning 
 product desired and not the accident of logical classification. 
 Clearly, we have here what are perhaps our most fundamen- 
 tal educational adjustments. In so far as civilization has pro- 
 gressed at all in terms of human well-being, its advance has been 
 in the line of the satisfactions which the race, in its long process 
 of trial and error, has found to lead to other satisfactions and 
 not to doubtful experiences. As long as man found his satisfac- 
 tions solely in the gratification of his primitive animal instincts, 
 he rose little if at all above his kindred animals. As soon as a 
 group began to seek the ideal, it became to that extent a social 
 group; it survived and bred an expanding society based on the 
 pursuit of honor, or what it conceived to be honor, and of the 
 satisfactions which differentiate man from the brute. Man be- 
 gan to express the soul that was in him in primitive music and 
 drama and graphic representation. He developed a code which 
 governed his relations with his fellow-man, calculated on the 
 whole to substitute justice for the caprice of the strong. He be- 
 came curious about his relation to the universe and built up 
 some sort of religion which would satisfy his yearnings after the 
 eternal. So have arisen through the long ages the wisdom of 
 mankind and man’s discrimination between right and wrong. 
 Every child tends more or less to revert to the life of his remote 
 ancestors. He inherits their physical organism through the germ 
 plasm. He inherits the culture of the intervening generations 
 and of his immediate ancestors, only as it is communicated to 
 him by the family, the school, and other social institutions. 
 Such appears to be the education of the individual in this 
 field. As we educate individuals, we educate society, provided 
 we can reach enough individuals. Systematic education of the 
 
‘ * 4! 
 ali 
 
 THE APPRECIATION TYPE 325 
 
 masses in this field has a peculiar significance in the modern 
 world. 
 
 The progress of science during the modern period, and the 
 acceleration of that progress during the past half-century or 
 less, has brought about an immense amelioration of the purely 
 physical conditions of life. Perhaps its most significant effect in 
 the United States has been a sudden rise in the economic power 
 of great masses of people whose forebears knew little of exis- 
 tence beyond its story of daily toil and lifelong penury. Not for 
 them labor-saving machinery, the comfortable home, the auto- 
 mobile, the ready means of communication, the theater. But 
 what are all these things for if not for the achievement of human 
 satisfactions? The individual has found himself with a healthy 
 body. He has avoided the misery of ill health in himself and 
 family, but what shall he do with his good health? He earns 
 
 more than enough to satisfy the pangs of hunger and to ward off 
 
 the assaults of the elements. What shall he do with his surplus? 
 There is only one answer: He seeks satisfactions and, apart 
 from the specific education required, he follows the line of his 
 primitive instincts. Food-seeking becomes gluttony. Sex im- 
 pulses become debauchery. Native love for surpassing one’s fel- 
 lows leads to a wild orgy of display. Posterity is robbed of its 
 forest reserves in order to feed the printing press which titillates 
 his untutored curiosity and discloses to him new fields of sen- 
 sual gratification. Interesting and harmless animals are deprived 
 of their outer integuments in order that his women may wear 
 them in the summer time and gratify the primitive instinct for 
 emulous adornment. The bowels of the earth are recklessly 
 despoiled of their reserves of mineral wealth in order that our 
 barbarian may whip into life once more a nervous system which 
 has been jaded and blunted in its capacity to respond to per- 
 petual and abnormal stimulation. It has been estimated by com- 
 petent authority that approximately one-third of the earnings of 
 Western society are expended on the pursuit of wasteful and 
 luxurious living. And so it must be. The pursuit of happiness in 
 
326 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the twentieth century along the lines of the primitive emotions 
 can never lead to an equilibrium of the human satisfactions and 
 to emotional health. The primitive instincts must be sublimated, 
 and education of the masses in the field which belongs to the ap- 
 preciation type of teaching is not only an appropriate method 
 but the only method. 
 
 FUNDAMENTALS OF OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE 
 
 The scientific background for the practice of teaching in this 
 type is meager but increasing. Perhaps our most illuminating 
 material is to be found in the case studies of behavior problems 
 which social workers of various interests have contributed and 
 are contributing. Studies in the general field of mental hygiene, 
 although they of course deal in the main with the pathology of 
 behavior and personality, are nevertheless full of suggestions 
 touching the treatment of the normal child. 
 
 More conspicuously than is the case in the other types, our 
 operative technique here must rest on the principle of what may 
 be called “apperceptive unfolding.” True it is that no principle 
 in the science type can be assimilated by the pupil unless there 
 is a background of experience to which it can be related. Never- 
 theless, as we have seen, given this apperceptive sequence, one 
 can select and teach a unit in the science type. Not so in the 
 appreciation type. Here, we are obliged to find in the pupil some 
 liking which he already has and build our structure thereon. 
 Perhaps the difference between the types is simply a difference 
 in the extent and variety of the respective apperceptive masses 
 in individual pupils which are likely to exist. Perhaps it is due 
 to instinctive tendencies to develop this or that kind of person- 
 ality. Whatever the explanation, the principle seems to be in- 
 contestable: We can get some pupils to accept a given value in 
 a given course and others we cannot. 
 
 Our fundamental problem is, then, to build up in pupils 
 from their earliest days in school a rich and varied experiential 
 
THE APPRECIATION TYPE 327 
 
 background of values which are calculated to appeal to many 
 different individuals. ) 
 
 First in order of importance here is an abundance of literary 
 reading material. Provided the children can be given the read- 
 ing adaptation early in their school lives, before the age of eight 
 if possible, and then put in contact with an abundance of good 
 reading material, the author has found little difference between 
 the child of the city slum, the child of the remote rural school, 
 and the child of the cultivated family. There will be marked 
 differences between individuals of the three classes but not be- 
 tween the classes themselves. If children are taught to read, 
 they will ordinarily read. If children do not get the reading 
 adaptation or if they are long delayed in getting it, they cannot 
 as easily be put in contact with good reading. They become 
 rapidly less plastic. Their out-of-school experience is apt to 
 make them less and less likely to respond to children’s literature, 
 though they may still be interested in informational material. 
 The same result will appear if, having acquired the reading 
 adaptation, they get no contacts with literary reading material. 
 As the child grows older in his school experience, it is of course 
 essential that he shall never lack for material which is likely 
 to appeal or which may appeal. The school’s reading-room and 
 the reading tables of the schoolrooms become one of the school’s 
 chief implements of education, second in importance only to 
 the teacher. 
 
 The pupil should hear an abundance of good music from his 
 earliest school years. Happily, the availability of instruments 
 for the rendering of the best music has made this possible in lit- 
 erally every school. Nor is a regular “music period twice a 
 week”’ sufficient. The victrola or similar instrument should be 
 set to playing informally whenever there is a suitable opportu- 
 nity—at recess times, for instance. 
 
 He should attend school in a worthy and dignified example 
 of architecture, not an expensive nor ornate building. Buildings 
 which are beautiful in their simplicity are often the least expen- 
 
328 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 sive, and they are perhaps never ornate. The rooms and corri- 
 dors of the building should contain many representations of the 
 best examples of painting which appeal to children and young 
 people. 
 
 Most of all, the administration of the school and the teach- 
 ing force should be well equipped to recognize and apply the 
 principles which lead to the willing acceptance of those values 
 in moral conduct which are ultimately built into the mature per- 
 sonality. Many volumes have been written touching this general 
 issue, and we shall return to the matter in later chapters. Suffice 
 it here to emphasize its significance in the basal technique of the 
 appreciation type. The literature of mental hygiene is full of 
 instances in which the whole structure of the personality has 
 been warped and the pupil’s later acceptance of moral values 
 perverted by unhappy experiences at school, which the teacher 
 or the school administration or both have allowed to pass un- 
 corrected and to become parts of the apperceptive mass to which 
 later conduct is assimilated. 
 
 The second principle is the reality and, we might add, the 
 idealism of the values taught. Does a book selected for class 
 reading or to be placed on the shelves in the reading-room ex- 
 hibit life as it is or as it should be, or does it draw a fantastic 
 picture of a life which never was and never can be? Does the 
 author make his people talk the language which such people 
 would really talk, or does he make them talk the stilted phrases 
 found only in books? Still worse, does the author exhibit a life 
 which undoubtedly exists but which should not exist? The 
 cheap juvenile is the type of the first kind of unreality. It ordi- 
 narily panders to pathological day-dreaming to which we are all 
 natively prone, just as the vendor of drugged cigarettes builds 
 his traffic upon systematically perverted physiological cravings. 
 The literary mudbath which panders to the animal in man under 
 the pretense of realistic craftsmanship will illustrate our second 
 kind of unreality. Such books never serve an educational pur- 
 pose with children or young people. Truly, they often exhibit 
 
THE APPRECIATION TYPE 329 
 
 social pathology to which the decent and constructive citizen 
 should not close his eyes, but their subject matter is that of the 
 university class in sociology or criminal law or abnormal psy- 
 chology, and not literary material in the field of general educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Another foundation of operative technique may be de- 
 scribed as the “specific influence of a valued personality.” While 
 it is doubtless true in any type of teaching that a serious obstacle 
 to the learning process itself is set up when the pupils for any 
 reason do not respect the teacher, the effect is fatal in the appre- 
 ciation type. 
 
 The teacher who is alive with the message of a poem or of a 
 piece of music can apparently hardly fail to communicate its ap- 
 peal to a class of boys and girls in the secondary school, if the 
 latter are at all receptive. The teacher knows his material, 
 senses its meaning and the value of its meaning, and is therefore 
 himself in possession of the true learning product which is to be 
 taught. 
 
 Such teachers are hard to find, but there are probably more of 
 them than we think. The initial problem is for the administration, 
 through its organization of courses and its development of an 
 appropriate technique, to make it possible for potentially effec- 
 tive teachers to operate. On the other hand, when a school finds 
 it impossible to secure even potentially effective teachers in the 
 appreciation type, it is far better not to attempt to offer courses 
 in appreciation. The reader’s rejoinder may be, “But the col- 
 leges require high-school units in literature and very likely such 
 and such books.” The essence of the college requirement is the- 
 oretically that its students shall come with some cultural back- 
 ground in literature. It therefore sets up a requirement which 
 it hopes will achieve the purpose but which, it should know, is 
 illy calculated to do so. There are few colleges, however, which 
 will fail to be content when they receive the reality, even though 
 it is unaccompanied by its stereotyped symptoms in the form of 
 units of ground covered and time spent. It is far from essential 
 
330 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 that all schools should exist for college preparation. Better that 
 the school shall be sincere in what it has to offer, even though its 
 students who are looking forward to college must go elsewhere 
 for college preparation. Better far, in subjects which belong to 
 the appreciation type, that the school shall avoid building up 
 positive inhibitions through courses which must be placed in the 
 hands of unqualified and unvalued teachers if they are offered at 
 all. We often encounter the administrative position which holds 
 that almost anybody will do for literature teaching. The con- 
 trary is true; the appreciation courses, one and all, depend upon 
 the personality and qualifications of the instructor more than do 
 any others whatsoever. 
 
 As we have seen, the building of a sound apperceptive mass 
 from the earliest school years is of primary and fundamental 
 importance but it is not enough. Many of the most valuable 
 products can be secured only when the meaning and significance 
 of specific pieces of aesthetic material are felt by the pupil. Even 
 though the meaning is made to register, the pupil may still fail 
 to value the meaning, but he is not likely to appreciate the work 
 if the meaning does not register. Macbeth is being presented to 
 a class in the senior high school. There is little or nothing in the 
 experience of most of the pupils which causes the meaning of the 
 tragedy to register. To them it is simply one more series of ex- 
 ercises on their way to graduation and admission to college. The 
 teacher, however, dwells on the meaning of the drama at length, 
 succeeds in attracting the attention of the class, and finally asks 
 the pupils to write papers giving their own notions of the piece. 
 About a third of the class evidently see some point to it all. 
 Again, the drama is talked over in class, a great deal of discus- 
 sion ensues, and after a time the pupils write again. This time 
 all but a few individuals seem to catch the idea, and several of 
 them present more nearly adequate notions than did anybody on 
 the first trial. We are now sure that the majority of the class 
 has had a vicarious experience in the form of a literary master- 
 piece which will add to their capacity to interpret values in life. 
 
 3 Oe ee r. 
 
THE APPRECIATION TYPE R37 
 
 A part of the experience of the race and a sense of such expe- 
 rience has been communicated to them. We hope that the vicar- 
 ious experience will never be anything other than vicarious in 
 their cases. Whether or not the teaching will contribute to a fa- 
 vorable attitude toward the reading of Shakespeare is another 
 question. If it is supported by several such experiences it prob- 
 ably will do so, at least in the cases of some pupils. Hence, the 
 place and importance and limitations of what are sometimes 
 called “‘Courses for Reading and Study.” The same argument 
 applies with equal force to courses in music or others of the fine 
 arts. The final product of the period of general education in the 
 appreciation type is much like that of the science type, namely, 
 self-dependence. The pupil has been trained to seek his satis- 
 factions in the fine arts, in his philosophy of life, in his code of 
 moral obligations—and he does so. If he does not, he has not 
 been educated in the field. All his courses and all the teaching 
 which he has encountered have failed to exert the transforming 
 influence which is education. Nor is this all of self-dependence. 
 
 Youth is prone to think that the world owes the individual 
 his happiness. It is hard to learn the lesson that happiness and 
 peace of soul must in the end be sought through hard work, 
 through self-denial and often through experiences which are the 
 reverse of pleasurable. When the growing young person has 
 reached the level at which he does sense this principle, he is edu- 
 cated indeed. A friend of the author could get little satisfaction 
 from grand opera but he realized that others did so and he 
 thought he saw the reason why. Intellectually, he was convinced 
 that a value existed there which might be his. Accordingly, he 
 trained himself by study and by a frequent attendance, which 
 was at times irksome. In the end, the power in appreciation 
 came, and he had a lifelong resource within himself. The clas- 
 sics, whether of art or of nature, commonly refuse to yield their 
 riches to the casual acquaintance. Their riches must be sought. 
 
 __ The first impression of Niagara Falls or of the Grand Canyon is 
 
 apt to be disappointing; it is only in weeks of daily contact that 
 
332 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the grandeur makes its full appeal. In the presence of a great 
 painting, we tend at first to make a casual survey and pass on. 
 Its value barely begins to register until we have stood before it 
 several times. In the end, we return year after year and always 
 gain a new sense of value and aesthetic reality. The likelihood 
 that a classic will call us back after the first meeting of course 
 depends somewhat on our native inclinations, but it probably 
 depends very much more on the breadth and depth of our apper- 
 ceptive mass. In the end, the classics are the great storehouses 
 of the values to which the youth adjusts himself in the apprecia- 
 tion type of experience. It has been said that they are not good 
 because they are old, but old because they are good. For years, 
 perhaps for centuries, the race has been able to find its higher 
 satisfactions in them, and so they abide. 
 
 In this final product of the appreciation type, then, the ob- 
 jective comes to be convincing the youth that in his maturity he 
 must actively seek his peace and happiness wherever the expe- 
 rience of mankind has made it evident that they can best be 
 found. In guiding the pupil into this final and incomparably 
 most important adjustment, the integrity and unity of the school 
 as a teaching institution is again severely tested. The teachers 
 who are concerned with courses in the appreciation type and the 
 personnel officers of the school, who are concerned with over- 
 sight of the developing personalities of the pupils, must all focus 
 their efforts upon the adjustment. In the end, it becomes a prob- 
 lem in the administrative technique of teaching. What evidence 
 have we in the case of Pupil A that he is approaching his appre- 
 ciative maturity? What evidence that Pupil B has attained it? 
 We cannot set up standard tests; that would be absurd. But in 
 the case of every pupil in school there are innumerable scraps of 
 evidence which tell the story. Every teacher and every person- 
 nel officer sees such indications in abundance almost every day. 
 They can be noted and recorded if the faculty will train itself in 
 the art of systematic observation. 
 
 Here is a boy in the tenth grade. He is of moderate talent 
 
 a 
 
THE APPRECIATION TYPE 333 
 
 but he is steadily growing in his taste in literature, in music, and 
 in the fine arts generally. His teachers become thoroughly ac- 
 quainted with him in classroom periods which in other schools 
 would be devoted to the routine daily recitation. He is far from 
 a problem case, but nevertheless there are frequent conferences 
 with the parents. His personnel! officer meets him in frequent 
 contact. Certain outstanding facts are noted. In literature, he 
 not only reads what is easily within his apperceptive reach, but 
 he constantly seeks to reach out for matter which is somewhat 
 beyond him. We discover that he saves his money to buy at least 
 one season ticket for the best music which his city has to offer. 
 He is a frequent visitor at the city’s art collections. The person- 
 nel office discovers that he is coming to be one of its main 
 supports in developing the school morale; in his scheme of mo- 
 tivation, he has substituted duty for interest. He is not actuated 
 by the commercialized drive of greed for superior credit, for 
 the school awards no marks or grades. Putting the evidence to- 
 gether, we find that we can with some confidence put this boy on 
 our list of pupils whose characters have been formed. Turning 
 to the science-type subjects we find much the same record. Call- 
 ing language arts to the bar, we find that he is reading French, 
 “for the fun of it.” Follow-up shows that at the end of his jun- 
 ior college he is substantially and thoroughly an educated man. 
 
 Here is another boy. This pupil is distinctly more talented 
 than the first. He is a brilliant fellow who has acquired intellec- 
 tual interests in several fields. He reads a great deal, but he 
 never goes beyond the region of what interests him. He creates 
 no conduct problems in the school, but he is purely negative in 
 that field. The personnel office has his dossier, and the story is 
 simply “undeveloped boy.” The family is interviewed, and the 
 disclosures confirm the evidence gathered from the school case 
 history. Following the family history backward, a story of sys- 
 tematic indulgence is uncovered, and the school finds it exceed- 
 ingly difficult to convince the older generation of the errors of 
 its philosophy of life. Converse with the boy brings out the prin- 
 
334 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ciple that he is definitely committed to a philosophy of interest. 
 His apperceptive mass for the school subjects of the apprecia- 
 tion type is adequate, but he shows no signs of making the final 
 and all-important adjustment. He becomes a problem case at 
 senior high school level. The forces of the school which operate 
 in this field are focused upon the task of bringing him to realize 
 the notion that he has reached the point at which he must learn 
 to seek the higher satisfactions of life and not merely wait for 
 them to come of their own notion. It is a difficult undertaking, 
 full of formalistic pitfalls and one which requires infinite tact 
 and patience. In the end, the boy seems to be convinced, but un- 
 happily he goes to college still an undeveloped boy. If he could 
 have remained at the secondary level until maturity had come 
 and then passed directly to the university level proper, much 
 might have been accomplished. We have to record him, not as 
 an instance in which the school has failed but as one in which it 
 has not succeeded. 
 
 These instances are real cases, composites rather than pic- 
 tures of individual pupils, it is true, but none the less veracious 
 representations. Experience shows that the majority of the ulti- 
 mate problems of this type can be solved, provided the school 
 can identify the true learning product which is implied and fo- 
 cus its efforts upon the direct teaching required. 
 
 i i i, ee, oe ee, i. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE—FREE READING 
 
 Y the term “literature,” as it is used in this chapter and 
 B in our discussion of the appreciation type of teaching, 
 we mean any good reading which tends to contribute a 
 sense of sound values in the pupil’s developing outlook on life. 
 We do not limit the term to classics or belles-letires in general. 
 We do not include purely informational reading. The objective 
 is conceived to be the development of right attitudes through an 
 abundance of the reading which reveals wholesome ethical and 
 aesthetic values and also an ultimate preference for reading 
 which uses adequate literary forms of expression. There is of 
 course no hard-and-fast dividing line between purely informa- 
 tional reading and that which has a tendency to cultivate right 
 ideals and individual standards of literary taste. Last Days of 
 Pompeii, a favorite of some pupils in the fifth and sixth grades, 
 exhibits both sentiment and information. Parkman’s studies in 
 the history of New France are invaluable assimilative material 
 for a senior high school or junior college course in history, but 
 they are also a treasure-house of heroic incident and master- 
 pieces of literary style. On the other hand, a supplementary 
 reader in science or geography is seldom more than a body of in- 
 formational material, valuable for extended reading in science- 
 type courses but not material for the appreciation type. 
 
 APPERCEPTIVE MASS 
 
 Our children come to us from homes of abundant books, in 
 which the child is accustomed to see every member of the family 
 reading a great deal and to hear frequent discussion of books; 
 from other homes in which there is no tradition of reading; and 
 from others still in which the elders are positively illiterate. No 
 
 335 
 
336 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 doubt some children inherit tendencies which manifest them- 
 selves as a liking for reading, while others do not. Whatever the 
 actual genetic story may be, there is no reasonable doubt that 
 most if not all normal children come into the world endowed 
 with purely human potentialities in this direction, with which 
 the school can do much, if it begins early enough. We occasion- 
 ally encounter a pupil at even senior high school or junior col- 
 lege level who has literally never in his life read a book other 
 than those assigned as school exercises. There is not much hope 
 of opening the treasures of Jiterature to such people. 
 
 The initial problem of the school is then to begin with the 
 primary period as soon as the reading adaptation has been estab- 
 lished, or even earlier, and endeavor to bring the little children 
 into something like a common apperceptive background. The 
 story period, even from the day when the child comes to kinder- 
 garten, is a manifest opportunity. It would not be impossible to 
 trace a very plausible connection between a student’s real profit 
 from a college course and a fortunate start in a good kinder- 
 garten. 
 
 As far as reading is concerned, as we have repeatedly seen, 
 the meat of the matter is to expose the primary pupil to an 
 abundance of good material which he may utilize for free read- 
 ing. And happily there is an abundance. Not only has the typical 
 school reader come to be a work of genuine merit, as well from 
 the standpoint of content as from that of pedagogical organiza- 
 tion; but there is a goodly body of new material like the books 
 of Beatrix Potter and Burgess. A rapid survey of the reading 
 tables in the primary school on a certain day revealed the fol- 
 lowing list available to the children and liberally used by the 
 children: 
 
 A great many school readers 
 Mother Goose 
 
 Several of the Beatrix Potter books 
 Thornton W. Burgess 
 
 Story of Three Bears [illustrated] 
 
TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE 337 
 
 Alice in Wonderland 
 Just So Stories 
 Howard Pyle’s King Arthur 
 Gulliver’s Travels 
 Arabian Nights 
 Peter Pan [illustrated] 
 _ Child’s Garden of Verses 
 Uncle Remus 
 Eugene Field Reader 
 
 The culmination of the primary period could not be better 
 set forth than by the quotation from a work report which fol- 
 lows. ‘The period is April 4—-June 13, 1924. The pupils are none 
 
 TABLE XI 
 
 Work REPORT 
 
 Pupil Animal Books} Fairy Stories History |Miscellaneous Total 
 
 OE Se 8 d-sbas,6. 0:30, 4,5' 5 5 5 2 8 20 
 EA ctab oftiesaAvlal's\e 2 2 I 5 10 
 as dist Sis aithvliay ose: a> eee eee 7 ee Oe ee ee 3 
 Bee as iota sites 2's 2 2 9 6 19 
 Beers eee Ca Viale 09 S°S%e ota bs 2 I I 5 9 
 id AAT ae 9 I I 3 14 
 PAG Put Bieta Pale GMs e a5! th I 4 2 6 13 
 Tse Pets fics 10.4 Pace G3 Bi a aaa tacked I I 4 
 MES Ts gadis ces S08 es Drewes laaslont eee 4 I 6 
 Bees Bal Sa i's a, ole. dvb k's I I 7 I b Ke) 
 et A eee 3 4 3 3 13 
 Maa wks Wace hora shel a eae o's eles I 6 2 9 
 Ata D chst aides uietebemeidiarira ote ae Wats whe eiaunree 8 2 Io 
 BMC ant oa sy sins tse 4 4 5 I 14 
 Mess id's 5 wisn die he AUT iSelect lee I 2 7 
 MEN as of 5 ars ow apiits 3 4 VERT AN eth Deane II 
 DPTONAG Coos aces ees Syn). LA aes 5 2 IO 
 Bis ite oh d pies pie sim ins te 2 2 2 4 ro 
 REM e stag sds aes 6 es 2 3 3 I 9 
 47 34 67 53 201 
 
 of them beyond third-grade level. “The children have learned to 
 use the library and they show considerable judgment in the 
 choice of books.” A tabulation of the reading of a section of 
 nineteen pupils is shown in Table XI. 
 
338 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The record is good evidence of the reading adaptation, ex- 
 cept perhaps in the case of Pupils 3 and 8, but not in itself con- 
 clusive proof. An eight-year-old child does not of his own accord 
 read a book each week if he has any particular trouble with 
 reading as an art. It is, further, good evidence that most of the 
 children in this section have probably established a working 
 background for the development of inclinations toward good 
 reading. 
 
 Some of this reading might have been done at home. Prob- 
 ably most of it was, in fact, done in the schoolroom—not in the 
 school reading-room, but in the schoolroom. In the cases of the 
 majority of young children, as we find them in the public schools, 
 small reliance can be placed upon the resources of the home. 
 Therefore, the veritable foundation of the child’s whole educa- 
 tional development rests in large measure upon the book tables 
 of the primary school. 
 
 THE READING-ROOM 
 
 Given actual reading ability and contact with abundant 
 book and periodical material, most children will read very wide- 
 ly. Thus arises one of the school’s chief opportunities and obli- 
 gations. The background which has been established in the pri- 
 mary school must have its opportunity to induce the continuous 
 expansion of the pupil’s ideational content. If the pupil’s nor- 
 mal growth in taste for good reading has been started, failure to 
 make the appropriate contacts continuously during the second- 
 ary period will bring about a prompt atrophy. Hence the school 
 reading-room already described. The reading-room should of 
 course be in charge of a teacher who is qualified by education, 
 by training, and by natural aptitude, to guide children in their 
 choice of reading. The room, as far as appreciation is concerned, 
 secures two important ends. It is the source of expanding expe- 
 rience with books which are calculated te generate growth in 
 sense of values; and its records are the test of the pupil’s 
 progress. 
 
TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE 339 
 
 Of course, the selection of books is the primary considera- 
 tion. The situation is not unlike that presented by the pupil’s 
 dietary at home. If the family provides a proper amount of 
 wholesome, palatable food, in the appropriate nutritional bal- 
 ance, the child will grow in a healthy and normal manner, other 
 things being equal. If the food appeals to the palate but does 
 not nourish the bodily frame and substance, the child will not 
 grow as he should, and he will be peculiarly subject to the at- 
 tacks of various maladies. A similar result will appear if the 
 child is compelled to eat unpalatable food. He may gormandize, 
 and his normal growth will suffer in consequence. Finally, he 
 may eat food which is palatable but unwholesome and even poi- 
 sonous. The analogy to the selection of books is close. A great 
 many books of the cheap juvenile order are agreeable to the 
 taste but they build up no sense of values. Quite the reverse; a 
 prolonged diet of such leaves the pupil unwilling to read any- 
 thing which does not contribute a “thrill.” If the pupil is as- 
 signed a reading course composed of books which his elders 
 think he should like and he is compelled to write a series of that 
 deadly thing called a ‘‘book report,” he will not only profit noth- 
 ing but he is more than likely to acquire an aversion to reading 
 altogether. Especially in the upper period of the secondary 
 school, the senior high school and junior college, the pupil may 
 encounter many books of a poisonous character. Prevailingly, 
 such books belong to the region of perverse literature. But for 
 timorous enforcement of federal laws, many of them would be 
 excluded from the mails. The authors are commonly people of 
 some literary talent but afflicted with emotional disorders well 
 recognized by the mental hygienist. Not only do such books 
 tend to establish in youth perverted sense of values, but they not 
 infrequently infect the young person with the very maladies 
 with which the authors have become afflicted. Finally, the pupil 
 may read too much, just as he may eat too much. In that case, 
 he is induced to spend more time on the playground or in the 
 school shops. | 
 
340 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Now the school cannot control the pupil’s entire experience 
 of life or of books, but through skilful and systematic co-opera- 
 tion with the home it can do much. Most of all, it can rigorously 
 weed out all harmful books from its own shelves. If the school 
 succeeds, during twelve years of the school life, let us say, in 
 building up a sound sense of values in the pupil’s appreciation of 
 life, the latter will tend to turn aside from much poisonous ma- 
 terial just as the well-nourished body throws off the toxins of 
 unwholesome food. Guidance but not constraint in the pupil’s 
 free reading is the teaching precept. The first step in effective 
 guidance is accomplished when a system of wise selection is in 
 operation. 
 
 In the second place, the teacher must know her shelves and 
 get to know the pupils. The latter is more difficult than the for- 
 mer, but it can be done. There should be a reading-room and 
 reading-room teacher for perhaps every two hundred and fifty 
 pupils in Grades IV—-VI, for every five hundred from the begin- 
 ning of the junior high school to the end of junior college. This 
 teacher has an advantage over most other members of the staff, 
 since she meets all pupils in the school, or at least all in her 
 group, while classroom and departmental teachers meet only 
 certain sections from time to time. Nevertheless, it is always 
 possible for the reading-room teacher to pool the impressions of 
 a given pupil which have been acquired by several teachers. In 
 the end, the teacher fits the book to the pupil at his present stage 
 of development. 
 
 Guidance is essentially salesmanship. Initially, much de- 
 pends upon the accessibility of books. It is amazing to note the 
 difference between the appeal of books which lie title upward on 
 a table and the appeal of others which stand on shelves, especial- 
 ly if the latter are beyond the pupil’s reach. The shelves, how- 
 ever, are open to the pupils. The ideal general study-room of the 
 school or of the group is the reading-room with books shelved 
 about the walls, accessible to all pupils and in plain view from 
 the teacher’s position. There will be a certain loss of books un- 
 
TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE 341 
 
 der this plan, but loss can be reduced to a minimum. The cost of 
 a minimum annual loss is one of the most distinctly profitable 
 expenditures which the school can make. It is likely to represent 
 the cost of an effective piece of educational procedure, whereas 
 the saving which accrues through having books checked across 
 the librarian’s desk would be at the expense of the major portion 
 of the reading-room influence upon the pupil. Of course, pupils 
 should be trained to check out books which are withdrawn for 
 home reading. Here again, systematic home-and-school co-oper- 
 ation accomplishes much. The salesman convinces his customer 
 that the latter desires the commodity which is offered. The mod- 
 ern salesman makes no attempt to “cram a sale down the cus- 
 tomer’s throat,” nor does he effect the sale of goods which he 
 knows beforehand are not likely to prove satisfactory. Similarly, 
 the good teacher, in guiding the free reading of the children, will 
 avoid using the strong arm of school compulsion and likewise 
 will try to avoid inducing a child to read a book which is un- 
 likely to appeal to that particular child. 
 
 A certain teacher of rare good sense was teaching a ninth- 
 year class in Ivanhoe. The work was being dramatized, and 
 most of the pupils were enthusiastic. Their free reading was for 
 the most part wholesome and abundant. One girl, however, was 
 getting nothing out of the literature period, and reading nothing. 
 Many teachers would have classed her as ‘‘dumb” and let it go 
 at that. Inquiry elicited the fact that she had recently come into 
 the system from a school in which reading meant simply oral ex- 
 ercises from graded readers, and the further not uncommon fact 
 that she had literally never in her life, of her own accord, read 
 a book of any sort. The teacher knew the pupil and gave her 
 Little Women. She read it with interest, called for more, and be- 
 came quite a different sort of girl. 
 
 Guidance should be systematic. The tabulation found on 
 page 337 belongs to the primary classroom reading-table period. 
 It might have appeared, somewhat expanded as to its classifica- 
 tion, anywhere in the secondary period. Suppose this to have 
 
342 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 been the case, and substitute “Literature” for “Fairy Stories.” 
 Pupil 1 has a fairly well-balanced reading diet. One-quarter of 
 his reading is in the field which we classify as literature. Sub- 
 stantially the same is true of Pupils 7, 11, 14, 16, and 19. On 
 the other hand, Pupils 2, 4, 5, 6,9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, and 18 con- 
 spicuously need some guidance into this field. Pupils 3 and 8 
 require further study concerning reading in general. 
 
 A convenient record sheet of individual pupil’s reading 
 used in the elementary section of our laboratory is shown in 
 Table XIT. A similar record is used in another connection at 
 high-school level (see p. 344). 
 
 TABLE XII 
 ON AM ee ee na 
 
 GRADE (year of school life) 
 
 Titles of Books Authors Date Completed 
 
 Pim care ae ne nan ne cee LR REN ENTS fm 
 
 A RA i ERY ARR gm AS 
 
 Now procedure of this sort can easily become so formalized 
 as to destroy any possible good effect. If any sort of credit is 
 attached to the record, it will not only become useless, but since 
 the pupil keeps his own record, will generate a spirit of mendac- 
 ity. If, on the other hand, the attitude of the teacher is, “I am 
 interested to know what you are reading, and it will be interest- 
 ing to you later to know what you have read,” the pupil will 
 very commonly keep a truthful account. The pupil is encour- 
 aged to keep a record of home reading as well as one of books 
 read at school. If undesirable books appear in the home-reading 
 list, as they will, the teacher refrains from saying “Naughty, 
 naughty; that is a bad book.” She rather puts the pupil in con- 
 
TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE 343 
 
 tact with better books and waits patiently for the result. In her 
 occasional conferences with the parent, she talks good reading. 
 But, thinks the reader, ‘“How does the teacher know that the 
 pupil has really read these books, and read them thoroughly?” 
 The answer is, “We do not care.” We are not dealing with as- 
 similative material in arithmetic or physics or history. As soon 
 as the pupil knows that he is really free to read anything he 
 pleases and as much or as little as he pleases, he will keep a 
 truthful record. The following is the list of a pupil in the fifth 
 grade for books read between October 24, 1923, and January 
 24,1924. 
 Ivanhoe . ; - « Retold by Alice Jackson 
 
 Stories of Three Saints : . MacGregor 
 Stories from the Crusades . Kelmen 
 History of France . : t Marshall 
 The Little Crusader Cousin . Stein 
 The Great Army . yh weit Letts 
 The Little Hunchback Zia . Burnett 
 The Little Book of Our Country Tappan 
 American Hero Stories .  . Tappan 
 The Brushwood Boy . . Kipling 
 Last Days of Marie Antoinette | Gower 
 Primrose Ring : - sawyer 
 Stories of Greece and Rime . Baker 
 American History . ’ -- */ "Price and Perry 
 Merchant of Venice  . . Shakespeare 
 Decline and Fall (15 pp.) : Gibbon 
 Last Days of Pompei. air Lytton 
 Hero Stories from American 
 
 History : Blaisdell and Ball 
 The Wonderful re ry) i 
 
 Ea : Lagerlof 
 
 The Burning of re fee an ) Church 
 
 There is much food for thought even in this short list. It is 
 tolerably evident that the little girl is telling the truth without 
 pretense. The readings are in the order in which they were done, 
 
344 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 and one can trace threads of sequence from book to book, inter- 
 rupted by browsings in different fields. She attacks Gibbon, and 
 of course finds it too much for her. It is interesting to note that 
 she returns to the attack the next year, but with no better suc- 
 cess. The same fate attends her attacks upon The Burning of 
 Rome. 
 
 The pupil’s free reading is unconstrained behavior. The 
 character of his reading is therefore perhaps the best evidence 
 we can secure bearing upon the issue, Has instruction in litera- 
 ture registered? As the pupil’s reading records accumulate, it is 
 very easy in the cases of some pupils to trace the definite influ- 
 ence of classroom instruction. In the cases of others, there is no 
 such evidence: In the cases of some, there is evidence that litera- 
 ture teaching has had no effect. The instructor who is a teacher 
 of pupils rather than a teacher of books finds some of his best 
 guidance in the reading-room. 
 
 When the pupil has reached junior high school level, his 
 range of interests is apt to expand, and he encounters in a well- 
 organized program of study a broader range of content courses. 
 He is likely to read more. Accordingly, the device here de- 
 scribed is utilized for keeping track of his reading. He is given 
 two sets of 4- by 6-inch cards, one set in white and the other in 
 buff. On the white card he records all books read in or in con- 
 nection with his literature courses; on the buff card are entered 
 the titles of his free reading. Precisely the same principles are 
 observed as those described for the guidance of reading at ele- 
 mentary-school level. I have before me a typical set of such 
 cards for an eighth-ninth-grade pupil, a girl. 
 
 The list of sixty-nine titles on the free reading card, running 
 from October 9, 1922, to December 4, 1923, is too long to record 
 here. Some of the titles, it should be observed, are simply those 
 of periodicals which were probably read only in part and others 
 those of poems. There are on the list, however, the titles of 
 thirty-eight books. From the first of October to the following 
 March, there appears only one reading which would classify as 
 
TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE 345 
 
 desirabie educative literature. There are twenty-four titles in 
 this period, mostly those of extremely popular periodicals and 
 washy juveniles. Of the forty-five titles in the period running 
 from the last of March until the following December there are 
 but five of the type which prevailed in the earlier period. Like 
 all the rest of us, the pupil occasionally falls under the influence 
 of the old Adam, or, perhaps in this case, the old Eve. Among 
 her better reading is The Alhambra, a list of thirteen ballads, a 
 course of Wilkie Collins, Papini’s Life of Christ—all read be- 
 
 
 
 _ cause she wished to and not because she had to. We note on her 
 
 white card that she began the year with first-year literature, and 
 at the beginning of the second semester she entered the “Com- 
 munity Life” course with its rich reading in related literature. 
 Early in the spring, the influence of these two courses began to 
 appear. Now, this child made her first contact with the better 
 type of reading at the beginning of her first high-school year. Is 
 there any doubt that, if she had enjoyed the same reading-room 
 opportunities which the fifth-grade child cited earlier was enjoy- 
 ing, she would have come to junior high school level not only 
 with a much better apperceptive mass in this field but with a 
 much better sense of values? 
 
 Another pupil, a boy, who has had the reading-room con- 
 tacts of the elementary school, exhibits less favorable symptoms. 
 Sixty-four titles appear on his buff card for his first high-school 
 year, seventh grade, thirteen of which are numbers of the 
 Youth’s Companion and American Boy. About twenty others 
 are juveniles of the type of the inevitable Tarzan and the impos- 
 sible Mark Tidd. Among the remainder appear Jack London, 
 Seton, and Conan Doyle. There also appear Howard Pyle, J. F. 
 Cooper, and Jules Verne. The boy is plainly very much in the 
 thrill-hunting stage, and it is of course entirely possible that he 
 will never come out of it. Nevertheless, the teachers have a solid 
 basis of recorded genuine pupil experience on which to work. 
 
 _ We are curious to find out if there has been any real progress, 
 
346 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 and so we turn to his card for a period two years later, the fall 
 of 1924. Ina period of nine weeks we find the following list: 
 
 Story of Ab 
 
 Before Adam (Jack London) 
 
 American Boy 
 
 Mark Tidd Manufacturer 
 
 Mark Tidd’s Citadel 
 
 Boy Electrician 
 
 Story of Mankind (Van Loon) 
 
 The Tempest (Shakespeare) 
 
 American Boy 7 
 
 Hamlet 
 
 A Tramp Abroad (Mark Twain) 
 
 Romeo and Juliet 
 
 Silas Marner 
 
 After all, the boy is growing, appreciably rather than vigo- 
 rously, although we may suspect that his reading of Shakespeare 
 and George Eliot represents an honest effort to seek the better 
 values than the satisfaction itself. However, we also note that 
 this fall he was in the “Classics” course. 
 
 CONFERENCE GROUPS 
 
 If we provide for the apportionment of a reading-room to 
 every two hundred and fifty pupils in Grades IV—VI in schools 
 in which the first three grades use their schooiroom reading ta- 
 bles, we shall have groups not too large for the oversight of the 
 reading-room teacher. She meets them year after year, and she 
 can, as we have seen, pool the current knowledge of pupils which 
 other teachers possess. 
 
 Five hundred pupils at junior-senior high school level, or a 
 school of five hundred pupils which includes junior college, all 
 use the high-school reading-room. On a six-period school day, 
 with one period for physical education and four for classroom 
 study, there will be in the vicinity of eighty-five pupils using the 
 reading-room at each period. This is not too large a number for 
 
TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE 347 
 
 supervision, but five hundred is too large a number for the 
 teacher’s intimate acquaintance and guidance. Hence, it comes 
 to be desirable to organize conference groups to meet with 
 teachers, perhaps once a week or once in two weeks. 
 
 At these conference periods, teacher and pupils talk over 
 reading. Now, to be effective, the conferences must be informal 
 and intimate. In other words, the teacher must get to know the 
 pupils whom he or she meets, and of course the teacher must be 
 gifted with genuine tact in dealing with young people. Needless 
 to say, the teacher must have an extended and somewhat inti- 
 mate knowledge of books and of the reading ways of young 
 folks. The efficiency expert is distinctly out of his element in 
 arrangements for such conferences. The teacher who turns to 
 the pupil, on the entrance of the latter, with cool professional 
 air, selects a formidable-looking card from a cabinet, and pro- 
 ceeds to probe the pupil’s inner consciousness will accomplish 
 very little indeed. Rather the greeting will be, “Well, John, 
 what have you been reading lately?” Or, “How do you like 
 eo 
 
 Ideally, every pupil should be in such a group throughout 
 his high-school years. Practically, this is seldom feasible. The 
 group assigned to the conference leader must be small enough to 
 enable the latter to know well each of the pupils and to keep in 
 mind the ways of each. In a fifty-minute period, there is time 
 for perhaps four or five conferences on the average, time for the 
 teacher to see twenty to twenty-five pupils each week when the 
 teacher has one conference period each school day. Some teach- 
 ers may carry on a cycle of two weeks before returning to the 
 first pupil; others may not be able to know so many. Perhaps a 
 group of fifty to each such teacher, each pupil of the group com- 
 ing for conference once in two weeks, is a maximum allowance. 
 Pupils who are registered in literature courses have not the same 
 need of guidance in their general reading as have those who for 
 the time being are not so registered. If pupils are normally reg- 
 
 
 
348 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 istered in two literature courses during a junior-senior high 
 school career of six years, the proportion thus provided for will 
 be on the average one-third of the total enrolment. In a school 
 of five hundred, this leaves three hundred and thirty-three pupils 
 to be provided for in conference groups, perhaps seven groups. 
 Many pupils, however, arrive at reading self-dependence com- 
 paratively early in the high-school period. Their reading tastes 
 are substantially formed. Others come from homes in which 
 reading is guided as well as the school can guide it or better. 
 Hence the maximum allowance for group conference is ma- 
 terially reduced in the presence of one or both of these consid- 
 erations. 
 
 We have several times referred to the menace of perverse. 
 literature, or writings which have real merit as examples of lit- 
 erary craftsmanship but whose whole content and philosophy of 
 life are expressions of a perverted emotional life in the author. 
 Such books have become particularly numerous since the Great 
 War. As a class, they exhibit a shallow wit and recklessness of 
 statement which are singularly well calculated to mislead the 
 later adolescent—perhaps because the authors themselves are 
 apt to be examples of personality development retarded at the 
 adolescent stage. Boys and girls of parts are prone to find these 
 books somewhere and read them. Oftentimes the parent in his 
 innocence mistakes such reading for evidence of superior taste 
 and wisdom in his offspring. The school cannot prohibit such 
 reading; to do so would only increase its appeal. It can care- 
 fully exclude the like from its own shelves and classrooms and 
 furnish an abundance of more wholesome material. But that is 
 not enough. It must set the pupil right by exposing the shallow- 
 ness and perversity of such writing, usually a simple task if the 
 teacher himself has arrived at the stage of maturity and culture 
 which makes him a competent teacher at senior high school or 
 junior college level. The conference group, tactfully handled, 
 
TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE 349 
 
 gives us our best opportunity for the identification of such pupil 
 problems and for appropriate correction. 
 
 Thus, m the reading-room and its records, in the pupil’s 
 free-reading report card, and in the group conference, we have 
 the means of systematically guiding the pupil in his contacts 
 with the best values of literature, of studying his individual 
 growth, and of securing as valid objective tests of the extent and 
 direction of that growth as is perhaps possible in the apprecia- 
 
 tion type. 
 CO-OPERATION OF HOME AND SCHOOL 
 
 It is perhaps not too much to say that the whole process of 
 general education depends on effective co-operation between 
 home and school. Home and school are the two social institu- 
 tions which mold the child of the race into his racial inheritance, 
 and in the modern world there is no escape from the interrela- 
 tion. Each must do its duty by the child, and it must act intelli- 
 gently. The home, however, in most of the field with which the 
 school is concerned, has long since become dependent upon the 
 latter for guidance. In the school subjects which belong to other 
 types than that with which we are now dealing, effective co-oper- 
 ation consists largely in an intelligent apprehension on the part 
 of the home of what the school is trying to do and then refusing 
 to meddle with school processes. In the appreciation type, how- 
 ever, both in the region of moral behavior and in that of growth 
 in acceptance of sound cultural values, it is essential that, as far 
 as possible, a plan of positive co-operation be organized. The 
 principle has special application in the matter of the pupil’s 
 reading. 
 
 Of course, in some homes there is no reading at all. In others 
 the child’s reading growth is nourished and guided quite as well 
 as the school can guide it. Neither of these classes of homes cre- 
 ates any formidable problem. A great middle class, however, is 
 composed of homes in which there is perhaps the most genuine 
 
350 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 concern for the right upbringing of children but, as far as read- 
 ing is concerned, a minimum of wise guidance. It is this region 
 in which the cheap juvenile flourishes. The chief characteristics 
 of this type of reading remain much the same from generation to 
 generation. The grandparents of our children were apt to read 
 juveniles in which the characters were impossibly and unwhole- 
 somely good; the parents lived with day-dream children who 
 were impossibly heroic; the juveniles of today usually exhibit 
 youngsters who are impossibly clever. In all, there is a set of 
 rewards for the righteous and punishments for the vicious which 
 could scarcely exist in any sane world. The success of a best 
 seller in this field consists in its capacity to arouse the maximum 
 of thrill with the minimum of mental effort on the part of the 
 reader. The child who is once thoroughly inoculated with this 
 type of reading is apt to read nothing else, and it seems to have 
 a tendency to control his whole future career as a desultory 
 reader. A single home in which it abounds is apt to infect the 
 whole neighborhood. Hence, the task of influencing the home. 
 The opportunities are too many for enumeration here. The two 
 suggestions which follow will illustrate. 
 
 Well-nigh every such home is in a quandary at Christmas 
 time as to presents for the children. Books suggest themselves. 
 The tables of the bookstore are piled high with examples of the 
 extremely profitable type of commodity to which we have re- 
 ferred. Aset is purchased, and judging by the results the present 
 is highly successful. For a long period of years, the return of the 
 season augments the stock on hand. Now, most parents on the 
 whole desire to do the right thing by their children. Hence the — 
 opportunity of the printed school list of books for Christmas — 
 presents, especially for the younger children. Obviously, the ef- — 
 fect of such a list will depend upon the character of the books 
 recommended and upon the ingenuity with which the list is pre- 
 sented, but, appealing or otherwise, the effect of such lists year 
 after year is bound to be cumulative. 
 
 The parent-teacher association movement is potentially 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE 351 
 
 perhaps the most effective means of setting up the school-home 
 bond which we have. An appropriate program for at least one 
 meeting each year may well center around the topic, “Children’s 
 Reading.” The teachers explain to the parents the program 
 which the school has and which it is trying to carry out. Some 
 general considerations touching the matter of reading are pre- 
 sented. Examples of good and bad reading are drawn in illustra- 
 tion, and, finally, suggestive lists of reading are presented. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 COURSES IN LITERATURE 
 
 S soon as we give over definitely the notions of time-to- 
 aN be-spent and ground-to-be-covered as guiding princi- 
 ples in teaching and school organization, and adopt in 
 their place certain learning products in the form of adaptations 
 in the individual pupil, the rationale of courses in literature be- 
 comes at once much more intelligible. We no longer think of 
 such courses as being Miles Standish and Evangeline in the sev- 
 enth grade; Snowbound in the eighth (all the way from New 
 England where it has a possible meaning to Oregon where its 
 meaning is, to say the least, far fetched); Jvanhoe and The 
 Talisman in the ninth; and the “requirements for reading and 
 study” thereafter. Rather, we raise the question, What ends in 
 appreciation can courses in literature serve? 
 
 Keeping in mind the principle of free reading in abundance, 
 with systematic and skilful guidance, further needs at once sug- 
 gest themselves. In the first place, the pupil will not be likely to 
 find his way into some of the most important values in literature 
 unless those values are illuminated in systematic class work. In 
 the second place, it should be remembered, much literature 
 makes its best appeal when it is read aloud or read in the social- 
 group discussion. Its value is thus contributed to the developing 
 taste of the pupil whether he ever selects the piece or similar 
 pieces for free reading or not. Its reflection in the field of free 
 reading is seen, or should be seen, in the improvement of his free 
 reading, albeit the latter shows title by title no particular rela- 
 tion to any of the books read in class. How, then, shall we or- 
 ganize courses? If we survey the field and keep in mind the 
 nature of the learning product in appreciation, we shall find 
 room in the secondary period from about fourth-grade level, as 
 
 352 
 
COURSES IN LITERATURE 353 
 
 schools ordinarily are, to the end of the junior college period or 
 the level of educational maturity, for the courses described 
 below. 
 
 General literature.—This course, as it has been worked out 
 experimentally with fairly satisfactory results, may be pictured 
 as the reading in class of a great many pieces of which the fol- 
 lowing taken from a current work report are samples: The Re- 
 venge (Tennyson); Paul Revere’s Ride; The Prisoner of Chil- 
 lon; Enoch Arden; Evangeline; The Raven; Cotter’s Saturday 
 Night; Marmion; Vision of Sir Launfal. Others, of a different 
 type, are: The Celebrated Jumping Frog; How Much Land 
 Does a Man Need? ; and short stories from the following au- 
 thors: Poe, Hawthorne, E. E. Hale, Hamlin Garland, Tarking- 
 ton, Kipling, O. Henry, Stevenson, and many others. A variant 
 of the course content, especially for schools in which a liberal 
 supply of complete pieces of literature is not available, is the use 
 of such books of selections as Lyman and Hill’s Literature and 
 Living. . 
 
 When should such a course be offered? The answer is, As 
 soon as a group of pupils is ready for it. The danger is that it 
 will become stereotyped as English I or Literature I and always 
 be assigned to the ninth grade. Equally futile is it to dub the 
 course “Junior High School Literature” and always offer it in 
 Grades VII and VIII. To be sure, circumstances may usually 
 decree that it wisely and rightly belongs at the level last named; 
 _ but pedagogical circumstances should be allowed to determine 
 _ and not the exigencies of a stereotyped administration. In gen- 
 eral, we can find the appropriate place for the course on the fol- 
 _ lowing principles. 
 
 _ The course is not likely to register, except in the usual 
 _ chance fashion, with pupils who have an inadequate appercep- 
 tive mass. Ideally, the pupil’s experiential background should 
 include a child life close to nature in the open with abundant 
 contact with his contemporaries. In any case, it must include an 
 indubitable reading adaptation; a rich background of free read- 
 
354 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ing; and courses in geography, history, nature, and the like 
 which possess real content and are not mere skeletons of infor- 
 mation. 
 
 The reading-room records of a group of children, in the sixth 
 grade perhaps, may very well reveal the fact that they are ready 
 for the course. Another group may not be ready until a year 
 later, or it may be two years later. In the language of the teach- 
 er, they are not mature enough, and this is a case in which the 
 teacher’s verdict is based upon evidence and not upon the notion 
 ' to which we teachers are all prone that our pupils are never ma- 
 ture enough to profit from our ministrations. On the other hand, 
 a group of pupils who are relatively mature in the physical, 
 mental, and social sense may give evidence that they need just 
 the kind of stimulus which such a course will afford. These are 
 apt to be either children who are reluctant to leave the field of 
 the juvenile or who are absorbed in things mechanical. Wise 
 forcing, not too late, sometimes accomplishes the needed result. 
 For instance, note the following quotation from a seventh-grade 
 work report: ‘A boy in the class who had neglected the required 
 reading throughout October was discovered to have read during 
 that month six of the series [inferior juveniles]. Report — 
 of the neglected work was sent home and pressure was brought 
 to bear on the weekly report. The next month showed only one ~ 
 book read of the undesirable type and five thoroughly good 
 books read with very evident enthusiasm.” 
 
 Generally speaking, then, appropriate administrative tech- — 
 nique means keeping this course open to pupils from about the 
 sixth grade onward. In a school system in which there are ap- — 
 proximately one hundred and eighty pupils in the fourth, fifth, 
 and sixth years of an elementary school, feeding into a junior 
 high school of about the same number, we might in practice find 
 perhaps one section of the course in the sixth year, three sec- 
 tions in the seventh, two sections in the eighth, and one section 
 in the ninth. Keeping in mind the principle that the learning ~ 
 product is not the conning of a particular content but rather the 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 COURSES IN LITERATURE 355 
 
 enlargement of the pupil’s resources, it is clear that the sections 
 at different levels from the sixth grade to perhaps the ninth need 
 not necessarily be dealing with the same reading material. The 
 end is achieved in the sixth grade with one set of books; in the 
 ninth, in a section of more mature pupils, the same end in appre- 
 ciation is achieved with a different set. 
 
 Later courses.—Under the influence of college-entrance re- 
 quirements, probably, it has come to be felt that some special 
 sanctity attaches to the term “classics.” Hence, even in the 
 most progressive schools, we commonly find a year devoted to 
 the course under that name. Other courses may follow, in the 
 effort to break away from tradition pure and simple, such as the 
 University High School courses in “Contemporary Literature,” 
 “The Drama,” etc. Logical classification of subject matter is 
 ever a strong motive. If, however, we apply the tests: of the 
 nature of the true learning products in general; of the objectives 
 of the appreciation type; and of the reasonable purpose of 
 courses in literature, the problem takes on quite a different as- 
 pect. Beyond the course in general literature, what fields are 
 _ there into which the pupil is not likely to find his way through 
 _ free reading under guidance, or, having found his way, is not 
 likely to reach the essential values save through systematic 
 _ classroom instruction? Apparently they are the drama, epic and 
 lyric poetry, the essay, and the novel.. Perhaps the short story 
 _ should be added. In these fields, the pupil’s actual or potential 
 environment presses close, in the drama very close indeed. Ad- 
 justment is imperative if education is to take place. We are 
 dealing here mainly with pupils who are at “senior high school 
 level” or “junior college level,” as those terms are commonly 
 used, but, other things being equal, there is no good reason why 
 - individual pupils at junior high school level who are ready . 
 _ should not be admitted to certain of these later courses. 
 
 The drama.—First of these in point of the pupil’s level of 
 _ maturity is the drama course—first because, in the form of the 
 moving picture especially, it is the region in which his environ- 
 
356 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ment presses most closely, and first because the adolescent has 
 not yet passed beyond the influence of the dramatic instinct of 
 childhood. The drama was made to be acted or at least read 
 aloud. Hence, there is little likelihood that the pupil will pick up 
 a liking from his free reading. 
 
 The objective is of course to lead the pupil to sense good 
 dramatic values and thus to lead him to prefer such to the taw- 
 dry, sentimental, sensational, and, it may be, sensual produc- 
 tions, for which there will always be a ready market so long as 
 people with educated dramatic tastes are not numerous enough 
 to furnish an audience to real dramatic art, except perhaps in a 
 very few of the larger cities. 
 
 The materials of the course are the great plays of all times, 
 and we have them in rich abundance. There is every educational 
 reason why the plays of Shakespeare and even of Sophocles 
 should be brought into the same course with the best contempo- 
 rary drama and the best productions in the moving-picture field. 
 As long as the pupil finds Shakespeare in one course, contempo- 
 rary drama in another, and the moving picture in another or not 
 at all, he grows up with the inescapable feeling that he has been 
 studying a series of sealed books while that which touches him 
 most closely is not drama at all. Literature, like the life which 
 it exhibits, is a continuous evolution. It is doubtful if a piece of 
 real merit could be made today, or in the sixteenth century, or in 
 the fifth century before Christ, apart from the influence of earli- 
 er productions. As far as productions appear which are not lit- 
 erature in any sense, it is mainly because they are out of the line 
 of significant human experience. The most enduring education 
 of the youth is that which puts him in possession of the genuine 
 values of the past and links them up with the possible values 
 which he sees all about him. 
 
 The technique of the drama course, apart from those princi- 
 ples which govern all teaching in the appreciation type, rests 
 heavily upon actual dramatization. What corresponds to the as- 
 similation period in the science type is liberal allowance for 
 
COURSES IN LITERATURE 357 
 
 working out experience with some plays in this form. A room 
 which has been designed with a small stage is of course an asset, 
 but the ordinary schoolroom will serve excellently well. 
 
 Other courses —The purposes and objectives of the general- 
 literature course and that of the drama apply to courses in lyric 
 and epic poetry, the essay, and the novel. In each, the problem 
 is to lead the pupil into and light up fields which he would not 
 otherwise explore. There is the further problem, in the case of 
 the novel especially, of developing in the pupil some critical 
 judgment touching the difference between good stories and poor 
 stories. In these courses, likewise, is the opportunity for the cen- 
 tral attack upon the anti-educational influence of perverse lit- 
 erature. 
 
 The administrative officer will likely inquire, “How much 
 time must we allot to these various courses, for, after all, the 
 school like other institutions has to exist within the limitations 
 of the calendar?” In answer, we can only discuss principles. We 
 must perforce leave the specific adjustments to the conditions of 
 particular schools, to the ingenuity and skill of their executives. 
 
 A course in science or mathematics or history has certain 
 natural time delimitations. We have conceived that certain units 
 constitute the course. Experience reveals the time allowance 
 needed to accomplish the teaching task. Not so with courses in 
 literature. The task here is one which lasts as long as the pupil 
 is in school or until the evidence shows that sound inclinations 
 have definitely been established. The contribution which a sci- 
 ence course has to offer is the mastery of a specific series of 
 units. We take then as much time as proves to be needed. The 
 literature course can contribute nothing so definite. Its master- 
 ies are not understandings of particular aspects of the environ- 
 ment or methods of interpreting environment, but rather in 
 some particular field a series of contacts which are made real to 
 the student in respect to meaning and message. Any such field 
 itself, however, is virtually unlimited. The pupil might go on 
 making such contacts to the end of the chapter, and, if his litera- 
 
358 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ture courses are effective, he will in truth do so. The science ~ 
 
 course soon reaches the point at which further learning passes — 
 
 out of the field of general education and into that of specializa- 
 
 tion. Hence, the literature courses and appreciation courses in 
 
 general, by an apparent paradox, are about the only courses in 
 the program of studies in which a definite time allowance is a — 
 matter of principle. We can therefore say to ourselves in effect: — 
 “Let us offer a course in drama for a semester or a termora year 
 and establish as many effective contacts as are possible in that — 
 time. Some pupils will establish many, some a few and perhaps 
 some none at all, but so be it; that is the nature of the learning ~ 
 product with which we have to deal.” As far as the individual | 
 pupil is concerned, we can in principle assign no credit as a 
 requisite for graduation. To do so is to set up an artificial goal 
 which he will promptly commercialize. We can work with him ~ 
 
 in various directions, trying now this method of approach and ~ 
 
 now that. In general, if he makes an honest effort, we can be 
 satisfied but we shall realize that the task of educating him in 
 
 this field will be prolonged. If he refuses to make an honest ef- _ 
 
 fort and we fail to induce him to do so, we shall probably decide — 
 that he must take the course again. Appreciation implies effort. 
 In the end, when the day comes to decide who has acquired a ; 
 valid general education, the issue is not, “For what courses in _ 
 literature has this pupil credit?” but rather, ““Does the evidence 
 show that he has formed reliable and respectable tastes in his 
 choice of reading?” 
 
 TECHNIQUE IN LITERATURE COURSES 
 In the science type, and in the other types to which we shall — 
 
 presently turn, the objective and its mastery having once been 
 identified, a somewhat definite routine of teaching is implied. — 
 
 The procedure cannot be conceived as a cut-and-dried process, 4 
 
 which, being followed, will always produce certain results with _ 
 
 the determinism of the factory; but any essential departure — 
 from the procedure will either result in non-mastery or uneco- 
 
 
 
COURSES IN LITERATURE 359 
 
 nomical learning or a learning product other than what the ob- 
 jective calls for. In courses in literature, no such definite pro- 
 cedure is indicated. There are no units. There are no specific 
 masteries capable of being listed in the program of studies; 
 nothing, for instance, which corresponds to “The Quadratic 
 Equation,” “How Plants and Animals Live,” “The Rule of the 
 People,” “The French Revolution.” The objective is rather 
 steady growth in the pupil’s sense of values and in the body of 
 values which he incorporates into his life. Nevertheless, there 
 are certain guiding principles which can be set up. 
 
 First of all, much depends upon the arrangement of the 
 classroom and the general conduct of the class period. There is 
 little doubt that, purely as a matter of psychology, the comfort 
 and attractiveness of the physical surroundings have a positive 
 influence upon the individual’s emotional reactions. The ordi- 
 nary classroom with its regularity of desks and chairs and its 
 teacher always seated at a desk in front may not prove fatal to 
 the reception of literary values, but in such rooms even the most 
 inspiring teacher works at a disadvantage. The arrangement of 
 one of the rooms in the University High School seems to be al- 
 _ most ideal. On one side of the room is an unusually large mul- 
 lioned window and on another a smaller window of the same 
 type. The windows have broad window seats stretching across 
 the width. Opposite the large window in a recess is a small 
 stage, not an essential appointment by any means, but helpful. 
 To the left of the stage looking toward the large window are two 
 large tables arranged in the form of a T, and about these tables 
 the teacher and perhaps twenty pupils can find seats. Up and 
 _ down the middle of the tables are rows of the books to which ref- 
 _ erence will be made and some of which will be used for reading. 
 
 To the right of the stage, still looking toward the large window, 
 is a group of student armchairs arranged about a teacher’s desk. 
 On smaller tables are periodicals; and on the walls, bulletin 
 
 boards bearing announcements of new books, book reviews, and 
 the like. 7 
 
360 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The selection of the pieces of literature for class reading and — 
 discussion is of course the point of departure. When the teacher 
 meets a section at the beginning of a course, he spends perhaps 
 two or three class periods, with the pupils seated about the 
 table, talking over with them reading in general—what they — 
 have read and what they like. Ideally, he also surveys their 
 reading records all the way back to the beginning of the sec- 
 ondary period. In this fashion, he forms a rather shrewd notion 
 of the reading tastes which have been formed. He is thus able 
 to plan the present course intelligently. He selects the material 
 for class use which he judges will best meet the situation, and he 
 lays out his list of assigned reading. There is evidently here an 
 analogy to the exploration step in the science type, the pre-test 
 of the mastery formula. 
 
 A suitable piece of literature is thus selected for the initial _ 
 presentation. The teacher tells why he selects it, why he thinks _ 
 it will interest the class, what it is all about, and something of 
 the story, its message and meaning. In a word, he motivates the 
 class. As is the case in all presentation especially, good control — 
 technique is imperative. The teacher is sure of his material, 
 sure of himself, and convinced of the value of the piece. Other- 
 
 wise, he may as well give up trying to teach literature, for he 
 will not succeed. He keeps at the task, turning from pupil to 
 
 pupil until he senses that he has in some measure succeeded in 
 registering the message. 
 Part of the teacher’s presentation may well be the interpre- 
 
 tive oral reading of certain passages. Such passages are read 
 
 without attempt at elocutionary effect, but forcefully and in a 4 
 
 manner calculated to bring out what the author intended to get 
 in his vocal values. Incidentally, an essential part of the prep- — 
 
 aration of a good teacher of literature is training in the art of — 
 
 reading aloud. If the teacher really feels the values which he 
 
 reads aloud, however, he will be pretty apt to read effectively. — 
 
 There will be many opportunities, as the discussion of the piece _ 
 
 
 
COURSES IN LITERATURE 361 
 
 goes on, when the teacher’s reading will help to establish appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 On the other hand, oral reading by the pupils themselves is 
 an essential part of the process of awakening appreciation in 
 many instances, and good oral reading for appreciation is hard 
 to get, especially in the adolescent. The essence of the matter 
 here is to avoid perfunctory reading. Perhaps the best plan is to 
 call for volunteers to select passages for reading at the next 
 meeting and to keep this process up from time to time until 
 everybody has had his chance. Meantime, the piece as a whole 
 has been read silently by the several pupils. 
 
 It will not ordinarily be long after the teacher’s presenta- 
 tion, in a class which is being conducted in a perfectly informal 
 manner, before comments will be heard, and thus a discussion is 
 precipitated. Now one of the most banal things in the world is a 
 “class discussion” which has been planned and which is con- 
 ducted in a cut-and-dried fashion. ‘“Tomorrow we shall have a 
 class discussion; class dismissed.” The effect is disgust in the 
 breasts of all but the lesson-learners, and they are proof against 
 disgust. Purely spontaneous and natural discussion, however, 
 opens many opportunities for the illumination which is the vital 
 matter in awakening appreciation. 
 
 In a poetry course, probably most pieces used for class study 
 will be orally read not once but many times. In a drama course, 
 the pieces used for class study will be read orally by individuals 
 in part, read as dialogue in part, and some of them will be as- 
 signed for dramatization. In prose courses, there will perhaps be 
 very little reading aloud. Prose is not ordinarily written for that 
 purpose. Nevertheless, certain passages frequently need to have 
 their value brought out in that way. Parkman or Macaulay, 
 which would probably not appear in a literature course at all, 
 have many passages, indeed, which should be read aloud for the 
 pure delight in the balanced and cadenced expression. 
 
 At the most, only a few pieces in a literature course can be 
 used for classroom study. Many others from the field with 
 
362 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 which the course deals are listed for silent reading. Now, not 
 only is the selection of material for the silent-reading list im- 
 portant, but the nature of the requirement itself is critical. If 
 the teacher assigns a limited list and requires the reading of the 
 entire list, the result will be simply perfunctory covering of 
 ground. If he assigns a minimum number of readings, the result 
 will be much the same; the short pieces will be found to be popu- 
 lar. The appropriate procedure is to assign a sufficient list, to 
 explain to the class its purpose, to get from them an honest effort 
 in the light of a clear understanding on their part of what the 
 purpose is, and then to guide and in some individual cases to 
 constrain wisely. 
 
 Some of the silent reading is done outside the class, but 
 much of it is done in the classroom. There will be some days 
 when the class period cannot well be used for group study, oth- 
 ers when circumstances appear not to make group study profit- 
 able, and others still when it is desirable to devote the whole 
 period to silent reading. In any of these cases, a visit to the 
 room which has been described will reveal a situation something 
 like this. The group, as a whole, is absorbed in its reading. 
 Some are gathered about the large study tables; others have 
 taken chairs and selected places by one of the windows; several 
 are curled up on the window seats. 
 
 The appropriate result of the silent-reading periods and of 
 out-of-class reading is the spontaneous contributions of individ- 
 ual pupils touching their own reading. As the class gathers 
 about the table again, these contributions are offered and discus- 
 sion follows. In practice, it is very noticeable that such individ- 
 ual reports operate as an effective “sales agency’ with other 
 pupils. 
 
 Each pupil keeps a card record of the books read, with such 
 comments as he cares to make. If his comment is limited to “I 
 liked this book pretty well,” the card is returned with the re- 
 quest that he record the reasons why he liked it—or perhaps did 
 not like it. Here, as in the free reading, the books of the reading 
 
 
 
COURSES IN LITERATURE 363 
 
 lists not only supply assimilative material but the pupil’s record 
 is the best evidential material we can get of the appearance of 
 the true learning product, of his own growth in appreciation, or 
 perhaps of his failure to grow. Table XIII, taken from a current 
 work report, shows the use of the silent-reading record for the 
 purpose last named. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 TABLE XIII* 
 
 u mz | Iv u ii | Iv 
 ° ° 9 a I 2 
 7 ° 12 4 re) 2 
 3 ° ° 5 ° ° 
 I I 3 6 ° ° 
 I I 4 5 I fe) 
 
 ii o ° 5 ° ° 
 3 I ro) ° ° 2 
 7 2 2 ° fe) 2 
 4 1 I 6 ° 6 
 9 2 0 3 ) 4 
 
 No record 6 2 ii 
 ° ° 7 I I 2 
 6 iS 2 3 fe) 2 
 ° ° 10 13 2 2 
 8 3 I 25 3 7 
 9 ° 2 —_— 
 
 10 3 4 168 30 99 
 5 K 9° 
 
 
 
 *I = No. of books from the classroom table. 
 
 II =No. of books of fiction read outside of class. 
 Ill = No. in I which are of equal quality with I. 
 
 IV =No. of newspapers and magazines read regularly. 
 
 The pupils in this section are almost entirely children who 
 have had no genuine background in good reading either in the 
 elementary school or in the home. The record is more illuminat- 
 ing when studied in connection with the following quotation 
 from the report which is also evidential material of weight. 
 
 For the first two weeks or more [of a twelve-week period] 
 some were restless if their reading continued throughout the class pe- 
 tiod. Their attention was easily caught by movements in the room 
 or hall. The boys are for the most part at the rowdy stage of early 
 adolescence and they were inclined to disturb each other. Toward the 
 middle of the quarter a noticeable improvement was observed, and 
 
 s 
 
364 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 toward the end of the quarter the attention during such periods was 
 almost perfect. The pupils began to read at the opening of the hour 
 without being called to order and some always stayed after the close 
 of the hour as long as possible. 
 
 An average of eight books in the field of the course were 
 read during the quarter, seven of them during the silent-reading 
 periods in class. That is a good beginning for the type of pupil 
 background available. Of the five books read out of class (free 
 reading), one was of as good quality as those read in the class- 
 room. There is a beginning of transfer, of the building up of the 
 true learning product. In the cases of Pupils 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 
 18, 29, 32, 33, there is evidence of actual effect of the course. In 
 the cases of 1-3, 6, 12, 14, 16, 20-22, 24-28, 31, there is no such 
 evidence, but in the cases of 2, 6, 12,16, 24, 31, the record shown 
 in Column [is favorable. 
 
 In a class of pupils, who are one and two years older in 
 school, a similar record shows 65 per cent of the free reading to 
 be of good or excellent quality. 
 
 Literature is the English department’s content subject. We 
 have seen at some length the importance and significance of 
 English writing in the content subjects of the science type. Here, 
 no less than there, the content of the course furnishes the foun- 
 dation for practice in writing, and conversely writing tends to 
 generate assimilation of the course content, so far as perception 
 of meaning is a part of the learning product. Only, the writing 
 must never be allowed to degenerate into perfunctory perform- 
 ance. With the controlling principles in mind, the ingenious 
 teacher will find many opportunities for productive writing 
 suited to the needs of the different individual pupils. In general, 
 however, three kinds stand out. Probably all pupils should have 
 some experience with the first two and as many as possible with 
 all three. 
 
 The book review, adequately conceived, seems still to be a 
 useful form of writing. Now the perfunctory review conceived 
 chiefly as an exercise to enable the teacher “to be sure that the 
 
COURSES IN LITERATURE 365 
 
 pupil has read the book”’ is of course worse than useless, and it 
 has deservedly fallen into ill repute. Before setting the senior 
 high school pupil, and sometimes a junior high school pupil, to 
 the task, the teacher should explain to the class the nature of a 
 good review and acquaint them with several instances. In fact, 
 they should become accustomed to the use of book reviews, as a 
 part of the work of every course in literature. The pupil should 
 understand clearly that, before he undertakes to write his re- 
 view, he should become thoroughly familiar with his book and 
 not begin to write until he has reached the point at which he 
 feels that he has something to say. Obviously, he should be al- 
 lowed to select a book which seems promising to him. He will 
 need a generous time allowance, not simply the admonition, 
 “Write me a review of for tornorrow.” The review, when 
 submitted, should be always a creditable piece of work, for con- 
 tent, for composition, and for English usage. Re-writing one or 
 more times, wholly or in part, may be needed. In the end, such 
 reviews presented to the class contribute, not only to enlighten- 
 ing the class as to the manner and method of such writing, but 
 very often they contribute illumination of literary values and 
 stimulate the other pupils to further reading. 
 
 The character study, again properly conceived and carried 
 out, is a serviceable instrument of study in a literature course. 
 When conceived as a perfunctory exercise in which an immature 
 pupil endeavors to grapple with a character development which 
 is far beyond his capacity, of course the performance is a farce. 
 A technique for developing character study has been carried out 
 in the University High School, with seemingly productive re- 
 sults, somewhat after the following manner. 
 
 A pupil exhibits some intelligent interest in a character. 
 Lady Macbeth, for instance, seems to possess a fascination for 
 many high-school pupils. The teacher responds, ‘Very well; 
 would you like to make a study?” The pupil is then warned 
 that the task will require lots of hard thinking, that a series of 
 paragraphs beginning “I think” will hardly do, and he or she is 
 
 
 
366 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 set to work. The pupil studies his problem and works up his suc- 
 cessive points on a series of the ever useful 4 by 6 cards, citing 
 passages. These cards are then submitted to the teacher who 
 examines and criticizes the content and suggests lines of further 
 study, probably in a silent-reading period. When the assembling 
 of material seems to be sufficient, the pupil is allowed to begin 
 writing. From that point forward, the technique corresponds to 
 that used in the supervision of a book review. 
 
 A third type of writing is one in which the pupil himself es- 
 says some modest creative work. This type is of course especial- 
 ly available in various forms of lyric poetry and in the short 
 story. It could probably be developed to a considerable extent in 
 many high schools, for there is a great deal more potential lit- 
 erary talent among children than we are accustomed to think. 
 Obviously, the purpose here is not primarily to develop such tal- 
 ent as may be found but rather, first, to utilize some creative 
 
 writing as one of the lines of access to appreciation; and, sec- 
 
 ond, to further the process of training the pupil in the art of ex- 
 pression. Experience seems to show that the pupil who himself 
 essays the art of literary expression tends to acquire a new atti- 
 tude toward the material which he reads. It is one of the several 
 methods of productive study in the field of appreciation. 
 
 The voluntary project. —In the appreciation type in general, 
 and in courses in literature in particular, there are found indi- 
 vidual differences among pupils just as such differences manifest 
 themselves in all subjects. There are, on the whole, perhaps 
 more such differences here than elsewhere, for, as we have seen, 
 courses in appreciation cannot be made determinate as can 
 courses in other types of teaching. Weare particularly concerned 
 with pupils in whom appear intellectual interests in the type of 
 material which they study and whose capacity for present 
 growth goes far beyond anything of which others are now capa- 
 ble. Hence, the voluntary project in teaching. Fruitful fields in 
 which such projects may be found can be seen in the enumera- 
 tion which follows. 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 eae ee 
 
COURSES IN LITERATURE 367 
 
 On the whole, perhaps the most available is the study of 
 some particular author as he is revealed in his works. Pupils at 
 high-school and junior college levels are apt to find a special 
 interest in the personality of a favorite author. If the interest is 
 genuine, they tend to read his works for passages which seem to 
 them to reveal him as they know him or think they know him. 
 Such an undertaking will often enlist their interested study for 
 weeks at a time, and the end of it all is a production which is 
 usually a creditable piece of work. On the other hand, if the 
 pupil is in reality seeking some commercialized reward for a vol- 
 untary undertaking, either a superior mark or perhaps a reward 
 at home, he is likely to confine himself to “reading up” about an 
 author. He explores the pages of an encyclopedia and perhaps 
 the introductions to the author’s works for biographical notes, 
 and the result is the more or less perfunctory schoolboy “compo- 
 sition” or “‘written paper.” 
 
 A very common form of voluntary project is the extended 
 attempt at literary production. Of course, pupils who have no 
 discernible talent in this direction should be steered into other 
 fields, but potential talent not infrequently does appear, and 
 pupils who seem to possess it may well be encouraged. Some of 
 the productions in the laboratory have been extended epics, 
 plays, and in one case the libretto for an imaginary opera. 
 
 Pupils whose bents are otherwise than these sometimes ex- 
 hibit and express their interest either in practical-arts channels 
 or in pictorial representation. Illustrations are found in the de- 
 sign and arrangement of stage settings, including the electrical 
 accessories, and in serious attempts at illustration in color. Some 
 of the girls who have acquired an interest in costume from their 
 domestic-arts courses utilize their attainments in studying the 
 descriptions found in works of a given period and in preparing 
 sets of sketches illustrating the period. 
 
 Now and then a pupil is found whose interest is purely intel- 
 lectual and whose voluntary project runs in the direction of his- 
 torical study. 
 
368 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Altogether, any subject will serve and any paper may be 
 accepted provided there is evidence of genuine interest, serious 
 and prolonged study, and painstaking endeavor to produce a 
 worthy result. Pupils should not be allowed to feel that failure 
 to undertake a voluntary project constitutes a reproach. Many 
 of them will be fully occupied with projects in other subjects.* 
 
 THE PROBLEM CASE 
 
 After all, there are pupils even under the best of conditions 
 with whom we seem to make little progress, and these become 
 the problems for individual study. The difficulty may reside in 
 causes which we have enumerated and discussed under the sci- 
 ence type. Indeed, if the pupil is a problem in one or more 
 science-type subjects as well as in literature, that is likely to be 
 the case. On the other hand, he may be and frequently is a prob- 
 lem in literature only. We do not seem to be able to reach him. 
 In such cases, the cause is apt to lie somewhere within the field of 
 the specific apperceptive mass. He does not respond to the 
 course in literature, simply because he has an inadequate idea- 
 tional and appreciative background. Corrective treatment con- 
 sists in providing some basis from which contacts can be made. 
 The case cited above (p. 341) was such. If the free reading has 
 been adequately guided, such cases will be the less likely to ap- 
 pear. Nevertheless, even when they do appear at a relatively 
 advanced level in the secondary school, they can usuaily be set 
 right. There comes to my mind a boy who is perhaps as obstinate 
 a case as is likely to be encountered. Afflicted by an obscure and 
 peculiarly mortifying physical malady, classed as ‘“dumb,” and 
 more or less the butt of his fellow-pupils, his reading inclina- 
 tions have scarcely passed out of the infantile stage. And yet 
 after two years in general literature and patient and intelligent 
 appeals on the part of his teachers, the work reports show a dis- 
 
 * An excellent description in detail of the use of the voluntary project in lit- 
 erature can be found in Miss McCoy’s article entitled “The Voluntary Project as 
 a Measure of Appreciation in Third and Fourth Year English,” Studies in Sec- 
 ondary Education, Vol. IL. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 
 
COURSES IN LITERATURE 369 
 
 tinct awakening to the appeal of the materials of the course. 
 Should such pupils receive “credit” for the course? Nowhere is 
 this counting-house term so essentially meaningless and fraught 
 with such mendacious implications. There should be no question 
 of credit. Rather should the attitude of the school be, “Now, 
 James, you seem to be ‘catching on’ and I think it will be worth 
 your while to come back to me next year. Frank and Mary are 
 going to take the course again and George Blank who you know 
 is in the junior class is going to be with us.” “But, will I gradu- 
 ate?” “Never mind graduation; that is a long way off yet. If 
 you really try as you have this year, you will graduate all right, 
 and you will be ready to graduate.” | 
 
 Related to the defective apperceptive mass, as the factor ex- 
 plaining many problem cases in appreciation, is the influence of 
 the materialistic home and social group from which the pupil 
 comes. The latter encounters a group opinion which is decidedly 
 averse to anything which is under the suspicion of being “‘cul- 
 ture.”” Comment on one such typical case recites that “ 
 resents anything written more than five years ago in his obses- 
 sion that it is not ‘up-to-date.’” The motivation lying behind 
 this attitude in the home is probably what is sometimes called 
 “inferiority compensation.” The parents who are acutely con- 
 scious of their own actual achievements, usually in the field of 
 easy money-making, are also conscious of inferiority in the so- 
 cial scale. They do not fit the station to which they had supposed 
 money was the ticket of admission. Vaguely conscious of the 
 lack of something which they generalize as culture, they com- 
 _ pensate by decrying everything which to them savors of culture. 
 The child thus becomes adjusted to a perverse social standard. 
 To him reading a classic falls in the same category with the inap- 
 propriate use of one’s knife at table. “It isn’t done.” The cor- 
 rective treatment here is discharge of the attitude by making the 
 pupil conscious of its existence. When the right moment arrives, 
 a conversation something like the following occurs. 
 
 
 
370 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 TracHeR: You do not seem to care for such books as ————. 
 Now, most of the class seem to enjoy them. 
 
 Purim: Oh, I hate all that stuff; it isn’t up to date! What do I 
 care about something that was written a hundred years ago! These 
 other kids are sissies and highbrows. John doesn’t like it any better 
 than I do. 
 
 TrAcHER: Frank likes it. Is he a highbrow [football player]? 
 Judge Blank was talking to me about some of these books the other 
 night. He and Mrs. Blank were reading [one of the books on the 
 book table] when I called there. [The Blanks are much looked up 
 to by the boy’s parents and he knows it.] 
 
 Pupii: Oh, well. 
 
 TEACHER: Now, William, I am going to tell you something that 
 will surprise you. You really wish that you could enjoy these books. 
 You don’t enjoy them because you won’t make the effort to. And so 
 you comfort yourself by this cheap talk about being up to date. A 
 great many people find something in the books, and that is why they 
 are still printed. They were printed a hundred years before you were 
 born, and they will still be printed a hundred years after you are dead. 
 
 The conversation will probably sink in and bear fruit. If 
 the home influence is still too strong, we shall try it again later 
 on. Meantime, the teacher will feel his way with other books, 
 perhaps better calculated to meet William’s case. 
 
 Attacks on (1) general factors which produce problem 
 cases; (2) the defective apperceptive mass; and (3) the adverse 
 public opinion of the pupil’s social group will clear up most prob- 
 lem cases. There remain obscure factors which must be sought 
 in painstaking exploration of the case history, if corrective or 
 remedial treatment is to be successfully applied. It may or may 
 not be true that certain traits which operate as true instincts 
 may stand permanently in the way. We do not know. We do 
 know that there are numerous identifiable and removable ob- 
 stacles which should claim the school’s attention. 
 
 In bringing our consideration of English literature to its 
 close, it is worth while to anticipate a later chapter (chap. xxv) 
 and to point out that the foreign languages, both ancient and 
 

 
 COURSES IN LITERATURE 371 
 
 modern, have literatures of their own, which are available for 
 the purpose of the appreciative development of the pupil. It is a 
 pity to use Vergil and Cicero or Goethe or Victor Hugo as mere 
 exercises in reading, for which they are ill adapted. They should 
 be used, rather, for their proper educational purpose—the awak- 
 ening in the pupil of new senses of value and the expansion of 
 that stock of values which he acquires in the literature of his 
 mother-tongue. 
 
 ANALOGIES IN MUSIC AND OTHER ARTS 
 
 Space does not permit the extended treatment of other sub- 
 jects belonging to the appreciation type which we have given to 
 literature. In the process of education they are not less impor- 
 tant. Good reading is accessible at any time, and in the public 
 libraries it is accessible to anybody. Good music in these days 
 of mechanical players and the radio-telephone is only less ac- 
 cessible. We have chosen literature as our type subject, both 
 because it still, on the whole, furnishes the most accessible envi- 
 ronmental contacts and because it has established its place in the 
 school. 
 
 In each, there is the foundation of abundant contact with 
 the best the world has to offer which is adapted to the several 
 levels of pupil maturity. In literature, we get this contact 
 _ through the free reading. In music we get it through the pupil’s 
 experience with music which has been committed to permanent 
 form. In painting, architecture, and sculpture, we get it through 
 representations in photographs, of which every school should 
 have a liberal and growing stock. 
 
 In courses set apart for learning in appreciation, the princi- 
 _ ples which we have discussed in the case of literature apply to 
 _ the other arts as well. They apply to the rationale of organizing 
 and conducting courses as truly as do they apply to the tech- 
 nique of teaching. 
 
 In the latter, we should find in each course: (1) the princi- 
 ple of exploratory testing and the selection of material best cal- 
 
 - 
 
372 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 culated to come into apperceptive sequence with the pupil’s ex- 
 isting level of appreciation; (2) the principle of illumination of 
 the field at the hands of the competent teacher; (3) the principle 
 of class discussion calculated to bring out the attitudes of the 
 several pupils and to contribute to the group attitude the reac- 
 tions of individuals; (4) the principle of individual reports on 
 music heard or examples of art seen; (5) the principle of nota- 
 tion of results by observation of unsupervised preferences of 
 pupils; (6) the principle of voluntary projects; and, finally, (7) 
 the principle of study of problem cases, and, so far as it is pos- 
 sible, correction of the same. 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 
 
 the present chapter we enter that field which used to be 
 [ eucecca in the books which discussed discipline and 
 school management. The task of developing right conduct 
 was commonly felt and probably still is felt to belong peculiarly 
 to the administration. Not so. The school in its influence upon 
 the pupil is a unit. The primary duty of the school principal in 
 this field is to organize and to direct the influence of the school. 
 In a small school, he may in addition be the personnel officer 
 who deals with problem cases in the field of conduct. But the 
 problem of educating the pupil into the right adjustments to- 
 ward his personal conduct is as much the task of every teacher 
 as it is the task of the principal. It is an instance of teaching in 
 the appreciation type. 
 
 Attitude is emphasized rather than conduct. The adaptation 
 or true learning product, here or elsewhere, is an attitude and 
 not performance. It is true that we must seek in the child’s con- 
 duct for the evidences of changing attitude, but we may have 
 good conduct with no positive attitude at all. The confusion of 
 conduct with attitude arises from the same kind of misappre- 
 hension which we have found elsewhere in the confusion of 
 classroom performance with learning. The good boy who never 
 does wrong may be as truly the lesson-learner in conduct as his 
 fellow who always scores high on the daily recitation but fails 
 in application. Common experience, as well as the literature, is 
 full of instances in which the typical well-behaved high-school 
 boy, and high-school girl as well, have broken down badly after 
 leaving home and the local school and entering upon the uncon- 
 strained life of the college community. In other cases, those of 
 most of our boys and girls we hope, right conduct stands for 
 
 aia 
 
 ca 
 
374 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 right attitude, just as their records of lessons well learned is 
 found to correspond to the attitudes of intelligence, or the at- 
 tainment of proficiency in certain arts, which such lessons are 
 presumably calculated to bring forth. 
 
 Right attitude, of course, appears as sense of duty, honor, 
 courtesy, fair play, religious obligation, and willing o-edience to 
 lawfully constituted authority. It is perhaps summed up in the 
 expression, “inclination to do right because it is right,” entirely 
 apart from hope of reward or fear of punishment. The result of 
 normal and successful development in the pupil is adjustment to 
 his obligations to the society about him and equally to the condi- 
 tions of his own dignity and self-respect—in brief, good 
 breeding. 
 
 In our concern for the rights of society, whatever that rather 
 nebulous term may mean, we are prone to forget the individual. 
 We start life as individuals and we continue as such to the end. 
 We can never escape ourselves. The normal child, healthy in 
 body and mind, is launched upon his career possessed of a pro- 
 tective trait which we call “self-esteem.” He would not be here 
 had not his ancestors long ago developed the trait. Nearly all 
 the qualities which we have listed above represent in one form 
 or another the end results of series of adaptations through 
 which the raw individualist, whom we meet as a child, is trans- 
 formed into a social unit who has not in the process lost his self- 
 hood. Self-esteem has become personal dignity. The satisfac- 
 tion which once came through mere self-assertion now appears 
 as self-respect for duty done, honor gratified, fair dealing ren- 
 dered. And yet attainment of the level at which the most inti- 
 mate service to self is rendered in the form of sense of duty, 
 honor, courtesy, fair play, and willing obedience is the level at 
 which the individual becomes a socialized being. He is valuable 
 to society just in proportion as he is sure of himself. When we 
 survey the long lists of problem cases in which pupil maladjust- 
 ments have been subjected to study and analysis, our attention 
 is attracted forcibly to the principle that, in dealing with the 
 

 
 RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 375 
 
 child, the family or the school or the church frequently destroys 
 all likelihood of the child’s growth into right attitude toward 
 conduct by laying violent hands upon his natural self-esteem, 
 the source out of which his ultimate personal freedom and per- 
 sonal integrity grow. 
 
 Right attitude toward conduct is of course the veritable 
 foundation upon which any possible citizenship must be built. 
 Out of regimented good conduct may, indeed, be produced the 
 subject but not the citizen. 
 
 At the risk of wearying the reader with repetition, it is per- 
 haps well to call attention to other learning products which are 
 related to right attitude toward conduct but which are neverthe- 
 less pedagogically different matters. 
 
 One thinks first of ethics as a body of principles applied to 
 the interpretation of conduct. Why is this right and that wrong? 
 Is this tradition which has become a canon of right conduct justi- 
 fied in principle by rational inquiry and analysis? If the youth 
 is not to pass out into life the mere slave of a moral code, he 
 must acquire intelligent attitudes toward the canons of right 
 conduct as well as right attitudes toward his obligations. He 
 must be able to apply the test of systematic reasoning to the 
 issue, Is this thing right or is it wrong? Furthermore, he must 
 - become one of the group which is capable of following sane and 
 wise leadership in the healthy evolution of the code and its adap- 
 tation to new conditions. People have frequently experienced 
 hideous injustice through the failure of custom to evolve rapidly 
 enough to keep pace with the evolution of society. Nevertheless, 
 an understanding attitude toward the moral order of the day is 
 pedagogically a thing wholly different from the right attitude 
 which rules conduct. To know what is right is one thing; to love 
 right and hate wrong is quite another. In the one case, we have a 
 learning product which is achieved through science-type pro- 
 cedure; in the other, one which arises out of teaching in appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 Religion is essentially learning in the appreciation type, and 
 
376 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 it is of course intimately related to right attitude toward con- 
 duct. Religion is, however, so likely to be lost in a maze of eccle- 
 siasticism and the warfare of contending sects that the public 
 school is prevented from including it in its program. Family and 
 church often make it a process of pure regimentation and con- 
 formity to a set of stereotyped formulas, with the result that no 
 proper adaptation results. Again, it is hopelessly confounded 
 with theology. Finally, the school, in its obsession for the science 
 type, endeavors to teach by explaining everything, from the 
 spelling lesson to the youth’s ventures in the field of romantic 
 love. The result is that the young person ultimately gets into a 
 situation in which he refuses to accept anything as having mean- 
 ing for himself which cannot be rationalized. He is a mass of 
 learning inhibitions of the appreciation type. | 
 
 Now, from a very remote period, man has felt the presence 
 of the infinite. He has sought a sense of values in which his own 
 relation to the presence is expressed, in a hymn of his faith, in a 
 majestic symphony, in an architectural monument, in a gracious 
 liturgy. The end result is an adjustment in which he has found 
 himself and has found peace. Obviously, it is an adjustment in 
 the field of appreciation. 
 
 On the other hand, man is curious about his religious expe- 
 riences as he is curious about other experiences. He speculates 
 on the nature of God. He investigates the psychology of reli- 
 gious emotion. He studies the history of religion and its mani- 
 festations at different stages of human culture and among differ- 
 ent peoples. He considers ecclesiastic organization and polity. 
 He examines religious documents. All of these activities are re- 
 sponses to intellectual interest as distinguished from emotional 
 experience. The products are a series of intelligent attitudes, 
 but only in a secondary sense, if at all, emotional attitudes. 
 Whether or not such studies belong to the field of general educa- 
 tion at the secondary level is no part of our present inquiry. As 
 far as the problem of teaching is concerned, the important issue 
 is to note that they are studies about religion rather than devel- 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 377 
 
 opments of the pupil’s sense of values in religion and incorpora- 
 tion of the latter into his attitudes toward conduct. 
 
 The basis of right attitude toward conduct seems to be 
 found in the normally developed and integrated personality— 
 the individual who senses his place in the scheme of things, ac- 
 cepts the results, and has become capable of self-control and 
 self-direction. Where shall we find the elements? 
 
 There has grown up in recent years a respectable body of 
 literature dealing with the study of maladjusted young people. 
 A large proportion of the case studies which constitute this lit- 
 erature, it is true, have grown out of court experiences and the 
 records of institutions maintained for the treatment of personal 
 maladjustments which have passed into the field of actual ab- 
 normality. Nevertheless, there remains a great body of material 
 which deals with the maladjusted child who has not become a 
 delinquent in the legal sense and has not passed over into a state 
 of positive abnormality. These are the educational cases. As we 
 survey this literature, certain characteristics of the maladjusted 
 appear with marked frequency. We cannot doubt that the cor- 
 responding positive adjustments stand in great part for the nor- 
 mal, integrated personality which is the basis of right attitude. 
 
 1. Deferred satisfactions —One of the most striking differ- 
 ences between the savage and the civilized man is the capacity of 
 the latter to postpone immediate trivial satisfaction in favor of 
 greater satisfactions or in favor of the later avoidance of misery. 
 The savage in the presence of an abundant food supply, unpro- 
 tected by the blind instinct of some of the lower orders, delivers 
 himself to a period of gluttony and, in the subsequent period of 
 scarcity, starves. People who have reached a somewhat higher 
 stage of human evolution have acquired a more favorable atti- 
 tude; they store the products of seasons of plenty. The truly 
 educated youth refrains from spending the product of his labor 
 upon his present pleasure but rather saves for higher satisfac- 
 tions in later years. The child who is born into the comparative 
 luxury of most modern American homes, and the paternalistic 
 
378 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 oversight of the modern state, shows a marked tendency to re- 
 vert toward the characteristics of his remote ancestors. He must 
 have his pleasure and have it now. Reasoned with, his rejoinder 
 is, “I know I want this thing; how do I know that I shall want 
 something better later on?” Materialistic hedonism this, with a 
 vengeance! The youth is lacking in one of the most primitive 
 and fundamental adjustments, and the adjustment is one of 
 right attitude and not one of intelligence. His response reveals 
 acute intelligence as a matter of reasoning on the basis of expe- 
 rience. The most his teacher can do is to sadly remark, “You 
 will nevertheless find out too late that you are woefully mis- 
 taken,” but the response makes little impression. With most 
 such, learning is only through actual experience, and unhappily 
 by the time experience is gathered it is often too late to mend. 
 On the contrary, the native tendency to secure emotional equi- 
 librium by various forms of compensation, the agreeable process 
 of deluding one’s self, impels the adult spendthrift to charge his 
 misfortunes to anything or anybody rather than to his own im- 
 providence. 
 
 The most hopeful single pedagogical instrument we have for 
 the establishment of right attitude here, and typical of all ap- 
 propriate technique, is the introduction of thrift teaching 
 through the school savings bank from the earliest practicable 
 point in the school life, supplemented at the high-school and col- 
 lege level by the general sources from which right attitude is 
 cultivated and which are discussed below. 
 
 2. Altruism.—To enumerate here merely the virtue of un- 
 selfishness would be to proclaim the obvious. The matter appar- 
 ently goes deeper than that. Normally, the developing child 
 evolves out of a profound egoism into an attitude in which such 
 egoism seems to him contemptible if not repulsive. Prior to the 
 adaptation, the world seems to exist for the sake of gratifying 
 his desires. If his desires are not gratified, he can interpret the 
 situation only as an incomprehensible injustice which he resents 
 as vigorously as his own powers and the patience of the older 
 
 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 379 
 
 generation make possible. it apparently seems to him incongru- 
 ous that he should put himself out, even in the slightest degree, 
 for the convenience of others. Under normal upbringing, most 
 children sooner or later pass into the normal adult attitude in 
 which it seems as natural and as fitting to serve the convenience 
 of others as to serve one’s own convenience. The thought that he 
 has on occasion ruthlessly enforced his own convenience to the 
 deprivation of others now causes an emotional reaction of shame. 
 He has thus passed through the normal altruistic adaptation. 
 
 Two forms of arrested development here are easily iden- 
 tified. 
 
 Cases are sometimes met in which the child has never ac- 
 tually made the primary social adaptation. He has grown into 
 adult life, arrested at the infantile stage, in which the all-suffi- 
 cient explanation of desire seems to be “I want it.” The causa- 
 tion which lies behind this type of arrest is typically an indul- 
 gent and influential home, a relatively weak school, or at least a 
 school which is unable to assert itself against the home, and a 
 child who is physically able to become a bully. These cases of 
 atrest at the infantile stage are pretty apt to become criminalis- 
 tic in later adolescence. The attitude toward conduct apparently 
 is, “Blank stands in my way. I hate him and will kill him; my 
 father will see me through as he always has.”’ No question of 
 right or justice or even fear of the consequences inhibits, for 
 these things are no more parts of his attitude toward conduct 
 than they were when he was a lusty three-year-old. One such 
 case known to the author in its end result, and intimately stud- 
 ied and reported by one of his students, has become a peniten- 
 tiary case on a manslaughter conviction. The case history runs 
 precisely true to the type which we have described, with the sin- 
 gle exception that the boy would not have been able to play the 
 role of bully but for the infatuated domination of the whole local 
 situation by the masterful father. Cases of this type are apt to 
 originate in what we commonly call the “respectable strata” in 
 society. The young street bully of the slums, however, shows the 
 
380 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 same type of arrest, and we find him later as the gun-toting thug 
 of the underworld. 
 
 Much more frequently, of course, arrest takes place at the 
 childish level. At that level, the child has learned to conform but 
 he has not passed through the adaptation in which the attitude 
 takes on the characteristics of genuine altruism. He has his own 
 way regardless of the rights of others so long as he sees no rea- 
 son to fear consequences unfavorable to himself. The end result 
 is the profiteer—in commerce, in politics, in ordinary social in- 
 tercourse, even in academic life. 
 
 It seems to be important to emphasize the point that the 
 altruistic attitude is the normal attitude in the mature individ- 
 ual, at least in the civilized races, and that the crass egoism which 
 we so often encounter is essentially a manifestation of arrest in 
 personal development. A heavy survival value was long ages ago 
 placed on the inheritance of the tendency to self-sacrifice. 
 Otherwise, the lengthening period of infancy, and its basal sig- 
 nificance in the evolution of the human individual, of the family, 
 and of society in general, would have been impossible from the 
 beginning. Hence, apart from freaks in genetic succession and 
 the survival of unfit stocks, we all of us inherit tendencies which 
 normally ripen into altruistic attitudes toward conduct. Only, 
 in this case as in the cases of most instinctive tendencies, the in- 
 dividual child must pass through the experiences which are cal- 
 culated to set them in operation. The ordering of such experi- 
 ence is the problem of teaching in the appreciation type in the 
 school, in the community, and in the home. The wise and strong 
 home, set in a wholesome community, and fortified by the wise 
 and abundant school, leaves little chance for the typical arrest 
 to take place. 3 
 
 3. Sense of fair play.—intimately related to the altruistic 
 adaptation, possibly an implication of it, and at any rate an ele- 
 ment in right attitude toward conduct, is that foundation of jus- 
 tice between man and man which we may call “sense of fair 
 play.” At bottom, it seems to be willingness to accord to others 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 381 
 
 what is their own, to do as one would be done by. The attitude 
 seems to appear in a crude form soon after the establishment of 
 the primary social adaptation. Even the small boy finds it rea- 
 sonable to proclaim, “That is not fair.”” The most he needs, ap- 
 parently, is progressive refinement in his attitude and habitual 
 application to widening sets of experiences. Only there must be 
 present both guidance and enforcement. In brief, justice re- 
 quires a judge who can interpret and apply and who is himself 
 fair. It goes without saying that, as soon as the child becomes a 
 member of a social group such as is found in the school, in- 
 numerable occasions arise in which there is abundant assimila- 
 tive experience. Especially is this true of the playground. But 
 the pupil’s dawning sense of fair play is quickly aborted unless 
 there is present the means of interpretation and enforcement. 
 To set up a playground and complacently assume that the sense 
 will rapidly evolve is like assigning lessons and expecting edu- 
 cation to result. Without enforcement, the bully soon dominates 
 and the pupil makes up his mind that being fair is not part of the 
 scheme of things. He tends to become himself a bully, or a wire- 
 puller, or a slave as circumstances decree. 
 
 4. Beauty in the sex relationship—lIn the process of build- 
 ing right attitude toward conduct, we encounter the problems 
 presented by what the poets call the “master-passion.” A large 
 percentage of the youthful conduct cases which come to the 
 various clinics are related in one form or another to matters of 
 sex. In dealing with such, we are prone to consider the sex-hy- 
 giene aspect and perhaps the psychiatric problems involved and 
 rest there. Perhaps that is the first thing and, it may be, the only 
 _ thing to do with cases which have developed to a pathological 
 end result. In neither aspect, however, do we get to the root of 
 the matter as far as the educational problem of developing right 
 attitude is concerned. 
 
 As man has evolved from the lower stages of savagery, in 
 which he differs little from the lower non-human forms—and 
 that difference not always to his credit—he has tended constant- 
 
382 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ly to intellectualize or rationalize those aspects of his environ- 
 ment which are capable of being so treated and to sublimate or 
 spiritualize those aspects which are incapable of rationalization. 
 On the whole, the latter process seems to have been one of ad- 
 justment in which successful adaptation had a marked survival 
 value. Personality tended to evolve along that line. Food supply 
 was more or less determinate and capable of rationalization. 
 Man’s next most driving force was not susceptible of that form 
 of adjustment. Accordingly, he endeavored to spiritualize it and 
 to adopt the results into his most highly organized attitudes 
 toward conduct. The Iroquois, for instance, surrounded the sex 
 relationship with a code of superstitious sanctions, so much so 
 that in the whole history of their fiendish treatment of captives 
 there are few known instances of violation of females. Other 
 primitive peoples founded religious rites on the instinct, and, al- 
 beit the result seems often to have been beastly, nevertheless we 
 note the characteristic tendency. Similarly, civilized man in 
 his best periods has spiritualized the sex relationship, and the 
 result has been some of the noblest cultural documents and mon- 
 uments of the race. In his individual attitude he has surrounded 
 it with what we commonly call “reverence and modesty.” 
 
 We can then draw a contrast in attitude. On one side is an 
 attitude in which the love of the sexes is felt as perhaps the su- 
 preme manifestation of beauty, calling forth the emotional re- 
 action of reverence. On the other, is an attitude in which at best 
 it is viewed simply as a set of biological phenomena, containing 
 certain warnings perhaps, and at the worst as a common and 
 sordid thing, valuable chiefly as a source of physical satisfaction 
 or of economic support. Which is the attitude of educated man- 
 hood and womanhood there can be no manner of doubt. One at- 
 titude belongs to man in what we recognize on other grounds to 
 be his highest development; the other belongs to man in his most 
 primitive savage condition. 
 
 The objective here is, then, an attitude toward conduct in 
 the normal boy and girl in which love is viewed as one of the 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 383 
 
 supreme aspects of beauty and not as a purely physical or at 
 least materialistic piece of human experience. The outcome is 
 not merely chaste conduct but, more than that, a contribution 
 toward that complex which we call “normally developed per- 
 sonality.”’ Chaste conduct is undoubtedly an essential piece of 
 evidence touching the existence of the attitude, but so is mod- 
 esty, taste in personal adornment, willing reverence toward wo- 
 manhood in the man, exaction of respect for her womanhood in 
 the girl, and refusal on her part to adopt masculine practices 
 in conduct. 
 
 5. Right acceptance of criticism—In the literature which 
 deals with conduct cases, and in unpublished case studies, one 
 very frequently meets with the verdict, ‘Cannot accept criti- 
 cism; makes every criticism a personal matter.” In such in- 
 stances, we encounter symptoms of arrest at an infantile or 
 childish stage of self-esteem. The reaction is normal in the child, 
 perhaps throughout the preadolescent period. His typical re- 
 joinder is ‘“‘Good gracious, why are you always ‘picking on me’?”’ 
 But he accepts criticism as the prerogative of the adult Olym- 
 pians and, if it is firm and resolutely followed up, mends his 
 ways and makes some progress toward the normal adaptation 
 in attitude. It is apparently at this stage that the mischief is apt 
 to be done by parental and pedagogical spoiling. Criticism is 
 not followed up by insistence on right conduct. Even worse than 
 spoiling, perhaps, is nagging. The parent or teacher fails to real- 
 ize that the perverse attitude has its roots in natural self-esteem 
 and persistently endeavors to incorporate in the child’s attitude 
 what is after all little more than idle notions taken from the 
 adult’s attitude. The latter is not content that the child shall do 
 right; he prefers that the child shall do right in the adult’s way. © 
 
 _ If continued into adolescence, we are very likely to get the defi- 
 
 
 
 nite set against all criticism which is characteristic of the per- 
 version. In the adolescent, the perverse attitude begins to be 
 pathological and, if uncorrected as the youth matures physically 
 and matures in his capacity for enforcement of his personality, 
 
384 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 he may easily pass into a state of permanent arrested develop- 
 ment. This is the state described by the negligent parent when 
 he helplessly remarks that his son “has got beyond him.” 
 
 6. Acceptance of the value of co-operation.—In following 
 out a series of histories, we encounter the note, “Will not take 
 part in the group activities of the school; keeps by himself; will 
 not co-operate.” The wise observer looks behind the charge, for 
 when one grown person thus accuses another the accusation is 
 apt to be an inversion of the facts. Nevertheless, the perversion 
 is not uncommon, and of.course it is a critical fault in conduct 
 attitude. Now, early in the kindergarten, in the period of infan- 
 tile egoism, the normal child as a matter of fact does not play 
 the game. Literally so, for it is hard to get him into the circle. 
 But in due season he “joins up” and normally grows into the 
 natural inclination to work with others. A pronounced non-co- 
 operative attitude in later life therefore implies an arrest in de- 
 velopment at the childish level, or else that something has caused 
 a perversion. The normal teaching procedure is to check up on 
 the development of the attitude in young children and see that 
 all are put in the way of experiences which will lead to natural 
 growth. Corrective work at this early stage is discovery and 
 elimination of causes which are hindering development. If left 
 to himself with no effort to check up and correct, the retarded 
 pupil becomes a remedial case. 
 
 In our consideration of this attitude, as well as of those 
 previously discussed, we are not concerned primarily with an 
 objective which is merely a social virtue. We are concerned 
 with an element in right attitude toward conduct and in the de- 
 velopment of normal personality. Right attitude here is an ele- 
 
 ment in normal personality not merely because society requires — 
 
 it, but because in the evolution of the individual in society it has 
 of necessity become a trait of the normal individual. 
 
 7. Fidelity to promises——A very common obstacle to the 
 development of right attitude toward conduct is failure to sense 
 the sanctity of a promise. In character analyses of conduct 
 
 Se ee ee eee 
 
 a ee a a ee ee 
 
 ee ee ee 
 
 Poa ~~ 3 
 
 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 385 
 
 problems, as well as learning problems, in the senior high school 
 or junior college, we frequently meet the verdict, ‘‘Promises 
 readily but never carries out a promise.” So does the young 
 child in preschool years. In the latter, the trait is normal; the 
 child has not yet come to sense that a promise is anything more 
 than a verbal reaction calculated to satisfy present insistence. 
 The vigilant parent sees to it that his infant not only promises 
 but carries out his promise. The child soon comes to sense a 
 connection between the promise and its fulfilment. More than 
 that, he senses the imperative involved as a matter of self-re- 
 spect; in other words, a promise comes to have sanctity. 
 
 The youth or adult whose promise is a broken reed is usual- 
 ly another case of childishness. He exhibits this fatal trait in 
 character simply because he has never learned any better. He is 
 the victim of neglect at home or at school or both. His case is in 
 reality rather simple, providing he has not matured to the point 
 at which he cannot be compelled to realize his promises. Treat- 
 ment consists: first, in seeing that he does in fact carry out his 
 promises; and, second, in convincing him of the essential in- 
 feriority of the person whose promises are not entitled to re- 
 spect. 
 
 8. Obedience to constituted authority.—Lawlessness is so 
 obvious and so fatal an ingredient of perverse attitude toward 
 conduct that it would be trite to include it in our enumeration, 
 were it not for the importance of noting the significance of obedi- 
 ence as an element in the normal personality. 
 
 Like most of the traits which constitute the latter, obedi- 
 ence has an evolutionary significance. In other words, it is a 
 _ form of racial adjustment. Even in the prehuman series, obedi- 
 ence to the training of the mature generation has a survival val- 
 ue. The cub fox who heeds the vixen’s constraint is likely to 
 survive and contribute to the generation of other foxes like 
 himself. His brother whose curiosity or greed leads him into 
 devious pathways unsanctioned by parental approval experi- 
 ences a short life and perhaps not altogether a merry one. The 
 
386 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 child of the present day who obeys is likely to survive; the child 
 who does not obey is likely to perish early, under the wheels of a 
 rushing automobile for instance. Obedience is then a trait in the 
 normal personality, that is, the type of personality which is, 
 other things being equal, adjusted to environment. Of course, 
 obedience to constituted authority is the primary element in the 
 ordered social group. 
 
 Unquestioning obedience in the infant and young child is 
 perhaps our best starting-point in breaking down the native ego- 
 ism of childhood and the beginning of the process of building 
 up the normal altruistic personality. As the years go on, how- 
 ever, if obedience remains merely passive, the result is a simple 
 performance ideal, no better and no worse than the learning in 
 other types which achieves the passing grade in the daily lesson 
 and contributes nothing to the pupil’s intelligence or to his spe- 
 cial ability. Passive obedience should normally evolve into will- 
 ing and intelligent obedience, in which the individual obeys his 
 superior officer or the law of the land because it is right to obey 
 whether he approves his orders or believes in the law or not. 
 Perhaps the supreme adjustment is found in the youth who says 
 to himself, “I shall respectfully protest this order or this law and 
 then I shall yield to none in the fidelity with which I carry it 
 out.” 
 
 The attitude of adolescent or adult passive obedience and 
 that of lawlessness and insubordination seem to be equally dis- 
 orders of personality. 
 
 Passive obedience is the attitude of the child and, if found 
 in maturity, it is the attitude of the slave. We can feel nothing 
 
 but contempt for the man who obeys the law because there is a © 
 policeman close behind. He is not a free man. We may be very — 
 
 sure, if we analyze his character, that we shall find a person who — 
 
 is lacking in self-respect and personal dignity. 
 
 In contrast with the servile type is the lawless individual ar- — 
 
 rested at an infantile stage of development. He refuses to con- 
 form to the requirements of social existence not merely because 
 
 a 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 387 
 
 he is unwilling but because his defective personality makes it 
 impossible. He senses his essential lack of self-respect and en- 
 deavors to compensate by loud proclamation of what he calls his 
 rights and by demagogic apostrophes of individual liberty. It is 
 interesting to note that perhaps the most lawless decade in the 
 last hundred years has been precisely the one which has been 
 most distinguished by the degradation of democracy to the level 
 of fetich worship. The hollowness of this individual’s “‘liberty”’ 
 compensations can be seen in the principle that with rare excep- 
 tions the victim becomes the most hateful of tyrants when he 
 finds himself in a position of authority. 
 
 9. Sustained application—capacity for hard work.—-We 
 have met this element in right attitude in Part IT, where it is 
 treated as an element in study capacity, and we have discussed 
 there its relation to the problems of interest and of self-direc- 
 tion. In its generalized form, it is of course an element in right 
 attitude. We need do scarcely more here than call attention to 
 its obvious conduct significance. We are not born with a dispo- 
 sition to work hard; we have to acquire the attitude. In the end, 
 the individual who has acquired the capacity has added an ele- 
 ment to his own self-respect and in it he finds one of the high- 
 ways to security and peace. 
 
 10. Sense of duty.—In our survey of cases, we not infre- 
 quently encounter a pupil who baffles us with his social graces. 
 He cannot be called selfish, unless his very dislike of giving of- 
 fense leads to essentially selfish acts. He is amenable. He has no 
 vices. He is capable of hard work on occasion, but, all in all, he 
 is a painfully negative factor in the life of the school. He is far 
 from being a bad boy, but then he apparently has few inclina- 
 tions in that direction. Taxed with such a question as “Why do 
 you not take part in such and such an enterprise? You should 
 do thus and so,” his response is apt to be “Why should I?” If 
 he seldom does wrong, it is equally true that he seldom does 
 right. He does not sense what the great German called the “cat- 
 egorical imperative.” The word “duty” is not in his vocabulary. 
 
388 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Explaining to him why he should undertake certain acts out of 
 which he can expect no profit and no satisfaction, unless it be 
 the satisfaction of duty done, is unconvincing because duty can- 
 not be explained; it must be felt. The problem is essentially one 
 of appreciation teaching and the technique is the awakening of 
 the sense of duty much as the sense of value is awakened in a 
 literature course. Very probably the center of the teaching will 
 be the holding up of a mirror in which the pupil can see himself 
 as other and valued associates see him and persistence in seeing 
 that he performs at least one act which is motivated by some 
 sense of duty, however feeble the latter may be. 
 
 Other attitudes which constitute major elements in the in- 
 tegrated and self-respecting personality might be added. We 
 find the items of the list conspicuously in our cases, and we can 
 be confident that they furnish a useful working analysis and list 
 of objectives. In searching for others, we shall need to bear in 
 mind two cautions. 
 
 In the first place, it is very easy to mistake symptoms for 
 attitude. Each of the list of ten has of course numberless mani- 
 festations by which we know it, but such manifestations of an 
 attitude are symptoms and not the attitude itself. 
 
 Again, it is easy to mistake elements in native or acquired 
 
 ability for conduct attitudes. For example, it is very easy to 
 
 identify signs of leadership, or of adaptability and, since these 
 are personal qualities, to set them down as attitudes toward con- 
 duct. Not so; these are endowment traits in the individual 
 which may prove important factors in taking on right attitudes 
 ——or hindrances, as the case may be—but they are clearly not 
 the attitudes themselves. 
 
 On the other hand, we not infrequently encounter individ- 
 uals whose personalities have become warped to the point of 
 profound emotional perversion. These people have become sub- 
 jects for the psychiatrist, and are no longer pedagogical prob- 
 lems. 
 
 4 
 i 
 4 
 
 
 
 ES RDP 
 
 Dates 
 
 = 
 
 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 389 
 
 TEACHING 
 
 Teaching conforms to the principles underlying the appre- 
 ciation type which have already been discussed. The reader 
 should note that here, as in other pedagogical activities in this 
 type, there is no determinate technique possible. In other types, 
 procedure is determinate. Given a certain learning product, we 
 can proceed to develop it in the pupil and success can be sooner 
 or later achieved, except in a very small percentage of baffling 
 problem cases. Not so in the appreciation type; not so in the 
 development of right attitude. 
 
 In attacking the teaching problem, we need at the outset to 
 look for our sources of material which is capable of exerting an 
 educative influence. 
 
 First of all, then, we have the abiding literature of the race. 
 Most literature which has survived the best-seller stage is the 
 treasure-house of the aspirations of humanity. Therein is re- 
 corded in one form or another the idealization of great conduct 
 and scorn of baseness. Through right and effective contact with 
 the literature of his race, the youth comes into his inheritance of 
 the moral achievements of that vast multitude of witnesses who 
 ' stand behind the passing and often trivial influence of his fam- 
 ily and contemporaries. The well-ordered school contributes 
 that influence in its carefully selected and abundant free reading 
 opportunities and in its skilfully conducted classes in literature 
 and history. If the youth fails to enter upon his inheritance in 
 the secondary period of his schooling, he embarks upon life 
 equipped with only the ideals which his own age can furnish, 
 and that is in any age a meager stock indeed. A nation recruited 
 from such young people must forever be entering anew upon the 
 long process of racial evolution. 
 
 In the second place, we have the life-histories of men and 
 women who have moved the race forward and who have fur- 
 nished our best examples of noble conduct. The influence of the 
 character of Lincoln in molding the attitude toward conduct in 
 public affairs of men who came after him and who had really es- 
 
390 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tablished an interest in his life has been incalculable. The influ- 
 ence of the characters of Newton, Darwin, and Pasteur in mold- 
 ing the attitudes of scientific men toward their professional 
 conduct has been perhaps not less important than the intellec- 
 tual contributions of these great minds to science itself. Unhap- 
 pily, our stock of biographical material suited to the reading of 
 children and young people is not as extensive as we could wish, 
 and it is heavily unbalanced in the direction of exhibiting the 
 characters of military and political heroes. Even in that field, 
 the tendency has seemed to be to exalt the successful common- 
 place rather than genuine nobility and genius. The failure of the 
 southern confederacy, for instance, has thus far deprived us of 
 several exceedingly valuable biographical contributions to our 
 national capital of high endeavor and noble conduct. Religious 
 and scientific intolerance likewise tend to waste the examples of 
 a host of spiritual heroes. Nevertheless, there is still a great 
 wealth of material to draw upon, and it should appear in abun- — 
 dance upon the shelves of the reading-room; it should form an 
 item in the guidance of children’s reading and, in some instances, 
 particular biographies may well be made the subjects of the — 
 class in literature. 
 
 The third great source of examples of right attitude toward 
 conduct is the teaching force itself. The influence of teachers, 
 possessed themselves of simple nobility and strength of charac- — 
 ter, is of course critical. It is an unhappy individual, indeed, who 
 cannot look back to the lasting influence of at least one such. — 
 Right attitude is at bottom a sense of value. If there is no value in 
 the child’s environment to sense, it is futile to expect adjustment. © 
 Outside of the family circle, the teaching force of necessity 
 stands as the model which the older generation provides to the — 
 younger. The requirement is at the least strength of character 
 and maturity of personality. If the youth seldom comes in con- 
 tact with these qualities in his teachers, society need expect no 
 positive right attitudes in the rising generation. If the youth sel- 
 dom encounters a teacher who is devoted to the teacher’s calling 
 
 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 391 
 
 as a permanent profession and who has matured to a stage es- 
 sentially beyond that of himself, it is futile to expect that the 
 youth will take on the attributes of social maturity. If the child 
 is accustomed to meet in the classroom the pedagogical dema- 
 gogue who maintains his position only by making himself popu- 
 lar with immature pupils, we need not be surprised if the result 
 is a citizenry which is incapable of being led except by the polit- 
 ical demagogue. In the long run, by far the most influential fac- 
 tor in the molding of the school child is the tone of the school, 
 and positive tone is imparted chiefly by the faculty if at all. Un- 
 happy the student who finds himself in an institution in which 
 the tone of the institution is established by strong students 
 rather than by a strong faculty. 
 
 Closely related to the influence of the teaching force itself 
 is the theory upon which the whole administrative technique of 
 the school is carried out. We have already discussed fundamen- 
 tals here. If we set up a passing grade based on relative perform- 
 ance instead of focusing our test upon the mastery of correctly 
 identified learning products, we need not be surprised if we gen- 
 erate an attitude toward life in which “getting by” and superfi- 
 ciality are conspicuous elements, and such we find in fact to be 
 the revelation in a multitude of cases. If we appraise the prog- 
 ress of pupils in terms of their performance on daily lessons, we 
 need not be surprised if the outcome is an abiding attitude in 
 
 which prestige is substituted for attainment, reputation for char- 
 
 acter, and symptoms are valued rather than realities. Finally, 
 if the child is accustomed from his earliest school days to judge 
 himself by comparison with his neighbors rather than by com- 
 
 _ parison of his present attainment with past attainment, it is 
 
 likely that envy and malice, arrogance and servility, will come 
 to be powerful elements in his attitude toward conduct. The 
 end result tends to be arrested development in altruistic attitude, 
 in right acceptance of criticism, in devotion to a social group, 
 in fidelity to promises, in sense of duty. 
 
392 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 A fourth source of influence in the building of right attitude 
 toward conduct is the intellectual adaptations which the pupil 
 has already made. We cannot expect right attitude toward con- 
 duct in a person who does not know what right conduct is. The 
 individual who is essentially ignorant of the elementary princi- 
 ples of contagion, for instance, cannot in this direction acquire 
 right attitude, no matter how definitely he has matured into a 
 general altruistic attitude. He carries a highly explosive cough 
 into a crowded auditorium and infects large numbers of his fel- 
 low-citizens simply because he knows no better. Another may 
 have developed a sense of’social group obligation to the point of 
 ultimate refinement and still remain a poor citizen, simply be- 
 cause he has no intelligent attitude toward the civil institutions 
 of his country. Another, still, who is essentially right minded 
 may commit dishonest acts simply because he does not recognize 
 
 the ethical significance of his acts. After all, here as elsewhere, _ 
 the school is a unit and its influence as a whole has to be focused _ 
 upon the pupil as an individual. While the school must be or- i 
 ganized on the principle of differentiation of function, its several 
 
 functions in the nature of the case have to be co-ordinated. 
 While we are obliged pedagogically to utilize essentially differ- 
 ent forms of technique in achieving different learning products, 
 the influence of the school comes to nothing if the several de- 
 partments of the school and its several functions attempt to op- 
 erate as disparate enterprises. 
 
 In contrast with the positive influences which can thus be 
 organized and focused upon the development of right attitude 
 in the school as a whole, there is what may be called ‘moral 
 sanitation,” the elimination or correction of harmful influence. 
 
 We first think of the harmful influences of vicious pupils, ~ 
 
 especially in the high-school and junior college periods. We 
 
 have to distinguish critically between the undeveloped pupil 
 
 who is not yet positively vicious and who is still an appropriate 
 object of general education and the pupil who has passed into 
 
 
 
 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 393 
 
 the field of legal delinquency—the thief, the inebriate, the 
 youthful rake. Such individuals are instances of outright social 
 pathology requiring separation from the school and treatment 
 outside the school. We have no more right, nay, less right, to ex- 
 pose the whole school to the infection of their presence than to 
 expose the pupil body to the menace of-a case of scarlet fever 
 or measles or diphtheria. They should be excluded and provided 
 for, either in corrective institutions or through some other form 
 of corrective treatment. 
 
 We next note the baneful influence of perverse literature, 
 with which we have already dealt at length more than once and 
 which we need only to note here in passing. 
 
 Finally, there is the ever present need of corrective influence 
 directed to the school as a whole. We cannot censor the sensa- 
 tional and often salacious newspaper and dramatic production, 
 nor can we prevent the publication of shallow books calculated 
 to destroy the student’s faith in God, his country, and his fellow- 
 man. We have already shown how to some extent such influence 
 can be counteracted in the free reading made available in the 
 classroom in literature. It becomes further pre-eminently the 
 task of the executive, if he is worthy of the name “educator,” to 
 set the student body right. My mind goes back to my own col- 
 lege days for an illustration. Thirty years ago, the press was less 
 shameless than it is today and the drama had not yet conceived 
 it to be art to wallow in filth for filth’s sake, but nevertheless 
 then as now occurrences found their way into publicity which 
 were well calculated to pervert the inquiring mind of youth. 
 “They are all doing it” exerted its debasing suggestion as it al- 
 ways does. But a great college president thought it to be his 
 duty once a week to comment upon the news of the day and to 
 set the student body right in its thinking. The influence upon 
 right attitude was immediate, obvious, and observation in after- 
 years shows it to have been on the whole permanent. 
 
 The student-adviser system.—Systematic administration of 
 
304 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the foregoing influences under a strong executive and at the 
 hands of a competent faculty will hardly fail, even under rather 
 adverse conditions, to develop a wholesome moral tone in the 
 school. The great majority of the pupils will have acquired, or 
 will be on the way to acquire, right attitude toward conduct. 
 Furthermore, among the older and stronger and more influential 
 pupils will arise a potential praetorian cohort capable of becom- 
 ing an incalculably valuable factor in controlling and developing 
 the school. There remains the need of intimate contact with the 
 public opinion of the student body and of intensive work with 
 individual pupils. The organization of the older and stronger 
 members of the faculty into an advisory group is perhaps the 
 first step. But such a group must be intelligent about its prob- 
 lem, diligent, devoted, and it must work systematically. Other- 
 wise it becomes simply a perfunctory paper organization. 
 
 The reading-conference groups perhaps constitute a good 
 beginning, and will continue to operate as a correlated enter- 
 prise. Beside this system should, however, operate another in 
 which perhaps not exceeding fifty pupils are assigned to each of 
 several members of the faculty chosen for the purpose. These 
 teachers have an hour set aside daily for meeting the individuals 
 of their groups. Meeting not more than an average of five pupils 
 daily, each member will get around his group about once in two 
 weeks. Now two purposes are served. | 
 
 First, much of the time taken with individual pupils will be 
 utilized for guidance in their school work, planning courses and 
 the like, and for gathering information which finds its way into 
 the pupil’s case folder (see chap. xxxii). 
 
 We are concerned here, however, particularly with the proc- 
 ess of building up and generalizing right attitude toward con- 
 duct in the individual and in the school. The process involves: 
 (1) setting the individual right on sundry issues, and (2) col- 
 lecting data touching the actual condition of school morale and 
 identifying the corrective points. But the individual adviser 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 
 
. 
 
 RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 395 
 
 working with his group has covered less than half the task. In 
 modern personnel work, the staff conference under the guidance 
 of the executive, or the chief personnel officer in a large school, 
 is on the whole the crux of the enterprise. Here is the clearing- 
 house of problems, both of the individual and of the school, here 
 is the point at which intelligent forward policies emerge, and, 
 perhaps most important of all, it is in the staff conference that 
 evidential material touching the development of right conduct is 
 gathered and evaluated. 
 
 THE PROBLEM CASE 
 
 Out of the reports of the student advisers and those of the 
 classroom teachers emerge the conduct problem cases. The 
 reader should of course distinguish here between the learning 
 problem and the conduct problem. We deal under each type of 
 teaching with the learning problems which are peculiar to that 
 type. The conduct problem, pedagogically considered, is a 
 learning problem under the appreciation type. 
 
 The whole theory of teaching which is founded on the pass- 
 ing grade and the philosophy of educational determinism tends 
 to induce the school and the teacher to note these cases, identify 
 them as bad boys or bad girls, and pass on with a sense of duty 
 done. The obvious effect is a stream of maladjusted individuals 
 who pass into society and contribute to the recruitment of our 
 delinquent classes or, what is perhaps worse, to the immensely 
 larger class of semi-delinquents who pass their lives skating on 
 the thin ice which separates the sound footing of wholesome and 
 right living from the black water of legal notice and punishment. 
 These folks are perhaps, on the whole, a more pernicious influ- 
 ence in society than the out-and-out criminal, just as the typhoid 
 or diphtheria “carrier” contributes more to the ill health of the 
 community than the identified and quarantined victim of dis- 
 ease. 
 
 A common routine dealing with such problems is a system of 
 
396 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 pains and penalties presumably adjusted to meet various de- 
 grees of misdemeanor. For a minor fault, stay in at recess; for 
 a greater, remain after school and write a word five hundred 
 times; and so on up to expulsion. On the same principles, a poor 
 lesson is awarded 70; a very poor lesson, 50; and no lesson at 
 all, o. The trouble with this procedure is that it attacks the 
 symptom and not the disease. 
 
 The appropriate procedure conceived in a scientific spirit 
 and from a valid educational point of view is to set up a regular 
 organization equipped to deal with conduct cases by the case 
 method of study and treatment. The essence of case method is 
 analysis of the problem, study of the school, family and social 
 background, identification of the causation at work, and carry- 
 ing out a treatment calculated to remove or minimize the causes 
 of the wrong attitude. An adequate discussion of the theory and 
 practice of case work requires a volume. We find space for a 
 chapter (see chap. xxxi). Suffice it here to set forth the outlines 
 of procedure in dealing with conduct cases. Provided we have 
 an abundance of data, gathered from the classroom, the advis- 
 ory group, the home, and elsewhere, it is a comparatively simple 
 matter to make a character analysis, sufficient for intelligent at- 
 tack upon the problem. Such analysis will ordinarily disclose 
 conspicuous defects in one or more of the attitudes which we 
 have enumerated above as being of most frequent occurrence. 
 Particularly shall we be likely to find evidences of arrested de- 
 velopment of the sorts which we have described. 
 
 The next step is to gather as full data as possible from the 
 pupil’s out-of-school life, his school history, and his family his- 
 tory. The diligent and skilful personnel worker will also bring 
 into the picture various psychological, physical, and emotional 
 data. If he has reason to suspect profound disturbances in one 
 or more of these fields, he will endeavor to provide for the col- 
 laboration of the proper specialist. In the end, the case worker 
 can in most instances put his finger upon the causation which is 
 
 
 
RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 397 
 
 probably at work. He may find that there are inhibiting phys- 
 ical, psychological, or emotional factors which should be elimi- 
 nated if possible or at least kept constantly in mind. He is very 
 likely to find that home conditions or the out-of-school life of the 
 child are responsible—a nagging or negligent father, an indul- 
 gent mother, vicious associates. He is likely to find that a bad 
 school history has created learning problems which have trans- 
 lated themselves into conduct problems. 
 
 The causation having been identified, remedial measures are 
 undertaken. It is very likely that the home life will have to be 
 in some measure reconstructed. How are you going to do it? 
 In many cases, perhaps in most cases, tactful and diplomatic 
 representations on the part of the school accomplish the result, 
 for after all most parents desire the best things for their chil- 
 dren. In many other cases, the school makes connection with 
 one or more social welfare agencies for the achievement of the 
 desired end. Very probably, remedial work on the learning side 
 to supply the school deficiencies will need to be set up. 
 
 The remedial agencies appropriate to the removal of the 
 causation having been set at work, in some cases the personnel 
 worker can rest, feeling sure that the removal of the causation 
 will restore to the pupil the right attitude. In other cases, per- 
 haps in most cases, specific re-education of the appreciation 
 type must also be undertaken. It would be assuming entirely too 
 much to attempt to give specific directions for such retraining, 
 good in all cases. After all, success will depend upon the tact, 
 the patience, the ingenuity, and, above all, the resolution of the 
 personnel worker. It is useful, however, to summarize the main 
 lines of attack, and to note the principles which are after all ap- 
 plicable to all such cases. 
 
 In the first place, rapport must be established, sympathy on 
 the part of the teacher and confidence on the part of the pupil. 
 Second, the pupil must be made conscious, as acutely as possi- 
 ble, of the nature of his defect. If the a alysis has been well 
 
308 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 done, the pupil will ordinarily readily come to see himself as 
 others see him. Unless there is profound emotional disturbance, 
 and, the author is inclined to think, rational perversions in the 
 case of older pupils—that is to say, false attitude based upon in- 
 tellectualized conviction that false attitude is right attitude or 
 else that it does not matter anyway—the pupil will desire to 
 remedy his fault. Third, a set of good resolutions which the pu- 
 pil is capable of carrying out must be agreed upon and then the 
 teacher must see to it that the pupil gets the experience of ac- 
 tually carrying out his resolutions. 
 
 TESTING 
 
 The principle that unsupervised and unconstrained behavior 
 is the only final test of a true learning product is of course sin- 
 gularly applicable to right attitude toward conduct. We may in- 
 deed set up extended tests in the form, “What would you do in 
 such and such a situation?” Incorrect responses may reveal 
 failure to sense the meaning of the questions and they may re- 
 veal that the pupil is ignorant of what right attitude should be. 
 _ Right responses, on the other hand, give us evidence that the 
 pupil knows what right attitude should be, but they give us no 
 evidence of attitude itself. Young people, like the rest of us, are 
 prone to see the better course and approve, but follow the worse. 
 Nevertheless, pupils are under observation in the school for five 
 or six hours daily and their out-of-school lives are more or less 
 within the observation of teachers and the personnel staff. In 
 other words, a fair sampling of their conduct is under observa- 
 tion, and that conduct is full of evidences of the nature of their 
 attitudes. 
 
 It is futile to think that a routine of scoring can be adopted 
 through which there will pass periodically to the principal’s desk 
 a mathematical representation of each pupil’s attitude. Attitude 
 is not susceptible to that kind of description. Nevertheless, 
 through the teacher’s personnel cards, and through the advis- 
 
 
 
Pa 
 
 RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD CONDUCT 399 
 
 ory-staff conferences, there does grow up a very satisfactory pic- 
 ture of each pupil. Periodically, perhaps twice a year, the entire 
 school can be canvassed in terms of the practical question, Can 
 this pupil and this be trusted with respect to this or that particu- 
 lar attitude? Such a canvass will normally yield something like 
 the following distribution: 
 
 I. For a pupils, the answer is positively “Yes.” 
 II. For 5 pupils, the answer is positively “Not yet.” 
 III. For c pupils, the answer is ‘“‘No evidence, either one way or the 
 other.” 
 
 IV. For d pupils, the answer is “Clear problem case.” 
 
 Now the tendency at first will be to include under I both 
 those who properly belong under I and the negative but well- 
 behaved individuals who properly belong under III. Not so; 
 the decision should be on the evidence. If there is no evidence 
 justifying the I classification, then the pupil should be classed 
 III, unless indeed there is evidence which places him in II or IV. 
 In the elementary school, the early part of the secondary period, 
 there will normally be few who really classify under I, but there 
 may be a few. There will be a great many who classify under IT 
 and III and perhaps a very considerable number who classify 
 under IV. While we are happy to get the I pupils, the presence 
 of large numbers of III at this level probably means that the 
 majority are simply developing in a normal fashion and at the 
 senior high school or junior college level they will appear in 
 Class I. 
 
 As we go on into the junior and senior high school and junior 
 college levels, while there will be some fluctuations, as individ- 
 uals previously in III class transfer for a time to II or even IV, 
 on the whole Class I will steadily expand. In the end, let us say 
 toward high-school graduation day, or the completion of the 
 junior college course, the distribution should show something 
 
 like the following: 
 
40c THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 We know that the great majority can be trusted, that is, that 
 they have attained right attitude toward conduct. We know that 
 a certain few cannot be trusted. As to some others, we do not 
 know whether they can be trusted or not, but this group should 
 be held to be evidence of culpable failure on the part of the 
 school. A school which has ministered to the needs of a pupil for 
 four years or longer and still does not know him well enough to 
 pass judgment on his character is colorless indeed. 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 THE PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION 
 
 \ , YE have to do in the present chapter with a body of 
 material which has found its way into the school cur- 
 riculum, largely in the last half-century and largely in 
 response to pressure exerted on the school compelling the latter 
 to become an instrumentality for social adjustment. We are 
 concerned with such material because it calls for a specific type 
 of teaching, and we shall find it hard to understand teaching un- 
 less we can frame a reasonable theory of the nature of the ob- 
 jectives sought and of their place in the process of general edu- 
 cation. 
 
 As a type of teaching procedure, we have to do with proc- 
 esses which involve the manipulation of physical material or the 
 intelligent operation of appliances. Pedagogically, the type 
 stands between the science and appreciation types, in which the 
 learning process is essentially a matter of reflection or of con- 
 templation, and the language-arts and pure-practice types, in 
 which adaptation is entirely a matter of learning by doing. In 
 the practical-arts type, learning is both a process of reflection 
 and of learning by doing. Among the subjects commonly found 
 in the school which belong to the type are shop work of various 
 kinds; domestic-arts courses in cooking, sewing, dressmaking; 
 accounting and office practice; drawing, both mechanical and 
 free-hand; modeling, designing, etc. 
 
 This volume is confined to the teaching processes which be- 
 long to the field of general education. The practical arts as they 
 are found in American schools are prevailingly in the various 
 special vocational fields. The legitimate objectives in general 
 education are materially different from those which are essential 
 in the vocational field. In the former, intelligent attitude bulks 
 
 401 
 
402 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 large but respectable skill in manipulation is not ignored; in the 
 latter, special craftsmanship and skill of manipulation are of the 
 essence of the learning but intelligence as opposed to rule-of- 
 thumb is an element in genuine craftsmanship. Any educational 
 policy, however, which meets the test of adjustment to environ- 
 ment, must provide a region of contacts which can be achieved 
 only through the utilization of the practical arts in the field of 
 general education. 
 
 Life in the modern world is placed in an industrial and me- 
 chanical setting. It is life none the less, and as such is subject to 
 the same fundamental controls as life in any age. But successful 
 life and the wholly sane personality alike depend upon adjust- 
 ment to the existing environment. When society as a whole lives 
 in a state of passive acceptance of the world as it finds it, we 
 note that condition of prevalent ignorance which is perhaps the 
 greatest enemy of the human race. We can imagine the Lords of 
 Life looking down on humanity and declaring, “You asked for — 
 freedom from the blind instinct of the lower animals and we 
 gave it to you; if you would now survive, you must learn.” Ad- 
 justment to environment means not only understanding and ac- 
 ceptance of natural law, but control of environmental forces, not 
 only individual control but social control. 
 
 Granted all this, the reader may say, Does not man through 
 his specialists understand the world as never before? Doubtless 
 that is true, but it does not suffice for the specialist to under- 
 stand. The specialist discovers and invents but he does not con- 
 trol in the social sense. The group mind does that or fails to do 
 it. The group mind controls wisely or ill or not at all in propor- 
 tion as the mass of individuals in society are possessed of intelli- — 
 gent attitude. We might illustrate far beyond what the space — 
 available will permit. A single instance will perhaps suffice. 
 
 One of the outstanding problems created by the Machine is 
 that of the great industrial city. The inhabitants of such live in 
 an atmosphere impregnated with all the essences of the pit. 
 They find it difficult to dispose of their waste products. Their — 
 
 
 
PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION —§ 403 
 
 drinking water is apt to suggest the chemical laboratory rather 
 than the mountain spring. Their food, like most of their living, 
 is conceived in the factory and born in artificiality. Their dwell- 
 ing places are a reversion to the pueblo stage. Few people would 
 choose that kind of existence, certainly not if they had been fa- 
 miliar with better things, but they are caught in the toils of the 
 Machine. All but a few are possessed of normal mentality but 
 only a very few are possessed of the specific intelligence required 
 by the situation. The specialist works out a remedial step and 
 refers it to a popular referendum. The proposal meets with an 
 overwhelming “No,” for the group mind is possessed of the ter- 
 ror of primitive man. It does not understand and, not under- 
 standing, declines to move from present discomfort into a prom- 
 ised land it knows not of. The situation changes slowly if at all, 
 simply because there is not enough specific intelligence in the 
 community to create the demand which would sweep away all 
 obstacles to sane and well-ordered life. 
 
 Now there are many factors in the problem of the great city 
 but the outstanding problem of all is the great city itself, and 
 there the factors reduce in the main to two, transportation and 
 the generation and transmission of energy in the form of electric 
 current. There will never be “alabaster cities” on the continent 
 so long as the local consumption of soft coal is the principal 
 source of energy. ‘“These things are well known to engineers,”’ 
 responds the specialist, “but the solution is not commercially 
 possible on a large scale.” Ah yes, and “commercially possible” 
 is only another expression for intelligent demand. Suppose every 
 graduate of the high schools of the United States for the next 
 ten years were to be made thoroughly intelligent in the layman’s 
 sense concerning the practical-arts problems involved, can we 
 doubt that the public attitude of passive acceptance would be 
 severely shaken? We should, in the first place, create an atti- 
 tude which would greatly stimulate invention and in the second 
 place probably uncover a great deal of latent inventive genius 
 
404 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 which now goes to waste. And we have a basis for more than 
 conjecture in this assertion. 
 
 From the time when the automobile first became a workable 
 machine to the time when it became available to practically 
 every second family in the United States in a state of highly de- 
 veloped mechanical excellence, a period of less than a quarter- 
 century was required. Demand not only called forth rapid me- 
 chanical development but it made the device commercially pos- 
 sible indeed. But the automobile once on the streets was ob- 
 vious. It appealed strongly to the natural inclinations of all. An 
 educated intelligence was not required for the generation of a 
 desire to own a car. 
 
 Perhaps an even better illustration of the same type is the 
 principle of wireless transmission and its applications. Most of 
 these mechanical marvels which are so obvious in their appeals 
 do little to solve the fundamental problems of society. Rather 
 are they accretions to the dominating and uncomprehended Ma- 
 chine. The automobile has created at least as many new prob- 
 lems as it has solved. Intelligent attitude widely diffused among 
 the masses of society, acquired only through the laborious and 
 rather slow education of the individual, is assuredly the only 
 pathway into a world in which man rules the Machine which he 
 has created. One essential element in comprehension of the Ma- 
 chine is the understanding of machines. 
 
 The objective in the practical-arts type of teaching is then 
 much the same as in the science type. The learning process and 
 teaching procedure are necessarily different. The similarities 
 and differences can perhaps be made clear by comparison of a 
 learning product which belongs to the science type with one 
 which belongs to practical arts. We may compare, for instance, 
 the Industrial Revolution with the-gas engine. 
 
 In the former, the learner contemplates a set of historical 
 facts which when brought together and understood lead to a 
 new point of view, an intellectual product which becomes thence- 
 forth a means of interpreting the past and correctly understand- 
 
PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION = 405 
 
 ing the world in which he lives. The learner can get no concrete 
 experience with the Industrial Revolution; he cannot go back 
 and live through the period in which there was brought about the 
 transformation from industry which was carried on in the home 
 to that which came to be assembled in the factory. Indeed, it 
 may be doubted that the learner would profit even if he could do 
 so. It is doubtful if the men who lived in the period in which the 
 transformation was taking place had any such clear comprehen- 
 sion of the process as is possible today. Nevertheless, by read- 
 ing, study, and reflection the student attains the intelligent atti- 
 tude sought. In this particular unit he also makes some progress 
 toward understanding the industrial and mechanical world in 
 which he lives. 
 
 Not so with the gas-engine unit. Here physical contact and 
 manipulation are requisite to the adaptation required. True, we 
 may take a book and familiarize ourselves with “the principles” 
 or we may listen more or less appreciatively to a verbal exposi- 
 tion, but in the end we have no realization. The learning product 
 is part of the junk of things remembered but not felt. Practical- 
 arts assimilation requires more than elucidation of principles. 
 In the Industrial Revolution, a wealth of book assimilative ma- 
 terial is possible. There is an ample region in which reflection 
 and assimilation can take place. In the gas engine or any other 
 practical-arts unit, however, the amount of genuine assimilative 
 material which can be written is extremely limited. A few pages 
 at most, with drawings of details of construction, is all that any 
 writer can possibly put forth without becoming, on the one hand, 
 verbose, or, on the other, passing into the field of engineering 
 technicalities. There cannot be organized assimilative material 
 enough without contact with the appliance itself. Even if we 
 have a good apperceptive background, as we read descriptions 
 of the mechanism and its working, an emotional stress is gen- 
 erated in which one says to himself, “I must see the machine; 
 take it apart; put it together again; see how it works.” Any 
 reader who has been through the experience, first of trying to 
 
406 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 understand from drawings and description and then of “seeing — 
 how it works” from actual contact, can bear witness to the men- 
 tal experiences involved and to the reality of the assimilation 
 from actual contact. 
 
 What, then, are the units for general education in the field 
 which thus belongs to the practical arts, or at least what are the 
 principles upon which units can be set up? The principle which — 
 we have already established for the identification of the unit in 
 the science type will serve, namely, “‘A comprehensive and sig- 
 nificant aspect of the environment.” May we illustrate. 
 
 The steam engine with its boiler is a comprehensive and sig- — 
 nificant aspect of the environment. It covers the locomotive, the 
 marine engine, the stationary engine used for driving machinery, 
 the steam pump. If we were to set up each of these types of 
 steam engines as units for study, we should gain little in the 
 form of intelligent attitude not obtainable in the study of the 
 more generalized unit, and we should use an amount of time and 
 energy wholly disproportioned to the possible educational re- 
 sults. We should be attempting to give a course in steam en- 
 gineering instead of developing the practical-arts unit, ‘The 
 Steam Engine.” On these principles both the gas engine and the 
 automobile are evidently units in the practical-arts field. So is 
 the electric generator and the electric motor, the water turbine, 
 the transmission of power. The heating, lighting, and water sup- 
 ply of residences are units, and so is the disposal of waste, both 
 for the residence and for the community. 
 
 Among the processes as distinguished from appliances out 
 of which units can be organized are the following: processes in- 
 volved in the ordinary manipulation of wood, metals, glass, and 
 concrete; processes involved in installing the simpler electrical 
 appliances and the ordinary repairs to house and furniture; 
 processes involved in the selection and preparation of food; — 
 processes involved in the construction of wearing apparel. | 
 
 Of course the field of agriculture has within it numerous 
 processes which belong to the field of practical-arts teaching, 
 
 
 
PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION 407 
 
 and the field itself to a great extent is distinctly one which be- 
 longs in this region of general education. 
 
 The foregoing paragraphs will serve to exhibit the nature of 
 the practical-arts unit. They do not purport to be a complete 
 curriculum analysis. Whatever the units selected in the organ- 
 ization of the course of study may be, the educational end in 
 view is an individual whose attitude toward the mechanical and 
 industrial world is one of comprehension and understanding and 
 not one of passive acceptance. 
 
 The reader wiil doubtless reflect that some of the types of 
 units suggested in the foregoing enumeration are found to some 
 extent in elementary-science courses and others are vaguely fa- 
 miliar as exercises in manual training. Certain principles seem 
 to be involved which are worth considering. 
 
 Contrast with science-course content.—It is true that we 
 commonly find in science textbooks paragraphs and several in- 
 teresting pictures devoted to the steam engine, the gas engine, 
 
 and their applications, usually in connection with the topic 
 
 “Heat.” The writer has yet to find a text in which the explana- 
 tions are clear enough to communicate to the pupil any real un- 
 derstanding of these important appliances unless perchance he 
 
 has already become familiar with them under working condi- 
 
 tions. The reason why they are introduced is usually the plea 
 that it is essential that the laws of heat should be applied to the 
 everyday life about us, and of course the point in itself is well 
 taken. Note, however, that the learning product in the science 
 course is an understanding of the phenomena of heat and not of 
 the steam engine or the gas engine. These appliances may con- 
 stitute valuable and even essential assimilative material, but, if 
 they are made objectives in themselves, the whole assimilation 
 
 ‘period is more or less thrown out of focus. The situation is anal- 
 
 ogous to that in which clock problems are used for assimilative 
 material in equations in algebra. The pupil has to learn how to 
 manage clock problems before he can use them for assimilative 
 material. It is an instance of the old story of mistaking the as- 
 
408 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 similative material for the learning product. The effect is un- — 
 duly to prolong the mastery of the unit and to confuse the pupil. — 
 Now the essential value of these engines as assimilative material — 
 on heat is found in their utilization of the expansive force of 
 gases when heated. For this purpose, a simple diagram which ex- | 
 hibits the principle at work will serve and serve clearly, without — 
 going into the study of the working of the appliances as such. 
 
 The same principle of the proper use of assimilative mate-— 
 rial in science courses applies to the various forms of water 
 wheels, to the steam pump, to the electric generator, motor, etc. . 
 It also applies to the telephone, telegraph, and radio. 4 
 
 On the other hand, a competent understanding of all these ~ 
 machines themselves is desirable, but it properly belongs to an- — 
 other course and to another type of teaching, namely, that with © 
 which we are now concerned. If, however, no practical-arts 
 course has been arranged and it is still felt to be desirable to deal - 
 with the various appliances in general-science courses, lest they - 
 be passed over altogether, then separate units should be devoted 
 to them, and these units should receive abundant treatment. — 
 The unit “Electrical Communication” found in the elementary- 
 science course (see chap. xi) and the presentation of this unit 
 exhibited at length in chapter xv will illustrate. | 
 
 On the other hand, practical arts may easily be confused 
 with manual training, and it frequently is so confused. 
 
 Contrast with manual training —Manual training, as the 
 term clearly implies, has for its objective the development of © 
 purposeful sets of neuro-muscular co-ordinations which seem to 
 have played a valuable part in racial evolution and to have an 
 essential place in the evolution of the individual. Handwork 
 leading to the manual-training objective has an important place” 
 in the primary school, and it should continue to have an im- 
 portant place until the pupil’s co-ordinations have been thor- 
 oughly established. Much of the appropriate practical-arts tech- 
 nique may be used, and courses which have primarily a practi- 
 cal-arts purpose in the secondary period may have also a 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION § 4o9 
 
 manual-training effect, but for purposes of clear educational 
 thinking the practical-arts and manual-training objectives and 
 purposes should be kept distinct in the educator’s mind. 
 
 The author will perhaps be pardoned if he digresses in this 
 connection into a plea for a renewed interest in manual training 
 proper. 
 
 In the urban life of our time, and to an increasing extent in 
 the rural life, there is little room for the neuro-muscular devel- 
 opment which used to be taken as a matter of course. The result 
 seems to be a marked increase in the number of children who 
 exhibit imperfect co-ordination and control. One effect can be 
 seen in the increasing difficulty of getting good permanent re- 
 sults in the handwriting skills. In days when handwork of all 
 sorts was the common lot and when the family chore and odd job 
 was an unnoticed but very important educational instrumental- 
 ity, manual training took place in the normal experience of most 
 
 children. It is a far cry from that child life to the child life of 
 
 today, when mechanical appliances and provision for family 
 tasks outside the home have little by little robbed the child of an 
 important part of his educational foundation. There seems to be 
 no recourse but to bring into the school what was once in the 
 
 home, not as a perfunctory matter of a period or two a week but 
 
 as a daily experience covering many school years. 
 
 There is, however, in this plea no justification for a school 
 policy which would make all work which involves manipulation 
 of appliances and materials simply a prolonged course in manual . 
 training. 
 
 Contrast with vocational courses.—Finally, the practical 
 arts in general education have objectives which are different 
 from those of the practical arts in vocational education, and to 
 some extent they require a different teaching procedure. In 
 general education we seek only the intelligent attitude which the 
 layman should have; in vocational education we seek crafts- 
 manship and trade intelligence and proficiency. In most if not 
 all vocations, the practical-arts aspect is but one of many, for 
 
410 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the intelligent practice of a given trade requires knowledge of 
 trade circumstances as well as operative skill in its manipula- 
 tions. Proficiency in the latter requires not only intelligent atti- 
 tude but skill which is the result of special intensive training. In 
 general education we are concerned primarily with the develop- 
 ment of an individual pupil and hardly in a secondary sense 
 even with the quality of the material product turned out in the 
 shops. In vocational education, we are still concerned, or should 
 be, with the development of the human individual, but we are 
 also concerned with the quality of the output he becomes capa- 
 ble of producing. Altogether, schools frequently fail to draw the 
 line critically between practical-arts courses which are intended 
 to serve the purposes of general education and those which are 
 presumed to achieve a vocational product. The result is waste of 
 time, energy, and educational efficiency when only a result in 
 general education is sought, and complete failure to achieve a 
 valuable trade proficiency if the end is a vocational one. An il- — 
 lustration may be found in the courses in mechanical drawing 
 which are so commonly found in the high school. 
 
 In these courses, a long time, perhaps two or three weeks, is 
 sometimes spent in lettering, and then the pupils devote many 
 weeks to exercises in drafting plans for various forms of con- 
 struction which mean nothing to them so far as practical expe- 
 rience is concerned. Of course we have here another illustration — 
 of the ground-to-be-covered and daily-exercise stereotypes. It — 
 is hoped that a year, or two years, of this sort of practice will 
 yield some educational product, we know not what or how. We 
 have what is essentially a vocational course but without regard 
 to any specific vocational product. Training in drawing is given, — 
 but not the use of drawing for the pictorial representation of — 
 specific aspects of the practical-arts environment or of specific — 
 vocational projects. The learning products are not identified 
 and segregated, and actual learning is consequently a matter of — 
 chance. 
 
 Now, in the field of general education, mechanical and free- 
 
 
 
PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION 411 
 
 hand drawing are valuable tools in interpreting and expressing 
 and consequently assimilating various experiences found in the 
 practical-arts environment. There are few people, indeed, who 
 _ do not have occasion frequently to seize a pencil and attempt to 
 explain a structure or a mechanism in which they are interested. 
 Their representations are usually crude and in effect their ideas 
 correspondingly nebulous. Drawing stands to the practical arts 
 very much in the same relationship which written expression 
 bears to the content of the science and appreciation types. In 
 either case, expression is the instrument which we use in the 
 clarification of our ideas. Hence, in general education both 
 forms of drawing are emphatically expressional tools, as neces- 
 sary to the mastery of many practical-arts units as mathematics 
 is necessary to the assimilation of physics units and as English 
 writing is necessary to the mastery of all units in which the ob- 
 _ jective is intelligent attitude. Furthermore, the adult individual, 
 in the presence of his mechanical and industrial environment, 
 has occasion frequently to read working drawings. He would 
 have occasion to do so more often if he only had the ability. 
 We are thus enabled to form a working notion of the appro- 
 priate scope of the drawing courses in the field of general educa- 
 tion. We need, in the first place, a set of learning products which 
 _ will enable the individual to express graphically the gross as- 
 pects of the practical-arts experience of his daily intercourse. 
 These learning products do not include the specialized opera- 
 tions which the individual can confidently leave to the technician 
 nor do they include the skills which are essential to the profes- 
 sional draftsman. The learning products thus understood, sim- 
 plified, and segregated are relatively few in number. In the sec- 
 ond place, we need a series of exercises which will develop and 
 _ test out the ability to read working drawings. It does not follow 
 _that mastery of the first set of learning products will carry with 
 it mastery of the second set. It will undoubtedly do so in the 
 cases of certain pupils, but to take the development of the sec- 
 ond set for granted is to fall back on the principle of chance. 
 
412 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The one does not imply the other any more than proficiency in 
 oral reading implies the reading adaptation. 
 
 In vocational training, on the other hand, we have two 
 classes of objectives which must be borne in mind. 
 
 In the first place, workers in many fields require only the 
 general-education learning products while others require these 
 in the form of further special application to their own vocational 
 field—auto mechanics, for instance. 
 
 In the second place is training in draftsmanship itself, in its 
 various fields, as a vocation. If we desire to produce a draftsman 
 who is something more than a mere copyist, we must probably 
 begin with a course which develops the general-education learn- 
 ing products in drawing. Beyond that, the learner is given a se- 
 vere course of training in a series of units which are carefully 
 selected with reference to their general applicability in all the 
 special fields which have need of the draftsman. Severe training 
 implies the development, not only of specialized intelligent atti- 
 tudes, but likewise of skill in the technique of the vocation. Fol- 
 lows special training in the narrower field chosen by the worker, 
 architectural drawing or drafting in the mechanic arts, or 
 what not. 
 
 The differentiation between general-education and voca- 
 tional objectives thus illustrated from the field of drawing is ap- 
 plicable throughout the field of the practical arts. 
 
 Lest the principles suggested in this chapter be misunder- 
 stood and misapplied, it is perhaps pertinent to remind the read- 
 er that we are dealing with the practice of teaching in the secon- 
 dary period and not with the organization of schools. It should 
 not be inferred that a high school which is in the main devoted 
 to the purposes of general education is thereby in principle 
 estopped from also offering courses in special training in one or 
 more vocational fields. The essential consideration for the man- 
 agement of the school is the principle that an appropriate differ- 
 entiation shall be made between practical-arts courses which are 
 designed to be contributions to general-education and practical- 
 
PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION § 413 
 
 arts courses which are designed to impart effective vocational 
 training. The teaching procedure which is effective and suffi- 
 cient in the first will always prove inadequate in the second; and 
 that which is required in the second leads to an objective which 
 is not at all the objective legitimately implied by the first. 
 
 The reach and the extent of the adjustments in the individ- 
 ual which are included in the field of the practical arts can by no 
 means all be covered within the walls of the school. In the first 
 place, the field is too broad; and in the second place, the school 
 does not, and probably cannot, provide the necessary assimila- 
 tive experience in some of the practical-arts units. The instance 
 which will perhaps first occur to the reader is in secondary agri- 
 culture. Whether we view a course in horticulture or one in field 
 crops as a vocational course, as it perhaps usually is, or as a 
 practical-arts course in the field of general education, as it often 
 should be viewed, the field project is the core of the assimilative 
 experience. It is as futile to attempt to teach such a course from 
 a textbook as it would be to attempt to teach elementary algebra 
 without problems. Now in certain types of schools in which the 
 students reside on the grounds, practical field projects can 
 _ doubtless be provided on the school estate. In most public 
 schools, reliance must be placed upon the home project, and this 
 is to the advantage of both home and school. The experience of 
 the past twenty years in the teaching of agriculture has worked 
 out the technique of the home project and nothing further on 
 that point is required. 
 
 It is often noted, however, that many others of the practical- 
 arts units are as truly opportunities for home projects as is a 
 course in agriculture. The heating of homes, for instance, calls 
 for study in the school of the principles upon which heating 
 plants are operated. It none the less calls for the actual opera- 
 tion of the heating plant itself. The thoroughly normal and 
 wholesome American home, where it can do so, still requires its 
 sons of high-school age to perform this residue of the chores 
 
AIA THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 which were once so important a part of the boy’s education. The 
 home still has numberless small jobs which the young people can 
 do and should do, and the energetic practical-arts teacher will 
 organize a systematic connection between the home and the 
 school in this field. In cooking, meal planning, dressmaking, and 
 other home occupations, the opportunity and the need of the 
 home project are obvious. 
 
 The reader will doubtless note in passing the intimate con- 
 nection between the carrying out of home projects as an integral 
 part of the work of the school in the practical arts and the de- 
 velopment of right attitude toward conduct discussed in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, especially in all that pertains to normal volition- 
 al growth. 
 
 It is quite true that the school is often met in such cases by 
 the protest of the home. “Cheaper to hire it done than to have 
 Mary do it.” “More trouble to make John attend to the job than 
 to do it myself.”’ ‘““That is the janitor’s job or the housemaid’s.” 
 The home must be convinced that in the nature of the case it 
 cannot delegate the entire education of its children to the school, 
 
 that it is not a question of being able to pay for things the young © 
 
 people might do but of educating the rising generation. Doubt- 
 less diplomacy and address in the school are required for the 
 
 convincing of the home. There is no law to which appeal can be — 
 made nor can there be any law. In the education of the children — 
 there is frequently imperative need of educating the home, and — 
 the school cannot meet its responsibility to education merely by — 
 
 adopting a policy of renunciation. 
 
 The foregoing is written with due appreciation of the fact 
 that home life under modern city conditions has sometimes 
 made household duties for the growing boy and girl entirely im- 
 possible. The fact does not negative the principle; the choice 
 must sometimes be made between a manner of family life and 
 the normal and right upbringing of the children of the family. 
 
 Such assimilative experience as the home project makes pos- 
 
 ———— — 
 
 
 
PRACTICAL ARTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION 415 
 
 sible must be supervised by the teacher just as assimilative ex- 
 perience within the school walls must be supervised. Hence, the 
 definite outlining and mastery of the home project and system- 
 atic inspection by the teacher. Just as the teacher of agriculture 
 is allowed time and his motorcycle or automobile for the super- 
 vision of the home projects in his courses, so should the prac- 
 tical-arts teacher in the village or the city school be allowed 
 time and transportation to carry out his schedule of inspecting 
 similar undertakings in his field. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 
 
 q ™ EACHING in the practical arts has had one great ad- 
 vantage over teaching in most of the so-called “academic 
 subjects.” It has never been susceptible of the lesson- 
 
 learning type of treatment. No matter how formalized the teach- 
 
 ing may have become, in the end learning must always perforce 
 be direct learning and not lesson-learning. Whether the pupil 
 is set to the making of a joint which is never used except 
 in schools, or to the carrying out of a project in auto mechanics, 
 he encounters real experience, and if he learns at all, he learns 
 from experience; he has not occasion to transfer from learning 
 about a thing to learning the thing itself. This is perhaps why it 
 so often happens that a pupil who is an utter failure in textbook 
 courses succeeds fairly well or even brilliantly in practical arts. 
 
 In such cases, we probably often have instances of direct learn- 
 
 ers whose first experience with direct learning is in the shop or 
 
 the sewing-room. 
 
 In the present chapter, as in all chapters which deal specific- 
 ally with teaching procedure, the point of departure is the na- 
 ture of the teaching objectives. We recall, then, that the prac- 
 tical-arts objective, in general education, is a series of intelligent 
 attitudes toward a particular field in the environment. Now 
 such attitudes are comprehensible wholes and not syntheses of 
 piecemeal parts. Intelligent attitude toward the automobile, for 
 instance, is directed upon the machine as a whole, not upon the 
 piston rings nor the crankshaft nor the differential. In wood- 
 working, the objective is an intelligent attitude toward the man- 
 agement of materials in a construction which has a useful pur- 
 pose and is felt as such by the pupil; not craftsmanship in the 
 making of a joint. The course is useful as a medium in the edu- 
 
 416 
 
= 
 
 TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 417 
 
 cation of a youth, and not as a means of training a skilled car- 
 penter and joiner. The pupil’s practice is assimilative experience 
 in the attainment of an intelligent and appreciative attitude and 
 not training for the acquisition of skill in a trade. If the course 
 had a vocational objective, then we should need to add to intel- 
 ligent attitude the attainment of trade skill and arrange expe- 
 rience on pure-practice principles calculated to develop such 
 skill. Hence the teaching technique in practical arts in the field 
 of general education centers around the project and not the 
 exercise. 
 THE PROJECT 
 
 The project may be defined as a comprehensive and signifi- 
 cant piece of construction or of manipulation which contributes 
 to generation of the attitude in the pupil which is the objective 
 of the educative process set up. An exercise, on the other hand, 
 is practice on an isolated piece of manipulation. Thus, the over- 
 hauling and reassembling of a gas engine and putting it in oper- 
 ation under its own power is a project. Learning how to grind 
 valves is an exercise. The construction of a colony poultry- 
 house is a project. Learning how to handle a hand saw properly 
 is an exercise. The preparation of a suitable breakfast is a proj- 
 ect. Learning how to cook cereals is an exercise. 
 
 A certain amount of exercise practice in working out a proj- 
 ect is obviously necessary. On the gas-engine project, for in- 
 stance, the boy will be unable to grind valves properly until he 
 is shown how and has had some practice under supervision in 
 grinding valves. If this element is passed over without mastery, 
 his assembled engine is likely to show no compression when put 
 in operation. His comrade who is working on the poultry-house 
 will make a poor job indeed if he does not practice until he can 
 saw toa line. The project itself fails in its ultimate educational 
 purpose unless the incidental and necessary exercise work is 
 properly done. It is worse than useless for a girl to prepare a 
 meal the constituents of which are inedible for lack of proper 
 exercise work, or for the boy to set up a gas engine which will 
 
418 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 not run. The crux of the matter consists in sensing the right pro- 
 portion of exercise work and its right relation to the project, 
 which is after all the important thing. 
 
 In earlier schools, now happily obsolete, the exercise was the 
 beginning and the end of the course and the project had no place 
 at all. The shop had its proud exhibit of carefully made joints, 
 beautifully turned card receivers, series of links in a meaning- 
 less iron chain, handsomely wrought handwheel bereft of any 
 comradeship with other parts of a useful machine. As pure man- 
 ual training, such exercise work doubtless rendered some service, 
 although service in that direction would have been more valua- 
 _ ble if it had been rendered in connection with genuine and useful 
 project work. That stage in practical-arts teaching corresponded 
 to the stage at which a prolonged course in Latin consisted in 
 learning principles and practice in applying them to the trans- 
 verbalization of the classics. In neither case did any actual edu- 
 cation take place except by chance. 
 
 The appropriate subordination of the exercise to the project 
 is always achieved when only such exercises are carried out as 
 will contribute to the proper construction of the project and 
 when they are carried only to the skill which is needed to make 
 the project serve the purpose for which it is intended. As soon 
 as exercise work passes beyond that critical dividing-line, the 
 course passes out of the field of general education into that of 
 special vocational training. 
 
 The project is a comprehensive and significant piece of con- 
 struction or manipulation. Explanation of what is meant takes 
 us into the unit organization of the course and perhaps into one 
 corner of the field of the curriculum itself, although the latter is 
 a story by itself. Shop courses will perhaps serve as illustration. — 
 
 Keeping in mind, then, the principles outlined in the preced- — 
 ing chapter, let us first raise the question, What units will serve — 
 to interpret that aspect of the practical-arts environment which 
 we wish to make intelligible to the pupil who is not, and does not — 
 intend to become, a specialist in any practical-arts field? 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 419 
 
 The most obvious aspect of the environment is perhaps 
 house construction. This is then the unit, and the adaptation 
 sought in the pupil is an intelligent attitude toward such con- 
 struction. Now, if we have in mind simply the house itself apart 
 from its furniture and equipment, house construction involves 
 chiefly woodworking, glass, concrete, and brick. We shall need, 
 then, to seek the project which will best serve as assimilative ex- 
 perience in learning the unit. A project which appears as the 
 construction of a small house will then be significant because it 
 indubitably expresses and interprets the environment; and it 
 will be comprehensive because it includes all the essential proc- 
 esses which go into that type of construction. As a practical 
 proposition, it will perhaps tax the ingenuity of the teacher to 
 provide such a project, but it has nevertheless been done more 
 than once. There are few schools indeed, and those chiefly in the 
 great cities, in which the need of small buildings of one sort or 
 another does not furnish the opportunity. Per contra, a project 
 which would be neither significant nor comprehensive would be 
 a section of concrete or brick wall laid up on the school grounds 
 simply as an illustration of what walls should be, or a toy house 
 constructed in the shop itself. 
 
 Within the house or the office or the school building—almost 
 any building in which people live and work—are found various 
 pieces of furniture, in the construction of which another kind of 
 woodworking is employed, requiring perhaps more exact meth- 
 ods of manipulation and fitting. This has been the field of ad- 
 vanced manual training and rightly so. A favorite project within 
 this field has been a piece of furniture or a bookcase. Either of 
 these is a significant project because it represents an important 
 piece of the household surroundings. A large chair or a table is 
 apt to be the more comprehensive since it involves not only fit- 
 ting flat pieces of wood but also some turning, gluing, and finish- 
 ing, and perhaps some carving. A bread board, a card receiver, 
 an Indian club, on the other hand, is neither a significant nor a 
 comprehensive project. 
 
420 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 A very significant aspect of the environment which presses 
 on the attention of the householder is the plumbing of the house 
 which he and his family inhabit. An intelligent attitude contrib- 
 utes to his own satisfaction, to the health of his pocket, to his 
 understanding of the sanitation problems of the community, and 
 hence to his value as a citizen. In the field of general education, 
 the construction and installation of fixtures is probably quite as 
 important as the technique of fitting pipes. Nevertheless, atten- 
 tion to manipulations like the latter is clearly essential to that 
 understanding of the situation which amounts to a serviceable 
 conviction. A significant and comprehensive project here would 
 be setting up a water closet or a kitchen sink or a wash basin and 
 connecting to both water supply and sewer. Learning how to 
 wipe a joint would be neither significant nor comprehensive, 
 though it might be an exercise in connection with the project 
 proper. Arrangements for such projects in the shop itself can of 
 course be made. In rural communities in which no sewers exist, 
 study and installation of a septic tank could in principle very 
 appropriately be made part of the project. | 
 
 Akin to plumbing is steam-fitting, and much the same prin- 
 ciples apply. The author recalls a school in which the boys ina 
 shop course installed all the steam fitting in a newly constructed 
 addition to the shop. Again, a significant and comprehensive 
 project. It would have been entirely appropriate and feasible if 
 the authorities had foreseen the need of the addition and had 
 allowed the boys in the shop courses to erect the addition as a 
 project in building construction, even though two or more suc- 
 cessive classes had been engaged in the enterprise. 
 
 Kindred to plumbing and steam-fitting is the study and in- 
 stallation and repair of electrical appliances such as call bells, 
 telephone service, and electric lighting. A significant and com- 
 prehensive project here would be the installation of a system of 
 call bells in the schoolhouse or the overhauling and repair of the 
 system in use; another would be the installation of telephone 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 421 
 
 service in the schoolhouse or in part of the building; a third 
 would be wiring and connecting up a lighting system. 
 
 All three of the foregoing—plumbing, steam-fitting, and 
 electrical appliances—are important contributions to the integ- 
 rity of the school as a teaching institution. They are essentially 
 applications of principles learned in elementary science and as 
 such represent both functional testing and post-assimilation. 
 
 In the preceding chapter, we have attempted a tentative 
 analysis of the practical-arts environment, by no means com- 
 plete, however, and have found therein certain of the major me- 
 chanical appliances of industry and the common life as signifi- 
 cant factors. Among these are the gas engine, the steam engine, 
 the water turbine, the generator of electric current, the electric 
 motor, systems of power transmission, and the automobile. 
 
 The automobile is, in a sense, an epitome of this whole field. 
 It includes a typical power generator, a system of power trans- 
 mission, an electric generator, an accumulator of electric energy, 
 and an electric motor. Furthermore, it is in itself a most signifi- 
 cant aspect of the practical-arts environment. It is then a com- 
 prehensive and significant project. 
 
 If we now take the gas engine, the steam engine, the turbine, 
 and the electric motor as projects in succession, in each case 
 belting the power unit to the electric generator, we shall have 
 again a major project comprising four minor projects, the ma- 
 jor project being essentially experience with the generation and 
 transmission of power. Each of the machines representing the 
 minor projects is taken down by the pupil, cleaned, oiled, as- 
 sembled, belted to the electric generator, and put under its own 
 power. It is then adjusted until the assembly is running smooth- 
 ly. In this case, the electric motor takes its current from the 
 street mains or from a storage battery. The turbine, if it is used, 
 is specially designed to operate under a head represented by the 
 pressure in water mains. 
 
 Now in the process of working upon these projects, and es- 
 pecially the automobile project, a very useful piece of experience 
 
422 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 is repair work and perhaps new construction. There is always 
 likely to be an abundance of the former, especially in connection 
 with automobile overhauling and repairing. As to the latter, a 
 working electric motor is apt to be a useful addition to shop 
 equipment or to the equipment of some of the homes represented. 
 Similarly, a working steam engine is not too complicated for 
 construction by boys in general-education courses. Not only do 
 repair work and new construction afford useful assimilative ex- 
 perience in connection with the units already discussed, but they 
 serve as appropriate starting-points for two types of activity 
 which form significant parts of the practical-arts environment. 
 These are blacksmithing and machine tool work. In village and 
 country schools an abundance of construction and repair work 
 not specifically related to any of the units suggested here also 
 affords opportunity for these activities. 
 
 The simpler and more essential blacksmithing processes 
 have no place in general education as trade-training but they 
 are useful as contributions to the building up of an intelligent 
 attitude toward an important part of the industrial-arts environ- 
 ment. They bear much the same relation to the mechanical proj- 
 ect which processes in woodworking bear to the house and cab- 
 inet projects. 
 
 Similarly, the use of the engine lathe, planer, milling ma- 
 chine, drill press, and grinder contributes an important element 
 to the pupil’s adjustment to his mechanical environment. Here, 
 as in most other instances in this field, and more here than in any 
 other perhaps, it would not be worth the while for any pupil to 
 spend a single period in the machine shop “‘because he may need 
 to use the knowledge.” It is very much worth the while for him 
 to pass through the experience for the sake of the enlightenment 
 which he acquires concerning common experiences and contacts 
 which he is destined to encounter almost every day of his life. 
 The individual who contemplates a revolving shaft and sees in 
 it a piece of steel, only this and nothing more, is a personality 
 essentially different from, and probably inferior to, him who un- 
 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 
 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 423 
 
 derstands its origin and purpose and senses that in case of need 
 he could construct a similar one. The latter dominates and the 
 former is dominated by the Machine. | 
 
 As in the case of the blacksmithing process, those of the ma- 
 chine shop are related primarily to the mechanical projects. 
 
 In the foregoing discussion, we have attempted to illustrate 
 the essential nature of the practical-arts project and to exhibit 
 its relation to the true learning product as found in the practical- 
 arts unit. The reader should understand that the projects sug- 
 gested are suggested only for the purpose of illustration. We be- 
 lieve that they would themselves constitute a serviceable course 
 in industrial arts, but it is no part of the author’s intention to 
 attempt to set up a curriculum. Other means of educational ac- 
 cess to this aspect of our common environment, other units, and 
 other projects might be more serviceable everywhere and prob- 
 ably would be more serviceable in some communities. We are 
 concerned here primarily with the organization of a possible 
 teaching procedure. We have dealt only with the shop courses. 
 _ The same principles will apply to the interpretation and organi- 
 zation of the practical-arts courses in domestic arts, and to 
 courses in the pictorial and plastic arts as well. 
 
 One thinks of mechanical drawing in connection with shop 
 courses. This is perhaps a mistake, for mechanical drawing, as 
 we have seen, serves its purpose throughout the field of the in- 
 dustrial environment. It is a means of graphic representation, 
 and as such its teaching conforms to practical-arts principles. 
 But it is also a means of graphic interpretation, and as such it is 
 properly a language-arts subject. There is much reason to think 
 that two courses might very properly be offered: one a practical- 
 arts course in graphic construction, and the other a language- 
 arts course in the reading of drawings. However that may be, 
 we are concerned here with the practical-arts aspect of mechan- 
 ical drawing. 
 
 It is perhaps true that mechanical drawing, more than most 
 practical-arts courses, has fallen under the domination of for- 
 
424 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 malistic exercise work. It has tended to hang suspended in the 
 air, uncertain of any connection with realities, save in vocation- 
 al courses in which its vital connection with work to be done is 
 obvious. This need not be. Every project in a shop course may 
 well be first a project in mechanical drawing. The principles 
 which make the small house or the electric motor an appropriate 
 project in construction make it likewise an appropriate project 
 in mechanical drawing. The two are further intimately corre- 
 lated since a serviceable educational use of the construction 
 project implies the use of working drawings. 
 
 TEACHING 
 
 A needful preliminary to our consideration of teaching 
 technique is perhaps to remind ourselves of the principle of 
 initial diffuse movements as applied to the establishment of 
 adaptations in the field of general education (see chap. x). 
 We are dealing with large units and comprehensive projects. 
 Our concern with them is that they shall contribute to genuine 
 growth in the pupil, not that the pupil shall always do a me- 
 chanically perfect piece of work. As the practical-arts course 
 goes on, the pupil will naturally eliminate many of his cruder 
 and more illy directed movements in favor of relative precision 
 and economy. Many teachers of the practical arts, especially if 
 they have been recruited from the field of the trades, tend to re- 
 verse the process and attempt to develop mechanical skill first. 
 The end is pretty apt to be that courses so conducted appeal only 
 to pupils who are disinclined to use their minds or who perhaps 
 have but a slender mental equipment to use. At the best, the 
 project will be only mechanical skill, which in most cases is not 
 the objective, and an educational result by chance if at all. 
 
 On the other hand, there is of course no justification for us- 
 ing the fundamental principle to which we have appealed as an 
 excuse for negligent and slovenly work. Practical-arts projects, 
 like study in the science-type subjects, should be used as instru- 
 ments for severe intellectual training in competent and respect- 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 425 
 
 able methods of work. The point at issue can perhaps best be 
 seen in a concrete illustration. 
 
 A young boy who is nailing up a piece of woodwork will 
 usually fail to hit the nail squarely, and, as a consequence, be- 
 fore it is driven home, the nail is bent. The youngster then ham- 
 mers the bent portion flush with the wood and repeats the proc- 
 ess later with other nails. The result is of course not merely an 
 unworkman-like job, but a slovenly piece of work. If allowed 
 to establish a tradition of such work, the boy’s volitional devel- 
 opment is not furthered and a contribution is made to the arrest 
 of development at a childish level, which we have discussed at 
 length in chapter xxi. The instructor invariably requires the 
 pupil to draw the nails and to do not a perfect but a right job. 
 If this part of the project is ruined, the pupil has to go back and 
 begin over. Now, the teacher whose mind is obsessed with the 
 thought, of a perfect mechanical product rather than occupied 
 with the purpose of developing the boy will not allow the pupil 
 to work on a project at all until he has learned the art of driving 
 nails correctly. 
 
 Again, in fitting two boards, perhaps, it is necessary to saw 
 accurately to line. Otherwise, the joint will not close and the 
 whole project, it may be, fails to function. Now the natural boy 
 will not saw to line, partly because he has not learned how but 
 largely because he will not make the effort. The task of the in- 
 structor is to convince him that he must saw to the line, not only 
 in this case but always. To do so is to work at mastery level. 
 Incidentally, the practical-arts teacher who is an educator seizes 
 the opportunity to generalize the training and establish a trans- 
 ferable ideal. In brief, he seeks to convince the pupil that saw- 
 ing to the line is an essential guiding principle in all school life 
 and in life in general. Thus does the pupil take a step in voli- 
 tional evolution. The formalist, on the other hand, will not allow 
 the pupil to work on a project at all until he has learned to make 
 joints accurately. 
 
 It will probably be objected that, unless the pupil is trained 
 
426 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 to accurate work as a preliminary, he will ruin a lot of valuable 
 material. The answer, of course, is that he should not be given 
 projects in mahogany until he has matured to the point at which 
 he can be trusted to deal with that kind of material. If he never 
 reaches that point in his general education, it does not matter. 
 A mahogany study chair skilfully executed makes an imposing 
 exhibition piece, but it reflects a product in pupil development 
 which may have been gained at a cost altogether out of propor- 
 tion to its value in his education. 
 
 A second preliminary warning in developing the principles 
 of teaching in this field is contained in the reminder that prac- 
 tical-arts courses in the shop, in the woodworking and black- 
 smithing activities in particular, are also manual-training 
 courses. The farther the school is from abundant opportunities 
 for manual work in the home and in the community, the more 
 does manual training loom large as a valuable and necessary de- 
 velopmental activity. Now, planing and sawing and hammering 
 constitute the chief manual-training activities. Wherever the 
 teacher, with an eye to the mechanical rather than to the human 
 product, introduces the power jointer or saw, he deprives the 
 pupil of a very important element in the value for which the 
 course stands. It is no rejoinder to assert that the modern car- 
 penter shop has replaced many of its hand tools with labor-sav- 
 ing machinery. General education is not using the woodworking 
 shop for the production of carpenters but for the development of 
 boys. 
 
 It is not ordinarily practicable for pupils to work together 
 on the same project unless the latter is a large one containing 
 operations which occur many times, such as, for instance, a sub- 
 stantial house project. To put several pupils together on a proj- 
 ect is apt to mean that no one of them will acquire the round of 
 experience for which the project stands. In the few instances in 
 which several, or perhaps a whole section, work together, the 
 conditions of course resemble those under which a working gang 
 of men operates. In working individual projects, there is no 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 427 
 
 hard-and-fast sequence, although of course the younger pupils 
 do not begin in the machine shop, not because the woodworking 
 projects are necessarily pedagogical prerequisites to the metal- 
 working projects, but because the latter require greater matur- 
 ity both of judgment and of volitional capacity. In domestic 
 arts and agriculture, and indeed in most practical-arts courses 
 other than shop courses, many pupils can be working upon the 
 same project at the same time. In the shops, the necessary du- 
 plication of apparatus would in most cases be altogether too ex- 
 pensive. 
 
 The course has then been organized in unit form and the ap- 
 propriate projects associated with the several units. There thus 
 appears a course outline which can be mimeographed and placed 
 in the hands of the pupils or printed on a chart and placarded 
 in an appropriate place in the shop or domestic-arts laboratory 
 or the classroom in agriculture. We thus come to the systematic 
 teaching procedure which has much in common with that of the 
 science type. 
 
 Pre-test in practical arts.—The pre-test member of the mas- 
 tery formula cannot be safely, or at least economically, ignored; 
 but the testing procedure is adapted to the nature of the course. 
 
 The needs of the pre-test are satisfied when the teacher has 
 become aware of the pupil’s present experience and knowledge 
 in the unit which the latter is about to attack. In some cases the 
 teacher will be sufficiently familiar with the out-of-school life of 
 the pupil to form an entirely valid notion of the latter’s apper- 
 ceptive background. This boy, for instance, is the son of a car- 
 penter, and he is known to be actively interested in his father’s 
 calling. He is released. Another pupil the teacher knows never 
 to have had the slightest contact with anything implied by the 
 unit. Others are quizzed in individual conferences. As the 
 course goes forward and the teacher becomes better acquainted 
 with the practical-arts side of his pupils’ lives, the pre-tests on 
 successive units practically administer themselves. 
 
 In other courses, and in some shop courses it may be, pupils 
 
428 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 will all be working the same unit at the same time. In that case 
 the pre-test is the exploration of the science type. 
 
 Presentation.—For each unit and project in the shop course 
 an extended set of mimeographed instructions is prepared, or, 
 if a suitable textbook is available, that is placed in the hands of 
 the pupils. Now such instructions essentially correspond to the 
 presentation in the science-type unit plus the assimilation guide 
 sheet. They might be given up in favor of an oral presentation 
 except for the fact that such a presentation would be required 
 for each pupil. In courses in which all work on the same project 
 at the same time, the regular science-type procedure of oral pres- 
 entation is followed. 
 
 In the matter of instruction sheets, it is important to note 
 that they should constiute a real presentation of the unit as well 
 as a guide sheet for the project. Teachers sometimes furnish 
 simply explicit guide sheets for the project in which the entire 
 operation is detailed from step to step. In such cases, the pupil 
 of course tends to become merely a laborer following out instruc- 
 tions which leave little opportunity for reflection. In the auto- 
 mobile unit, for example, the proper presentation is something 
 after this fashion. Attention is called to the less obvious aspects 
 of its place in social and industrial life. Its rapid evolution as a 
 mechanism is noted. Its peculiar availability for the service it 
 renders is set forth. (The teacher bears in mind that in most 
 schools today the pupils have had no experience with a motorless 
 age.) Attention is called to its singularly comprehensive charac- 
 ter as a machine. Its essential features are then explained in or- 
 der, and the vital parts of its upkeep, such as lubrication and 
 care of valves, of the ignition system, and of the electrical parts, 
 are enumerated. Easily understood drawings with a minimum 
 of detail are either included or else reference is made to easily 
 accessible charts or drawings in books. In the end, the pupil 
 should have in mind a clear and reliable sense of the unit and of 
 its import. 
 
 Before proceeding to the project, the necessary presentation 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 420 
 
 test is administered. This may be either of the two forms de- 
 scribed in the chapter on exploration and presentation (sec 
 chap. xv). On the whole, the written presentation test is to be 
 preferred for the sake of its marked effect in compelling intellec- 
 tual exertion. Whichever form is used, the pupil’s reaction to 
 presentation is not accepted until he shows evidence of having 
 thoroughly read and digested. If a test paper is submitted which 
 does not indicate mastery of this part of the instruction, the pu- 
 pil is told to read again and get the meat of the matter, although 
 of course not all the details. The immature boy, here as else- 
 where, is prone to half-read instructions, and every opportunity 
 is seized upon which will enable him to acquire a sense of work 
 thoroughly done. 
 
 The guide sheet for the project should indicate what is to be 
 done, but not how it is to be done. It should contain lists of ap- 
 propriate reading material and references to charts, working 
 drawings, book material, and the like but not such directions as 
 “Read pages 54-59.” In brief, the pupil is placed in the pres- 
 ence of his project with the background of his presentation 
 sheets and abundant collateral sources of material, but he is then 
 expected to work for himself and by himself. Exercises are indi- 
 cated; e.g., “Before trying to fit shelves, you will need to prac- 
 tice with the mitre-box until you are sure you can use it accu- 
 rately for the purpose intended. Use scrap pieces of board.” 
 The project is not a piece of ground-to-be-covered but an expe- 
 rience out of which it is intended that the pupil shall accomplish 
 certain learnings. 
 
 Assimilation—The practical-arts project corresponds to the 
 assimilation period in the science type and much the same tech- 
 nique is followed throughout. The same cautions are to be ob- 
 served concerning the tendency of pupils to sponge. The same 
 check and training on sustained application are required. The 
 problem case and corrective procedure are essentially the same. 
 The testing is different. The teacher has before him a typical 
 supervised-study problem. Not only the work but, as far as pos- 
 
430 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 sible, the mind of each pupil is to be followed. The requirements 
 can perhaps be made clearer by visiting first a poorly supervised 
 room and then one which is well supervised. 
 
 The first is a forge room. We note on entering that the air is 
 a haze of smoke traceable to poorly made fires and neglect of 
 drafts. Pupils are coughing in an atmosphere of sulphur fumes 
 and the coughing is rapidly becoming hilarious rather than physi- 
 ological. There is a clatter of tools being dropped upon the floor. 
 One group is skylarking. As soon as we can locate the teacher, 
 we note that he is feverishly trying to regulate a fire while the 
 pupil concerned is standing listlessly by and contemplating the 
 process. Presently, the teacher desists and shouts, ““Tom, get to 
 work on that job.” He rushes to the next boy and mends the lat- 
 ter’s fire. He then grasps the tongs from another, seizes an over- 
 heated piece of iron, and furiously hammers it on the anvil. 
 And so it goes. Investigation shows that the shop is being con- 
 ducted on the exercise basis. No one of the boys has any notion 
 of what it is all about. There has been no presentation and there 
 are no guide sheets. The teacher did, however, give a brief dem- 
 onstration yesterday, and if we had been present we should have 
 seen a group of fifteen boys huddled about a forge and anvil, the 
 rear ranks vainly attempting to get a glimpse of the process over 
 their classmates’ shoulders. In a brief conference at the end of 
 the hour, the teacher shakes his head dubiously and remarks, 
 ‘These boys do not seem to be able to concentrate.” 
 
 We next visit another school and find a general-shop room. 
 Here are carpenters’ benches, a few wood lathes, a half-dozen 
 blacksmithing outfits, a glue outfit, a tinsmith’s bench, and an 
 outfit of breast drills. Fifteen boys, as they enter, rapidly get 
 into jumpers and overalls and attack as many different projects. 
 The teacher is a quiet young man who has taken position near 
 his desk and his own working material where he can see all that 
 goes on. Every boy in the room is busily engaged on his own 
 task. There is no “visiting,” but occasionally two boys seem to 
 be comparing notes. Presently, one of the boys leaves his proj- 
 
 
 
x 
 Id 
 
 TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 431 
 
 ect, crosses the room, selects a volume from the bookcase, and 
 seats himself at a long study table. He makes some notes and a 
 rough sketch and after a time returns to his work. Meantime, 
 we hear the teacher call out, ‘Better start that again, George.” 
 A boy comes to the teacher and remarks, “I think I am all 
 through on Unit VII, Mr. .’? “All right,” returns the 
 teacher, “I will inspect and let you know tomorrow. Here are 
 the instruction sheets for Unit VIII.” This boy spends the re- 
 mainder of the period at the reading table. Another announces 
 that he would like the teacher to look over his work since he is 
 approaching a critical point. The teacher accordingly steps rap- 
 idly across the room, inspects the project, and we note that there 
 are three minutes of brief conversation. When the teacher re- 
 turns we inquire, ‘““How was it?” “Pretty good,’ is the reply. 
 “He will have to go back over a part of it.” Toward the end of 
 the period, a boy presents himself and remarks, “I am ready to 
 learn how to make a weld, Mr. , and I guess Frank is too. 
 We have read up on it and we think we see how it is done, but we 
 should like a demonstration.” ‘All right, can you and Frank and 
 John and William come in for a little while this afternoon?”’ 
 “Yes, sir, I guess so.” “But,” we inquire, ‘‘are these boys will- 
 ing to come back for after-school work?” “Yes, this place is 
 open till five every night for voluntary work and two-thirds of 
 this class is usually here. Ordinarily, I give a demonstration dur- 
 ing the class period, but this is rather a particular piece of work, 
 and it will take some time. As long as the boys are willing to 
 come, I prefer to make it an after-school affair.” Before the bell 
 rings, the teacher calls another boy to him and bids the latter be 
 present after the session. This boy looks grieved. 
 
 We are glad to return at 3:30, and, as the teacher antici- 
 pated, the greater part of the class is present. We are curious to 
 follow out the story of the reluctant pupil and so we listen to the 
 colloquy. “‘James, you are badly behind with your project. Do 
 you know why?” “Don’t work hard enough, I suppose.” “It 
 isn’t so much that as that you don’t know how to work. You 
 
 
 
 
 
432 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 dawdle and will not stick to your job. See, this is how you work 
 [application profile]. I have talked to you once before about 
 this. I have had a talk with your father, and he agrees with me 
 that the most important thing for you is to learn what work 
 means. See, here is a picture of Frank at work, and Frank is 
 here voluntarily. He is enjoying work and as soon as you be- 
 come willing to apply yourself, you will enjoy yourself too. So 
 you are going to work overtime until you have got into the habit 
 of making a good work profile. It is up to you.” 
 
 Meantime, the four boys in whom we are specially inter- 
 ested have started four forge fires. The teacher sits down with 
 them and quizzes them for fifteen minutes on the process of 
 welding. In the end he is satisfied that all four are thoroughly 
 aware what the process is and in general how it is carried out. 
 He then gathers them about a forge and makes his demonstra- 
 tion, talking as he works. After a few further questions on the 
 part of the boys, each takes some scrap and goes to work. The 
 teacher stands back and watches them. Very little is said until 
 the job is done. We note particularly that the teacher does not 
 keep up a continuous flow of advice, instruction, and interrup- 
 tions. When the boys have finished, there is a period of perhaps 
 ten minutes of discussing the work and then all four boys repeat 
 the process, and each makes an acceptable weld. 
 
 Such is the difference between a good technician and an in- 
 competent teacher. “But,” the reader may remark, “‘you have 
 simply pictured the difference between a hopeless rattle-brain 
 and a strong, capable man.” Not at all. We have contrasted a 
 man who is willing to work systematically, thoughtfully, and 
 with due self-control with another who is not willing to make 
 the effort. The inadequate, incoherent person whom we found 
 in the first school is not essentially different at bottom from the 
 boy whom we found in the second school under special training 
 for lack of sustained application. 
 
 In our description of the work of the second teacher, we 
 have suggested the application of the mastery formula to proj- 
 
TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 433 
 
 ect work and likewise the application of assimilation testing. 
 As a matter of fact, in practical-arts teaching both are largely 
 self-applied. The student who is working on a project and finds 
 that what he has done does not work out according to the picture 
 which is in his mind is naturally inclined to revise his operations 
 and try again. The teacher may in many cases be obliged to 
 hold students up to high ideals of effort and persistency; that is 
 part of their training in right attitude toward conduct. He may 
 at times need to make suggestions as to the seat of the trouble 
 which the student is finding it difficult to locate, but, if he takes 
 over the project for the time and locates the student’s difficulty 
 for him, he deprives the latter of any real educational product. 
 If the presentation has been thoroughly done and tested, and if 
 the instructor has seen to it that the shop is furnished with an 
 adequate working library of books and other collateral mate- 
 rial, it will seldom be necessary even to suggest. Here, as else- 
 where, in study periods, the most obstinate learning products 
 are the development of sustained application and the convincing 
 of each pupil that he can and must work out his own salvation. 
 
 The final assimilation test is the inspection and acceptance 
 of the completed project, but such is not the unit test. Be it re- 
 membered that the practical-arts unit objective is intelligent at- 
 titude. The working of the project is a performance which must 
 itself be checked up, but, after all, the project is only an expe- 
 rience out of which, in connection with the presentation and 
 more or less collateral reading, intelligent attitude may or may 
 not arise. In the end, the unit test is precisely similar to the unit 
 test set at the end of the assimilation period in the science type. 
 Like the latter, it is well to submit the student to an exploratory 
 unit test comparatively early in the project or assimilation period 
 in order to secure a basis for corrective teaching. Otherwise, the 
 pupil may come through to the end with non-mastery, and in 
 that case the unit has to be attacked anew with a second and dif- 
 ferent project. Of course a waste of time and motivation is thus 
 
434 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 incurred which might have been avoided by adequate follow-up 
 and reteaching. 
 ADMINISTRATION OF PROJECTS 
 
 As we have already noted, some practical-arts courses are 
 of a nature which permits all pupils to work on the same project 
 or equivalent projects at the same time, while others do not ad- 
 mit of such treatment. Others still admit of either treatment. 
 Again, practical-arts courses, like others, are susceptible to an 
 indefinite amount of voluntary enterprise study. The latter 
 may be in the form of additional projects, or in the form of ex- 
 tended investigations in the library. On the whole, in the field of 
 general education, the latter are probably to be preferred in 
 most cases. 
 
 When the course is of such a nature that purely individual 
 work is done, administrative problems arise which require a 
 more or less abrupt departure from standardized notions of ad- 
 ministrative routine. Apparatus is expensive, and enough of it 
 to provide every pupil with equipment whenever he needs it 
 would require an unreasonable amount of floor space. Nor is 
 the latter at all necessary or even desirable. While units, and the 
 suggestive projects under each unit, should be listed in con- 
 venient order, it does not necessarily always follow that all pu- 
 pils should begin at the same point on the list. Again, it is often 
 possible and even desirable that several pupils who are working 
 on the same unit shall work on different projects, all of them 
 focusing on the same unit. Finally, in courses which are carried 
 as strictly individual work, it is not essential that pupils shall 
 end the course or even begin it at the same time. A typical ar- 
 rangement may be pictured somewhat in the following manner. 
 
 The course is organized in units and posted. Under each 
 unit, if more than one project is possible, several are suggested. 
 
 Instruction sheets and guide sheets are made available and — 
 stored in a case accessible to all pupils. The instructor has pre- — 
 
 pared a master-sheet on which the names of the pupils registered 
 appear in a column to the left, while the unit titles or numbers 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN PRACTICAL ARTS 435 
 
 are carried across the top. The sheet is then ruled in rectangular 
 form. As each pupil completes a unit, he is checked in the ap- 
 propriate square. 
 
 Now, as soon as the class lists are prepared, the teacher, the 
 head of the department, and perhaps the principal’s office con- 
 fer. Pupil A is known to be a slow worker and something of a 
 problem case though in no sense remedial. Pupils E, M, N, O, S, 
 T, and W are in varying degrees much of the same order. All 
 are notified to meet the practical-arts teacher on the day sched- 
 uled for opening. Pupil B, however, is known to be relatively 
 well equipped already, and will probably be released on one or 
 more of the units. His beginning is deferred for three months, 
 and he is advised to throw himself with special energy for a good 
 start into a language course in which he is likely to be weak. 
 Pupil C will probably work effectively and need little corrective 
 teaching, but practical-arts work is new to him. His beginning 
 is deferred for one month. Several others are treated on like 
 grounds. As the course develops, Pupil E exhibits special talent 
 and completes the course early. Pupil B exhibits strong inclina- 
 tion for voluntary enterprises, and, in spite of the fact that he is 
 released on several units, the succeeding class has entered upon 
 the course before he finishes. Pupil C makes up his month and 
 finishes early, but he does no voluntary enterprises; his chief 
 interest is in history. Others finish at different times, but Pupils 
 A and B for different reasons run over the normal time allotment. 
 
 While we have drawn our illustrations largely from the shop 
 courses, the principles apply equally to all others which are 
 practical arts in their nature. The teaching may be concerned 
 with agriculture; with cooking or dressmaking; with accounting 
 or office practice; with drawing, design, or modeling. The char- 
 _ acteristics of all are: organization in comprehensive and signifi- 
 cant units which can be mastered as intelligent attitudes; the 
 selection of significant and comprehensive projects which focus 
 upon the several units; insistence upon creditable performance 
 in working the projects; effective testing and follow-up; and 
 finally testing for learning products implied. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 LANGUAGE ARTS 
 
 HE five types of learning which we are considering in 
 this part of our study have much in common, but for 
 
 practical teaching purposes the differences are much 
 more important than the similarities. The type which forms the 
 subject matter of this and the two succeeding chapters is dis- 
 tinctly the most pronounced in its peculiar characteristics, and 
 successful learning in the subjects which belong to the type is 
 more critically dependent upon accurate recognition of the 
 learning peculiarities involved than is the case in any of the 
 others. It has to do with the art of getting thought content or 
 some other form of impression from running discourse of some 
 sort, and with the art of giving expression to one’s thoughts or 
 emotions in the form of discourse. The type includes not only 
 reading and speaking and writing in language, but such kindred 
 learning objectives as musical and dramatic expression. In fact, 
 wherever the discourse element is present, we have the critical 
 differential which marks off the type. The name “language arts” 
 is chosen, not because the learning is limited to linguistic expres- 
 sion and impression, but rather because the pedagogical prob- 
 lem involved is most commonly found in the school languages. 
 In developing the type we shall study the teaching of languages, 
 but teachers of other subjects, such as the various forms of mu- 
 sical expression which belong to the type, will be able to under- 
 stand the principles set forth and apply them in their own spe- 
 cial fields. | 
 The learning objective in the language arts is always an 
 ability to read or hear or feel a message expressed in some form 
 of language, or else an ability to use some form of language to 
 express thought or feeling, without in either case focal conscious- 
 
 436 
 
LANGUAGE ARTS 437 
 
 ness of the discourse itself. Such ability we shall term generical- 
 ly a language-arts adaptation. We have already found it in the 
 primary reading adaptation discussed at some length in our 
 chapter i. There the child comes to the point at which he sees 
 through the printed page to the message beyond, much as a per- 
 son gazes through a window without consciousness of the glass. 
 In the same sense, the pupil who has learned to read French 
 without translating has attained a reading adaptation in French. 
 He no longer picks his words but looks through them to the mes- 
 sage which the complex of words conveys. Again, the person 
 who writes his vernacular for the purpose of conveying a mes- 
 sage to others does so without consciousness of the words he 
 uses. He does not fit words together in a sort of discourse mosaic 
 but rather the words fall into their right places while his mind is 
 centered on the thought which he wishes to express. He becomes 
 conscious of what he is writing only when an occasional right 
 word fails to drop into place. Using the same terminology, we 
 may call this objective the composition adaptation. Once more, 
 the musician can express the feeling which he wishes to arouse 
 in his audience only when he has developed such mastery of his 
 instrument that he is no longer obliged to pick his way over the 
 keyboard or strings. 
 
 Confining ourselves now to the language uses which are 
 commonly taught in the secondary period, let us take French as 
 an illustration of the learning of a foreign tongue. So far as use 
 of the language is concerned, there are two primary objectives, 
 either the reading adaptation in French which has just been de- 
 fined or the speaking adaptation which is a similar objective. 
 That the speaking adaptation can readily be learned in the 
 school is probably doubtful. A special social situation is re- 
 quired in which the proper motivation for converse is present 
 and the proper type of assimilative experience, that is to say, 
 _ practice in normal conversation, is available. That pupils can be 
 led to the reading adaptation in its full sense is beyond question. 
 We shall confine ourselves to the latter for the present. 
 
438 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The objective then being clearly in mind, the teacher pro- 
 ceeds directly toward its attainment. He utilizes such forms of 
 presentation, class exercises; and reading material as will defi- 
 nitely focus upon the attainment of the objective. He cherishes 
 no illusions that learning lessons about the structure of the lan- 
 guage will automatically transfer to ability to read. His proce- 
 dure is the essence of direct method. 
 
 It is important to discriminate between the reading adapta- 
 tion and certain other arts sometimes acquired. 
 
 The most obvious is the so-called translation ability, in 
 which the pupil learns to use a lexicon in one form or another for 
 the purpose of turning French into a sort of French-English. He 
 may retain in memory enough word meanings so that he be- 
 comes a veritable briefer lexicon in himself. In a clumsy and 
 awkward way, he can thus contrive to decipher the meaning of 
 the page. He is not reading but deciphering, not translating but 
 “transverbalizing.” He may indeed become so skilful that he 
 carries on the process rapidly but he is still deciphering and not 
 reading. 
 
 Students of language are universally agreed that a meaning 
 expressed in one language cannot accurately be expressed in an- 
 other by this process which we have called transverbalization. 
 Every people has its own peculiar thought processes which are 
 faithfully reflected in peculiar forms of expression. The pupil 
 who learns to read and reads a great deal comes to sense these 
 peculiar meanings. ‘To some extent, he enters into the spirit of 
 the other people and indeed this is in itself an important educa- 
 tional objective. The artist who is a master of both the foreign 
 tongue and of English can indeed translate, but he does so by 
 catching the thought expressed in the foreign tongue and then 
 endeavoring to express the same thought as the English-speak- 
 ing person would express it. 
 
 As we have seen, the test of the reality of a learning product 
 is its habitual use and permanency. Neither the deciphering 
 ability nor the school translation ability is likely to become a 
 
 ee ee ie ee 
 

 
 
 
 LANGUAGE ARTS 439 
 
 real product for the reason that use is too difficult. Nobody is 
 likely to use the foreign tongue habitually in that way unless he 
 is under some strong motivation, such for instance as employ- 
 ment as a translator. On the other hand, one who has learned to 
 read the foreign tongue in the same sense as that in which he 
 reads his mother-tongue is apt to be reading in both, as interest 
 or entertainment dictates. 
 
 Similarly, the fundamental objective in English writing is 
 the ability to express one’s self correctly and with facility. Now 
 this seems to be a unitary adaptation like reading ability. The 
 experiential process through which he has attained the adapta- 
 tion may have been a complicated one in which there are many 
 elements, but in the end the pupil habitually expresses himself 
 clearly and in conformity to conventional usage or he does not. 
 The contrasting situation is that in which the individual simply 
 does not bother to express himself other than in a semi-illiterate 
 manner. He seems to have no sense of an obligation to be sure 
 of his spelling, his punctuation, or his sentence structure. It may 
 be that he is not conscious of right usage or of composition but it 
 is certainly true that many times he fails to write as well as he 
 knows. Now, it is quite true that the person who possesses a 
 sense of correct writing is occasionally guilty of lapses. Prob- 
 ably everybody has such experiences. But there is a wide differ- 
 ence between him who fails to catch an error in proofing his pa- 
 per and him whose papers are a mass of illiteracy, who never 
 proofs his writing, and possesses no sense of the need of doing 
 so. 
 
 Now the teacher who has here the fundamental objective in 
 view all the time adjusts instruction, course content, and assimi- 
 lative practice to the end in view. He tests with reference to the 
 end, studies defects in the learning process, and corrects them 
 with the objective in mind. Again, this is the essence of direct 
 teaching. The teacher does not give a course in grammar and 
 then one in usage and finally one in rhetoric, in the expectation 
 that automatic transfer from performance in these several 
 
440 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 courses to the ability and the attitude which spells habitual cor- 
 rect writing will later take place. 
 
 SUCCESSIVE ADAPTATION LEVELS AND ASSOCIATED SKILLS 
 
 In the language arts, more perhaps than in other fields, it is 
 essentially important to distinguish between the fundamental 
 learning products on the one hand and successive masteries and 
 the associated skills on the other. 
 
 In the case of habitually correct writing, we have an in- 
 stance of a fundamental learning product. For purposes of gen- 
 eral education, that is as far as the individual need go. Some in- 
 dividuals, however, either because they become interested in 
 writing as such or because vocational needs require it, go on and 
 develop masteries at the levels of stylistic accomplishment. This 
 person, for instance, develops an expository style; another ac- 
 quires the style called for by good journalism; still another that 
 which makes him a successful writer of novels. These additional 
 attainments are characteristic of the persons concerned as indi- 
 viduals; we soon turn away from the writer whose style is a 
 purely conventional affair. The attainments are adaptations in 
 the same sense that the fundamental learning product of correct 
 writing is an adaptation, The man is known by his style in a 
 manner not very different from that in which he is marked off 
 from others by his features: it is a part of him. 
 
 On the other hand, facility may be built up on the basis of 
 any of these adaptations. This high-school pupil writes correct- 
 ly, and he writes rapidly and fluently. His vocabulary is flex- 
 ible, and he manages involved sentences well. Another writes 
 slowly, laboriously, and with a restricted vocabulary, but he 
 writes correctly. As far as the fundamental learning product is 
 concerned, the two are at the same level, but one has acquired 
 facility while the other has not. 
 
 Again, two pupils have alike arrived at the reading adapta- 
 tion in a foreign language. Both show the characteristics which 
 the latter implies. But one of them reads rapidly and, if tested, 
 
 
 
 | 
 | 
 ‘ 
 f 
 . 
 . 
 
LANGUAGE ARTS 441 
 
 shows a high rate score, while the reading of the other is slow 
 and his rate score is low. Both have arrived at the fundamental 
 learning product but they differ, perhaps widely, in skill. 
 
 Now the teacher and the school not infrequently center at- 
 tention either upon skill or upon the rudimentary appearance of 
 what are in reality successive masteries so that the true learning 
 product is lost sight of, with disastrous results. The school is so 
 interested in evaluating educational results in terms of the rela- 
 tive attainments of different pupils, that all pupils fall into the 
 chasm of no genuine attainment at all. The teacher notes that A 
 shows considerable facility while B shows less. As a matter of 
 fact, both are on their way to the mastery contemplated by the 
 course or sequence of courses, but neither has arrived. C shows 
 signs of what may turn out to be budding literary genius but he 
 habitually writes with scant regard to the requirements of cor- 
 rect writing. D, on the other hand, shows no literary promise 
 and writes as correctly as C. C is accordingly graded higher be- 
 cause the remotely possible literary genius he displays seems to 
 “require recognition.” In the end neither pupil acquires the 
 adaptation in terms of which he habitually uses correct English. 
 
 In the process of acquiring a language-arts adaptation, 
 whether it be the primary reading adaptation or a stylistic level 
 in specialized university courses, elements of skill begin to ap- 
 pear at once. Judged by performance, the pupil is improving. 
 He continues to improve in skill along the line of the character- 
 istic learning curve up to and through mastery of the learning 
 unit, but there is no evidence, from scores which reveal improve- 
 ment in skill, when the adaptation has been made or that it has 
 been made at all. Evidence of the latter must be sought in other 
 directions, for instance in the characteristic eye movements of 
 the reading adaptation. A rough method of identifying the pres- 
 ence of the adaptation in a reading course is to note when the 
 learner begins to read voluntarily upon exposure to attractive 
 reading material. Overlooking the principle just set forth leads 
 backward into a common form of lesson learning, in this way. 
 
442 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The teacher has no specific objective in mind, but only rela- 
 tive degrees of skill in different performers; but there must be 
 some standard of performance. What shall it be? There are two 
 possible answers. We may go back to our system of passing 
 grades and fix the standard at the score achieved by the poorest 
 performer of that group which we feel obliged to pass, or we 
 may set a standardized test and select as passing performance 
 the score achieved by some statistically selected median pupil 
 which becomes the norm. In neither case does the passing grade 
 of performance bear any relation to the attainment of a lan- 
 guage-arts objective. On the contrary, the standard set either 
 by the passing grade method or by the standardized norm 
 throws us back into a situation in which the adaptation will not 
 be attained except by a casual few. 
 
 It is nevertheless always possible to keep track of the true 
 learning product by observing the pupils in their progress toward 
 it and by identifying the point at which it is attained. The time 
 comes when we may say with confidence: A, B, and M have 
 learned to read or write in the true sense and they need continue 
 in this course no longer; C, D, and N have not reached that 
 point and they will need further experience. 
 
 THE TYPICAL INHIBITION 
 
 Language-arts learning, like learning in other types, is pos- 
 sible only when its own peculiar learning conditions are satis- 
 fied. The tendency of schools is to reduce all learning to a crude 
 science type process. The effect upon subjects which belong to 
 the appreciation type or to the practical arts is to make the 
 learning product nil, with or without inhibitions. The effect up- 
 on subjects which belong to the language-arts type is systemat- 
 ically to set up actual inhibitions of a peculiar and characteristic 
 type. We shall call them generically the language-arts inhibition 
 and adopt the term into our terminology. 
 
 The set of reactions which either learning or use of a lan- 
 guage art requires takes place in a situation whose characteristic 
 
 Ce iin 
 
LANGUAGE ARTS 443 
 
 is running discourse. The mind has no chance to pause for con- 
 scious reflection from word to word, although it may, of course, 
 pause for reflection upon the content which is contained in the 
 discourse. Any such pause, if it is a part of the learner’s method, 
 generates the mental set to which we have applied the term used 
 in the preceding paragraph. If a learner in a foreign language, 
 for instance, thinks to himself, ‘This word means and 
 this one I must look up; this word is probably a subject because 
 it is nominative and the exact meaning of this verb is continu- 
 ing past time because it is in the imperfect tense,” he proceeds 
 haltingly and after long and laborious effort builds up a deciph- 
 ering, transverbalizing ability falsely called translation. If now 
 we take such a pupil and try to teach him to read, we find that 
 he has the characteristic mental set which has grown out of his 
 learning experience. He is looking for words and other isolated 
 elements and even a slight appearance of unfamiliarity causes 
 him to balk. Those of us who have learned to read encounter a 
 
 
 
 . great many unfamiliar words even in maturity, but we read over 
 
 them to the meaning of the passage as a whole. Usually the un- 
 familiar word slips into its place from the meaning of the con- 
 text. If not, we do not stop until the meaning of the passage as 
 a whole fails to clear up, and then we go back and investigate 
 the unfamiliar word. In other words, we read for meaning, and 
 isolated elements fall into their places in the whole complex 
 which constitutes the meaning of the passage as a whole. 
 
 The language-arts inhibition in foreign language is chiefly 
 traceable to the grammatical daily-lesson type of approach. 
 
 The latter attempts to teach a language through the application 
 
 of science type principles to a discourse situation. It rarely suc- 
 ceeds and then only in a casual and uneconomical way. We oc- 
 casionally find a student who has been given long training in the 
 ordinary grammatical approach, acquiring thereby only the 
 ability to decipher with the aid of a lexicon, and whose language 
 needs call for the reading adaptation. In such cases it commonly 
 
 : happens that the language-arts inhibition must be broken down 
 
 ee 
 
444 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 by remedial treatment. In some way, he has to be taught to “let 
 himself go” and disregard the errors he may make in his seeking 
 rapidly for a sense of the meaning of the passage as a whole, re- 
 reading rapidly several times until the meaning begins to come 
 clear. It is interesting to watch such a remedial case and note 
 the persistence with which the language-arts inhibition holds on. 
 He has been convinced of the nature of his difficulty and has 
 seen clearly the way out, but if we watch him at work we shall 
 see him guiltily and furtively turning to his lexicon for the mean- 
 ing of an unfamiliar word. For some time he simply cannot get 
 over the malevolent insistence of that old mental set. 
 
 The corresponding situation in English expression is com- 
 monly found rather in the primary than in the secondary school. 
 The young child is natively extremely voluble. Apparently this 
 is nature’s method of giving him sufficient assimilative practice 
 for the needs of his developing power of expression in language. 
 If allowed to have his fling at home and school he is no doubt 
 tiresome to his elders, but he grows. By the time he has reached 
 the school age he has learned to tell a connected story, but he is 
 extremely prolix. Little by little his stories become coherent and 
 he takes on a certain charming individuality in what he has to 
 say and in his manner of saying it—provided parents and teach- 
 ers are possessed of unusual patience. Let the child grow up 
 in this way and we are quite likely to find an adult whose lan- 
 guage is, to be sure, devoid of conventions but nevertheless 
 graphic and forceful. We find individualistic ways of looking at 
 things joined with quaint and apt forms of expression. In the 
 highly artificial life of complex society we are more likely to 
 meet such people in secluded and somewhat remote corners than 
 in the standardized life of the city. But our loquacious child 
 seldom does have his fling. In the home he is suppressed, and in 
 the school he is not only suppressed but there are inflicted upon 
 him unended series of language ‘“‘don’ts.”’ His energies are di- 
 rected to language papers long before his handwriting adapta- 
 tion has become established, while he is still practicing exercises 
 
LANGUAGE ARTS 4A5 
 
 in penmanship. The result is familiar: the child will say little in 
 the schoolroom and will write less. Whatever he has to say must 
 express some form of school convention rather than a meaning 
 sensed and recognized by himself as meaning. The pupil is a 
 mass of language-arts inhibitions. 
 
 There is a somewhat similar situation in high school and 
 college, where good performance in a composition class refuses 
 to transfer to ordinary writing, although the lesson-learning ele- 
 ment is apt by that time to have also become influential. 
 
 In general, wherever in the learning of a language art the 
 learning process focalizes consciousness upon isolated elements 
 of the discourse situation, the language arts inhibition tends to 
 be set up. 
 
 ASSOCIATED LANGUAGE OBJECTIVES 
 
 In the courses ordinarily listed as language courses there are 
 commonly to be found objectives which are not of the language- 
 arts type. There is at least grammar, or the study of language 
 structure, and some portions of the literature. In foreign lan- 
 guage in the high school all three elements are likely to be found 
 mingled in the same courses, except that the literature is not 
 often found in the first course. The objective of the school either 
 announced or implied is learning to use the foreign tongue. 
 
 Now here are three widely different types of objectives, each 
 of which if brought into the same learning situation with the 
 others tends at the best to throw the purpose of teaching out of 
 focus and at the worst to set up inhibitions. 
 
 We have discussed elsewhere the legitimate and proper func- 
 tion of grammar as part of the educational equipment of the in- 
 dividual in any language. See chapter xiii, page 216. If it is 
 desirable to give the learner that independent critical command 
 of the language which grammar implies, then let us organize a 
 course in the essentials of grammar and offer it to pupils who 
 have acquired the reading adaptation. 
 
 Much the same sort of situation arises in the case of litera- 
 ture, using the term “literature” in the sense of belles lettres. 
 
446 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The proper educational objective here is the cultivation of taste 
 through the formation of adaptations of the appreciation type. 
 Now most such reading material is a highly developed type of 
 expression which makes of it very poor assimilative material for 
 the purpose of attaining the reading objective. If the pupil gets 
 the sense, he must read laboriously with much analysis and fre- 
 quent use of the lexicon for the interpretation of a highly devel- 
 oped vocabulary. The result is the accumulation of the familiar 
 inhibitions in reading and corresponding inhibitions on the ap- 
 preciation side. The extreme illustration perhaps is the use of 
 Caesar’s Commentaries and the orations of Cicero as vehicles 
 for the development of reading power in Latin. We should hard- 
 ly place the Civil War history of the Count of Paris in the sec- 
 ond grade, or the speeches of Daniel Webster in the third grade, 
 for the purpose of teaching children how to read English. Most 
 high-school courses in French or German show much the same 
 kind of misinterpretation of the pedagogical situation, though 
 perhaps not to an equivalent degree. The English department 
 meets the situation by placing its belles-lettres courses at levels 
 which are much later than that of the attainment of the reading 
 adaptation. Indeed it goes farther than that, for it does not at- 
 tempt to use a particular piece of literature in its courses until 
 the pupils are presumably sufficiently mature, both intellectual- — 
 ly and socially, to form the adaptations which the literature im- 
 plies. | 
 In like manner, the best modern schools do not introduce 
 the study of English grammar at all until after the pupil has ac- | 
 quired the art of expressing himself in his mother-tongue. | 
 An element of confusion is sometimes introduced in think- 
 ing out language-arts pedagogy through confounding reading © 
 which implies other learning products than those of the lan- — 
 guage arts with the fundamental reading adaptation. For in- © 
 stance, here is a pupil who reads readily books in elementary 
 science and he is adjudged therefore to be a better reader than 
 his schoolmate who reads readily only matter which is entirely — 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
LANGUAGE ARTS 447 
 
 non-technical. Not so: the first has simply acquired a set of un- 
 derstandings which enable him to get the sense of the science, 
 while the second has not done so. There is not necessarily any 
 difference in their reading ability as such, either in respect to the 
 fundamental adaptation or in respect to such associated skills as 
 high rate and assimilative power. No amount of training in 
 reading, apart from training in the subject matter read, would 
 improve the specific reading ability of the second. The compari- 
 son will stand for many similar instances found in the language- 
 arts field both in the secondary school and in the university. 
 
 A student, for instance, has learned to read German. He 
 now has occasion to read scientific German, in the field, let us 
 say, of chemistry. He does not succeed, and either one of two 
 reasons may be the explanation. The more likely explanation is 
 that he does not know his chemistry with a clarity which is suf- 
 _ ficient to enable him to read into the text the unfamiliar phrase- 
 ology. If he knows his German, he of course needs an illuminat- 
 ing glossary of the technical terms and phraseology in their Ger- 
 man use. In either case, the problem is a chemistry problem and 
 not a language problem. 
 | Similarly, a student may have the undoubted ability to read 
 
 French. He presently finds himself in a course which requires 
 the reading of diplomatic documents. He soon encounters the 
 same difficulty which his fellow-student has found in chemistry; 
 he is not sufficiently familiar with the course content even in 
 English and he probably lacks the needful glossary. 
 
 Turning to the field of written and spoken English expres- 
 sion, we encounter the same set of phenomena. In a specialized 
 field, the student stumbles in the use of the appropriate terminol- 
 ogy. The young pupil in the secondary period is prone to at- 
 tempt to meet the difficulty by the use of such expressions as 
 “that thing” and “that way.” The older pupil who is suddenly 
 introduced to a course in which the books use the severely tech- 
 nical terminology at first balks and then falls back on the lesson- 
 learning attitude. 
 
448 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 We cite these illustrations primarily for the purpose of mak- 
 ing clear the distinction between what is a language-arts prob- 
 lem pure and simple and situations in which a language-arts 
 problem is complicated with subject matter and study problems. 
 The practical solution, however, can be summarized by pointing 
 out the principle that teachers of science type subjects have lan- 
 guage-arts problems in the whole field of the development of 
 study abilities, problems which they can solve and which can- 
 not be solved economically and satisfactorily by giving special 
 courses, either in ‘‘reading science” in the elementary school or 
 junior high school or in “scientific German” or “diplomatic 
 French” in the university. If a foreign language is concerned, 
 the problem becomes one of specialized thinking in the foreign 
 tongue. The appropriate course to take is to recognize the dis- 
 tinction between general education and specialized training and 
 to see that all pupils in the secondary period have an abundance 
 of material in science type subjects in which the use of profes- 
 sional terminology is reduced to the lowest terms consistent with 
 clear thinking. 
 
 FUNDAMENTALS OF TECHNIQUE 
 
 Before going on to the consideration of the specific tech- 
 nique in the language-arts field most commonly found in the 
 secondary school, it is perhaps well to survey the learning proc- 
 ess in its more general aspects, and particularly with reference 
 to the peculiar importance of the law of initial diffuse move- 
 ments. 
 
 The principle seems to apply in this type more critically 
 than in any other, save perhaps that of pure practice. That is to 
 
 say, the learner acquires the learning products most economical- — 
 ly, most efficiently, and most abidingly by keeping his mind off | 
 his mistakes in the early stages of the learning process. What is 
 
 meant can perhaps be made clear by concrete illustrations. 
 
 The infant in acquiring some of the early and fundamental 
 adaptations is perhaps more definitely in a “state of nature” 
 than is ever the case in the schoolroom. Inhibitions are not set 
 
 Le v 
 
LANGUAGE ARTS 449 
 
 up, simply because the parent cannot make her instructions reg- 
 ister even if she desires to do so. The baby in his thirteenth or 
 fourteenth month who is arriving at the walking adaptation 
 would not heed specific instructions from his mother even if she 
 were to give them. No use to try to teach him to ‘“‘walk right 
 from the beginning” by pointing out his mistakes. He goes his 
 own way anyhow and achieves a very satisfactory success. He 
 creeps about the floor in his own individual way. He draws him- 
 self up to a chair and goes stumbling about in an unco-ordinated 
 sort of fashion for some days, every muscle in his body discharg- 
 ing itself quite without regard to its ultimate place in the neuro- 
 muscular complex which we call walking. Little by little the 
 random movements disappear and in a few weeks he toddles 
 about the house in substantial independence. He has reached 
 his walking adaptation. As body and limbs grow stronger, he 
 comes to exercise an agility at which most older people marvel 
 and which they perhaps envy. 
 
 So it is with talking, eight months or so later. After a long 
 period of babbling which is perhaps little more than the reflexes 
 of auditory sensations, he comes to the point at which he is con- 
 - scious of a simple message which he wishes to communicate. An 
 incoherent stream of sound issues. We are conscious that he is 
 trying to say something. He is encouraged and little by little his 
 messages begin to take shape and eventually his verbless sen- 
 tences appear, sufficient for present needs. He uses the infant 
 patois or baby talk, but still he can talk. As experience expands 
 and the content which he wishes to communicate becomes itself 
 more complex his means of communication keep pace. His skill 
 on the level of the talking adaptation improves. Under favor- 
 able conditions it continues to improve into middle life or later. 
 
 Now, if we could divest ourselves of our own experience in 
 this kind of learning and view it in a purely objective way, as 
 perhaps a visitor from another planet might view it, we should 
 probably be astonished at the learning which the infant achieves 
 
450 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 and the brief time in which he achieves it. No courses of three 
 or four or five years for learning to talk, but rather scarcely 
 more than as many months, after the learning process as such» 
 has actually begun. 
 
 A somewhat similar situation seems to have existed in for- 
 mer days when white men were frequently thrown into contact 
 with savage peoples. Here was foreign-language learning with- 
 out either grammar or beginner’s book indeed. Nevertheless, 
 the castaway sailor or the lonely missionary contrived to learn 
 the language. Much the same situation reversed was found 
 when the stranger in our midst came among us with a tongue as 
 wholly unknown to us as ours was to him. No interpreter and 
 yet in a surprisingly short time he learned our language. How 
 clearly there comes back to some of us his painful and incom- — 
 prehensible attempts, his later grotesque misapprehensions of 
 single words and his perversion of all grammatical principles. 
 Nevertheless, he contrived to make his meaning perfectly clear 
 and eventually to carry on a fluent conversation of his own kind. 
 If possessed of native sense and taste and aspiration, he some- 
 times came to speak a pure English which most of us might ad- 
 mire. 
 
 In all of these situations we find two elements standing out 
 clearly. There is always a message to be communicated or re- 
 ceived. The message is central in the learner’s mind. He be- 
 comes totally regardless of the manner of communication, as 
 long as he eventually succeeds in conveying his meaning or re- 
 ceiving the meaning which he wishes to get from others. The 
 learning process is a series of random movements, hit or miss, in 
 which the hits gradually come to exceed the misses and the lat- 
 ter finally disappear altogether. Sometime during the struggle 
 of hits and misses, a feeling of confidence in language use comes 
 and thenceforth learning is simply a matter of the final elimina- 
 tion of misses, that is to say, the acquisition of skill or facility. 
 Such is the essence of language-arts pedagogy. 
 
 
 
LANGUAGE ARTS Ast 
 
 The principle is applied in the primary school in teaching 
 little children to read.* 
 
 First of all, the children are exposed to an abundance of op- 
 portunities to read. The playhouse has its signboard. The new 
 cart has its descriptive label. The sitting hen has the briefest of 
 stories stenciled above her nest. And so the children become in- 
 timately familiarized with the fact that there is a symbolic lan- 
 guage equivalent to their own spoken language. Presently a few 
 of the children begin to announce that “they know what that 
 says.” A class is now formed. The teacher recalls some vivid 
 experience which all have recently had, and she presently gets a 
 sentence from one of the children suitable for her purpose. The 
 sentence is printed on the board or on a stencil and the children 
 become aware of the symbolism. In a few days, a succession of 
 these sentences appears, making a complete story. The children 
 thus become familiar with the notion of a continuous discourse 
 in. print, and eager to get more of this printed talk. They may 
 be seen at odd moments practicing with the material. For some 
 time it is mere memory process. They know that somewhere 
 there is a sentence which says thus and so, but their eyes are apt 
 to be on any other as they repeat the sentence they have in mind. 
 In a brief time, however, they follow down the chart or board with 
 clear and correct recognition. In three months or less they have 
 built up a use vocabulary in which words have been learned from 
 reading thoughts, instead of sentence meanings being put to- 
 gether out of words learned elsewhere. Books are now placed in 
 their hands, but, instead of being read in oral exercises, content 
 reading is induced by asking questions about the meaning. If 
 the children were asked the exact meaning of sentences in terms 
 of the words used, the response would be meager. If they are 
 asked to tell the story, the response is good and it becomes bet- 
 ter with practice. The law of initial diffuse movements is in op- 
 eration. There presently comes a time when the pupil becomes 
 
 1See Hardy: Teachers’ Manual to Child’s Own Way Series. 
 
452 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 word conscious, but instead of being set up artificially in the be- 
 
 ginning, the mental attitude comes naturally with the inclina- — 
 
 tion to eliminate the last of the random movements. It seems to 
 correspond to the period when the baby ceases to toddle and be- 
 gins to walk. Unless circumstances prolong this period and 
 thereby cause arrested development, the learner quickly passes 
 
 it and reaches rapidly to the reading adaptation. When he seeks 
 
 the book table and becomes absorbed in a book, it is pretty like- 
 ly to be true that the reading adaptation has become established. 
 This point can be verified, of course, by noting the eye move- 
 ments which are characteristic of true reading. 
 
 As soon as the pupil*has indubitably reached the reading 
 adaptation, he is released from further class work, unless and 
 until observation of his silent reading suggests some defect 
 
 which needs correcting. He reads abundantly books of his own © 
 
 choosing. For the best results, a reading room or children’s li- 
 brary is provided, in charge of a teacher interested in children’s 
 
 reading and versed in the pedagogy of reading. Likewise, the © 
 
 teachers of geography, history, and other content subjects do not 
 forget that an essential part of their own technique is the devel- 
 
 opment of study ability and study ability is very largely profi- — 
 
 ciency in reading in special fields. Laboratory studies of chil- 
 dren’s subsequent development in reading ability show that with 
 rare exceptions they continue to improve in comprehension, rate 
 of reading, and proficiency in oral reading, in spite of the fact 
 that they do not meet in a reading class for perhaps three or 
 even four years prior to the end of the sixth grade. 
 
 This condensed description of method in primary reading © 
 will stand as the type for any sort of language-arts learning — 
 
 whatsoever. It fits the foreign language in the high school or 
 
 college, or in adult evening classes, the learning of vocal music, — 
 the piano, violin, or other form of musical expression; and it © 
 
 fits the acquisition of ability in English composition. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
a 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 
 
 specific fields, the point of primary and fundamental im- 
 
 portance is a clear perception of the objective and an effec- 
 tive resolution on the part of the teacher to keep the objective 
 in mind to the exclusion of cross purposes. The objective in this 
 case is the reading or the speaking adaptation in the foreign 
 tongue. 
 
 The method can be summarized as learning to read thought 
 content by abundant experience in reading thought content from 
 the beginning. It utilizes images set up by the use of voice, ear, 
 eye, and hand, applied to the symbols in which the thought con- 
 tent is expressed, and trains them to work effectively together 
 in conveying to the mind intelligible and reliable impressions 
 gathered from the printed page or the spoken word. 
 
 |: this, as in all our chapters on the technique of teaching in 
 
 FIRST STAGE 
 
 The beginners’ class enters the room without books, papers, 
 or notes. It has no assignment and receives none, and such con- 
 
 _tinues to be the case for many months. The teacher speaks in 
 
 the foreign tongue some command such as “Open the window.” 
 He repeats it several times, with such gestures as may furnish 
 the needed cue, until he gets some pupil to carry out the order. 
 
 ‘He continues to repeat until the class as a whole reacts satisfac- 
 
 torily. He then writes the command on the board and awaits the 
 response in the same manner. Finally he has one pupil after 
 another practice the commands, calling upon other pupils by 
 name to carry them out, using both oral and written commands. 
 Pupils are encouraged to “let themselves go” without self-con- 
 
 453 
 
454 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 sciousness of their awkward vocalization of the strange tongue. 
 No rules for vocalization are given: the pupils simply imitate the 
 teacher. This process continues until the class has acquired an 
 initial sense of the use of the language as a vehicle of expres- 
 sion. Each day, the significant words and phrases are used again 
 but varied in their combinations. For instance, “Open the win- 
 dow” becomes ‘‘Open the door.” We use the term “initial sense” 
 advisedly, for, while every pupil in the class may know perfectly 
 well that as a matter of fact the language which he is beginning 
 to learn is used for the expression of thought, such information 
 is very different from the sense of reality which comes from ac- 
 tual use. Furthermore, the pupil is launched on his career of 
 reading thought content directly instead of being allowed to be- 
 come accustomed to the notion that language learning is a mat- 
 ter of learning words and forms in isolation and afterward put- 
 ting them together in discourse which has a meaning. The proc- 
 ess of building up the eye-voice-ear-hand connections is begun 
 at once. 
 
 In this early stage, the executed command is ideally the best 
 device in any language, for it gives the best assurance that the 
 pupil reacts to the sense of a full sentence instead of focalizing 
 
 upon the meaning of separate words. It can be used in an an- 
 cient language like Latin as effectively as in a modern language ~ 
 
 like French, provided the teacher himself has a sufficient com- 
 mand of the ancient tongue. Such is not often the case. Further, 
 the pupils are not likely to have occasion to read Latin which 
 
 deals with current affairs expressed in modern thought content. 
 
 Consequently, even if they should build up a Latin usage sense, 
 
 drawn from the physical classroom itself, let us say, it would be r 
 
 likely to be expressed in terms which would later find no place 
 in their reading. Hence, the modification described below. 
 Instead of the command used in a modern language, sen- 
 
 tences on the board are used. The board is kept perfectly 
 
 free from all other work which might enter the fringe of con- 
 
 sciousness and distract the attention with the effect of forming 
 
 Se ee ee ee ee ae ae ee mae | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 455 
 
 a blurred and vague visual image. The teacher secures perfect 
 attention, saying “I am going to place on the board a Latin sen- 
 tence which means ‘the man is good.’”’ An instant of pause, 
 holding the class, and then the sentence is rapidly written in large 
 and clearly formed letters and promptly erased. He then utters 
 the sentence aloud two or three times, places it upon the board 
 and erases it in the same manner as before. Next a pupil is 
 called upon to read the sentence in Latin and then several pupils 
 in succession; finally the class in unison. The initial sentence is 
 then varied into puer est bonus, puella est bona, cibum est bon- 
 um, homo fuit bonus, puer est validus, etc. In this way a usage 
 sense of words and forms is built up, but the forms are always 
 sensed in their meaning in the sentence and not as isolated and 
 abstract words. The teacher must use much greater precaution 
 than is necessary in the modern language command step to pre- 
 vent the pupils’ building up an initial habit of looking for word 
 meanings rather than sentence meanings. If the teacher pro- 
 nounces the sentence slowly and artificially word by word in- 
 stead of reading it aloud, this is just what will happen. 
 
 A variant on this procedure is to use flash cards on which the 
 sentences as used are printed. Each card is then displayed for 
 not quite a second, and as it disappears the class gives the Eng- 
 lish meaning. Exercises of this sort are used day after day until 
 all pupils except the identified problem cases fall into the swing. 
 
 Whether the teaching is in a modern European language 
 like French or German or an ancient language like Greek or 
 Latin, this first-stage work is continued until the pupils react 
 readily to thoughts which can be expressed in short sentences, 
 even though the sentence itself be complex. They will have built 
 up a considerable use capital of words, forms, and simple syn- 
 tactical constructions. 
 
 SECOND STAGE 
 
 When the possibilities of the first stage have been exhausted, 
 as they should be after two or three weeks at the most, longer 
 paragraphs are placed on the board. ‘Placed on the board” is 
 
456 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 used only in a general sense. The board will be used a great deal 
 at first. Afterward, mimeographed material, or readers if suit- 
 able ones can be found, may be used instead of the board. It is 
 imperative, however, that the use of books or mimeographed 
 material shall not lead to home or out-of-class assignments. The 
 inevitable result with most pupils would be lesson-learning. Ii 
 pupils exhibit a genuine interest and wish for such material, by 
 all means they should be allowed to have it, but not in any case 
 material which is to be used presently in the class. Such pupils 
 may well be loaned the simplest of books in the foreign tongue. 
 If they are really interested, these will best meet the need. If 
 they are concerned only with lesson-learning, the books will 
 not gratify the desire. In modern language, the paragraph 
 thought content should be something which is absolutely famil- 
 iar to the class. In Latin this is not so easy, for the reason ad- 
 duced above. However, the content in the latter should be at the 
 least wholly intelligible, eliminating all reference to such strange 
 terms as the names of Caesar’s military diplomats. When the 
 paragraph is on the board, the teacher reads it aloud, distinctly, 
 but not as word by word pronunciation. Perhaps it is read sev- 
 eral times, the class is called upon to read in unison, and finally 
 several individuals are called upon. The teacher asks questions, 
 first about the salient meanings and then questions touching 
 remoter meanings. Of course it is an advantage to have ques- 
 tions so couched that they can be asked in the foreign tongue 
 and similarly answered. Language development will in that way 
 be more rapid, and the class will gain confidence. It is not, how- 
 ever, essential to the principles of the teaching involved as such. 
 The matter of critical importance is that there shall be no trans- 
 verbalizing the passage, or translation in the ordinary school 
 use of that term. 
 
 The process is continued until-the class has built up a use 
 vocabulary of perhaps 200 common words and a use familiar- 
 ity with the most common word forms and syntactical peculiari- 
 ties. By actual count, some pupils in the third month of such 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 487 
 
 exercise work as that of this stage and the preceding were found 
 to be using in written papers (see below) from 250 to 275 dif- 
 ferent words and word forms. The principle to be observed here 
 is that such word meanings and form and syntax meanings 
 should be developed slowly in proportion to the amount of con- 
 tent read. That is to say, the same meaning should appear over 
 and over again in the paragraphs placed upon the board, and, 
 while new meanings either of word or form or syntax should ap- 
 pear daily, they should not appear in such abundance as to in- 
 duce the class to begin the memorization of such isolated items. 
 Similarly, the class should not be required or encouraged to 
 make lists of isolated meanings to be memorized. All the teach- 
 er’s technique should be focused upon getting the class to read 
 content and to pick up word and form meanings from the con- 
 text instead of in isolation. 
 
 It is hard for the teacher who is habituated to the grammat- 
 ical approach to believe that it is at all possible for pupils to un- 
 derstand the meaning of a form unless that form has been prac- 
 ticed in isolation until the pupil has a visual image of its place 
 in the list of its kindred. It is still harder for him to believe that 
 the pupil can manage a meaning expressed, let us say, in Latin 
 indirect discourse, unless he has studied the principles of indi- 
 rect discourse and then learned to make the application. Never- 
 theless, the pupil does so in practice, with on the whole less diffi- 
 culty than his fellow-pupil at the same stage of advancement 
 who has been trained in the grammatical principles involved and 
 who has memorized all the paradigms which he has occasion to 
 use. He does so because he is learning according to the princi- 
 ples which apply to effective learning in this type. See pupils’ 
 written passage quoted below, page 463. 
 
 A few days prior to writing this chapter, the writer saw two 
 Latin classes on the seventeenth day after the beginning of the 
 first course. One section read a long board full of paragraphs 
 with little difficulty. The other was handed a new volume of 
 Latin stories and in a few minutes, less than ten, extracted the 
 
458 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 meaning from the first two pages. The process was in no sense 
 different from what would be taking place about six weeks later, 
 in the first-grade reading classes, with children who had begun 
 to learn to read their mother-tongue on the same day on which 
 the Latin sections had begun to learn to read Latin. 
 
 Nevertheless, these Latin beginners had not completed the 
 stage which we are now considering. They should go on building 
 up their use meanings to the point at which, when they take the 
 printed volume, they will read it with reasonable readiness, a 
 readiness such that they will not be encouraged to begin the 
 process of deciphering, such that the sense of new word meaning 
 will tend to come from the context read. This prolongation of 
 the second stage implies the preparation of a good deal of as- 
 similative material in which the gradient from a meager usage 
 vocabulary to one which is considerable is slow and easy. There 
 is little material ready-made for this purpose. The teacher can 
 best prepare such material himself, and that takes time. Never- 
 theless, the accumulation of material year by year will in a very 
 few years give an abundant quantity. The defect in most be- 
 ginner’s readers or first books is that the gradient referred to 
 is much too steep. New words and forms appear so rapidly that 
 the learner does not assimilate in the manner required by lan- 
 guage-arts principles. He becomes swamped in the mass of new 
 isolated learnings and promptly falls back on the process of 
 memorizing, deciphering and transverbalizing. 
 
 Unlike the situation found in the assimilation period of the 
 science type, every day’s teaching is also a day of testing. The 
 teacher can become very sensitive in his rapport with the actual 
 progress of a language class. Reteaching becomes a process of 
 turning back to the reading of material at a lower point on the 
 gradient of difficulty until the class catches its stride again. Or 
 it may mean lingering at the point now reached and supplying 
 an abundance of new material in which the word and form 
 meanings that have been used are kept but no new meanings are 
 
 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 459 
 
 added for a few days. The critical points in the reteaching are 
 two. 
 
 First, the teacher should avoid isolating a new meaning 
 whether of word, form, or syntax and studying it by itself out of 
 context. On the other hand, it may often be well, in the case of 
 a meaning which is difficult to catch, to fall back on first-stage 
 principles and develop the usage from sentences at the board. 
 
 TABLE XIV 
 
 
 
 Second, it is imperative that the teacher shall “follow the 
 mind” of the class and of every individual in it, shall learn to 
 sense without formal testing whether or not the class is learning. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is essential to careful teaching that there 
 shall at intervals be set a formal test for the purpose of more 
 deliberately taking stock of progress. In this manner. 
 
 A selection of considerable length is chosen, long enough to 
 give opportunity for the inclusion of most of the vocabulary and 
 
460 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 form and syntax meanings used to date, but not of progressive 
 order of difficulty. A series of twenty to thirty questions is then 
 carefully framed to cover the thought content. The pupils write 
 answers to the questions, the papers are collected and studied, 
 not for the purpose of scoring but for the purpose of extracting 
 such light on the progress of the learning as they may contain. © 
 The charted results of such a test may perhaps look something 
 like the exhibit in Table XIV. Right responses are indicated by 
 —}; wrong ones by X. 
 
 90-100 Per Cent L7//TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT TTT THT TTT ITLL] 
 
 80- 89 Per Cent [TT/ 
 70-79 PerCent //////7/ 
 60- 69 Per Cent LITT TL) 
 
 10- 19 Per Cent (777 
 
 te Ne 
 
 FIG. 9 
 
 Let us see what we can make out of the exhibit, bearing in 
 mind that we are interested in its disclosures as to the progress 
 of the class, and of the individual pupils, toward the reading 
 adaptation and not in the relative values of the scores made by 
 the different pupils. 
 
 First of all, we note that F and G have reacted correctly to 
 every item they have tried. We know them for painstaking but 
 rather slow workers. The evidence of learning in their cases is 
 as good as that in the cases of D and O who have tried every 
 item of the test and have reacted to all correctly. The suggestion 
 that F and G might have failed in subsequent items if they had » 
 tried them is no better than the suggestion that D and O might 
 have failed on items 25-30 inclusive if such had been included. 
 The evidence may disclose that these two pupils have wasteful 
 learning habits, but it does not disclose that they do not learn. 
 Accordingly, we shall first consider the per cents of rights, and 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 461 
 
 we shall throw these into a distribution for its disclosures touch- 
 ing the learning in the class as a whole. (See Figure 9.) 
 
 On the whole the disclosure is that the daily follow-up and 
 control technique have been fairly good. If it had been otherwise, 
 the distribution would have looked more like Figure ro. 
 
 We note that there is a wholly disproportionate number of 
 failures on item 10. Probably the question was a “misfire.” If 
 so, a little reconsideration will be likely to disclose the difficulty. 
 If we decide that the question was in fact of that character, then 
 four more pupils are added to our too per cent list. If, on the 
 other hand, we can find no good 
 reason why pupils should not have LIL] 
 reacted correctly to the question, LZ/7/////7// 
 we must conclude that it points out (777777777777 TTT TTT 
 a region in which teaching is called 
 for. Al 
 
 Questions 5-7, 9, I2, 13, I5, 
 
 17, 19-25 indicate regions for re- CZ// 
 teaching, not, be it observed, with 
 
 reference to the questions themselves, but with respect to the 
 word, form, or syntax meanings with which they are associated. 
 
 Now, turning to the pupils, A, E, K, and L evidently need 
 some special corrective teaching. C and M may or not. Indi- 
 vidual conference will disclose. 
 
 Pupil H is a problem case for study. It is early in the course 
 yet and we may be able to find and correct the obstacles which 
 are hindering him or we may find he has some deeply rooted im- 
 pediment which will make it undesirable for him to continue in 
 the study of language. 
 
 We now have definite guidance for continuing our teaching 
 intelligently. 
 
 Throughout the first two stages, it is imperative that very 
 high control technique shall be secured. Always essential, it is 
 particularly so in language teaching at this point. If the precau- 
 tion is not observed, the result will be a distribution like the sec- 
 
 FIG. 10 
 
462 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ond above shown. So long as that type of distribution appears, 
 the class as a whole is not making progress. In time, one individ- 
 ual after another will join the “passing grade” fraternity in one 
 form or another, leaving only a few who really learn.. 
 
 As soon as a sufficient use vocabulary has been built up, the 
 pupils should be encouraged to begin writing, not exercises, but 
 continuous stories of their own. Volunteers at first are induced 
 to ‘plunge into” discourse and write as well as they can. They 
 are told not to mind making mistakes. Of course they will make 
 them: that is the way we learn a language. The teacher who can 
 induce the class to forget their schoolroom shyness and formal- 
 ism will be surprised to see how soon pupils will be writing really 
 acceptable French and Latin, with fewer blunders on the whole 
 than those who come to this stage after months, and years even, 
 of formalized exercise work, and with infinitely more zest and 
 reality in their writing. There is on file in the laboratory an orig- 
 inal Latin play written by a second-year girl who began this 
 way. A tactful teacher who has the educational point of view 
 and who can forget her prepossessions in favor of bringing all 
 pupils into some sort of relationship to standard performance as 
 contrasted with learning will soon have most of the class writing, 
 each in his own way. There will be great differences in the excel- 
 lence of the writing as performance, but as long as the pupil is 
 writing and endeavoring to express himself, the quality of his 
 performance as such is of minor importance. He is practicing 
 in the use of the foreign tongue for the expression of thought, 
 and that is the basis from which he builds up his language 
 adaptations. Furthermore, he is not primarily learning to write 
 but to read. Self-expression in the foreign tongue is an important 
 part of the language-arts complex which manifests itself chiefly 
 in reading. 
 
 The following passage is the direct quotation of a paper in 
 
 Latin submitted in a beginner’s class on November 3. The 
 
 course began on October 3. The paper was therefore turned in 
 on the 24th day. 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 463 
 
 MARCUS 
 
 Marcus filius Publii est. Publius agricola est, sed Marcus in bello 
 pugnat. Marcus arma multa habet. Arma scuta, gladii, galea sunt. 
 Marcus in castris Romanis manet. Interdum aestate in oppido habi- 
 tat. In tecto pulchro manet. Soror Marci Julia est. Marcus saepe 
 Cornelian et Publium non videt. Cornelia mater Marci est. In casa in 
 agra in insula parvo habitant. Ex fenestra tectis in oppido silvam 
 vident. Noctu stellam claram et lunam pulchram vident. Vesperi 
 
 Marcus puellis et puerorum fabulas narrat, set puerorum fabulas non 
 amant. 
 
 Marcus amicum habet qui nauta est. Nauta solus stat. Nauta 
 Marcum exspectat, sed Marcus domi est. Marcus cum Helena est. 
 Nautam non videt, et nauta miser et defessus est. Nauta ad tectum 
 ambulat et Helenam videt. Helenam laudat, sed Marcus Helenam 
 amat. Nauta Juliam, sororam Marci, amat. | 
 
 The quotation is the paper just as it came to the teacher. It 
 contains mistakes, but no more than would be likely to appear 
 in a daily exercise which would ordinarily be set several months 
 later. The mistakes are not important in view of the fact that 
 the pupil is having an experience of using new words, forms, 
 and syntactical principles to which she has become accustomed 
 through use. She uses a genitive for the subject of a clause, but 
 then in most sentences she uses the nominative. She uses the 
 same genitive as an indirect object, but in the same construction 
 she uses another word in its proper case. The pupil had never 
 learned a word or form in isolation. She had never memorized 
 a vocabulary or a paradigm. If she had ever heard of the accusa- 
 tive case, she had picked it up elsewhere than in the class. She 
 had not been told that the direct object is in the accusative, but 
 had sensed the use from her board work. The discourse is not 
 Ciceronian but it is Helen’s. She blunders in Latin, but she still 
 blunders as yet in English. Of a collection of 37 first year papers, 
 representing 19 different pupils, dating from November to 
 March of the first year, the paper quoted is one of the best, but 
 it is by no means the best, nor does it represent the climax of 
 expressional capacity among these pupils. After eleven days 
 
464 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 more practice, another pupil passed in a paper of more than 
 twice the length and revealing much more complexity of expres- 
 sion. The paper last named is flawless except for one misuse of 
 a case form. The shortest paper has 47 words and 9 errors, and 
 this is about the poorest in the lot. 
 
 The reader will thus be able to see more concretely what is 
 meant by early writing and to realize that the pupil can in fact 
 be led into the stride which means writing and not mere exercise 
 work. If it can be done with Latin, it can the more readily, 
 effectively, and profitably be done with a modern language. 
 And so it is. 
 
 THIRD STAGE 
 
 When the class has accumulated a stock of word, form, and 
 syntax uses sufficient for rapid book reading, the second stage 
 fades into the stage of book reading. If the usage meanings 
 which form the basis of training in the second stage have been 
 systematically related to those found in the books which it is 
 intended to use first, of course the gradient from the second 
 stage into the third will be the more easily negotiated. 
 
 So far as is possible, the books selected for the third stage 
 should be real content and not merely school exercise books. 
 Such are comparatively easy to find in German, they are less 
 frequent in French and Spanish, and rare indeed in Latin. It 
 may perhaps be suggested in passing that here is a rich field of 
 service for American teachers. There is needed a list of titles, 
 particularly in French, Spanish, and Latin, reaching to many 
 times the number which are now available. These books will 
 have to be made. One of the most effective types of such books 
 has been found to be stories which, though not translations, 
 are based upon stories with which children are familiar in their 
 mother-tongue. An example is Miss Perley’s Que fait Gaston. 
 
 The book in the hands of the class, the procedure is essen- 
 tially the same as that followed in the second stage. A selection 
 of considerable length, a page or more, is read silently by the 
 class. The pupils are told first to read rapidly, not pausing for 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 465 
 
 unfamiliar words or obscure passages, and they are assured that 
 even on the first reading the larger meanings will begin to ap- 
 pear, though perhaps vaguely and uncertainly. They next read 
 silently again, not sentence by sentence, but perhaps paragraph 
 by paragraph, or it may be by groups of sentences. The meaning 
 begins to clear up and in this way the pupil learns how to search 
 for the sense of the longer passages. Such is supervised study in 
 the language arts. As different pupils reach what appears to 
 them to be satisfactory apprehension of the meaning of the se- 
 lection read, the teacher is notified; and, when most of the class 
 have finished, the teacher quizzes on the meaning. By the end of 
 this period, the troublesome words and other usages are pretty 
 likely to be brought to the teacher’s attention, and these are 
 then taken up and explained. 
 
 “Explained” is used advisedly: the English equivalent of a 
 meaning is not sufficient. In a very true sense, there are no such 
 equivalents, for any word takes on its meaning from the context. 
 Even in the mother-tongue a given word has materially different 
 meanings in different contexts. For instance, the word “man” 
 may mean simply a male as distinguished from a female. It may 
 mean an adult as distinguished from a boy. It may mean a per- 
 son who has the attributes of virility which we like to associate 
 with mature manhood in contrast with others who have them 
 not. And it may have a variety of other meanings. 
 
 In this way, every class period is a teaching test and an index 
 to the teacher as to the reteaching required. 
 
 Some passages encountered will contain constructions which 
 will clear up later. These the teacher passes by. More often the 
 teacher will realize the need of reteaching of specific usages and 
 then a brief period is taken for the purpose, using the principles 
 of the second stage. Some individuals will appear as problem 
 cases, needing individual corrective work, and these we shall 
 discuss later. 
 
 As in the second stage, there is need of testing periodically 
 for more exact evidence than the day-to-day test will give. And 
 
466 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 so the test is framed essentially on the principles of that already 
 discussed, and interpreted in the same manner. The difference 
 between the two is one of degree rather than one of kind; the 
 present test is focused on a more highly developed discourse. 
 The reteaching, however, is of the same kind. If the class as a 
 whole is vague in its capacity to interpret the printed page, the 
 indications are prima facie that the gradient is becoming too 
 steep. We turn back to easier reading. If there is little or no 
 failure, the reading is pushed on rapidly to a region in which the 
 gradient is more steep. The problem cases are noted and studied. 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to warn the reader that the initial pre- 
 sumption of poor test results is that there has been neglect of 
 
 control technique, that the teacher has allowed various members 
 
 of the class to drop out of the learning situation. Hence, the sys- 
 tematic and careful teacher endeavors to scrutinize this aspect 
 of his work first in a severe self-examination, before considering 
 his language-arts problem as such. 
 
 Throughout the reading stage, the free writing is kept up. 
 The several pupils if skilfully handled will develop writing pow- 
 er as practice goes on and as the character of the reading dis- 
 course develops. 
 
 Pronunciation and phonetics ——The reader has doubtless in 
 mind the query, what about pronunciation, vocalization, pho- 
 netics? The point requires some discussion. 
 
 It is very easy here to mistake the primary objective, and in 
 that way to waste time and to work at cross purposes. It is per- 
 haps unfortunate that many people judge a child’s ability to 
 read his mother-tongue by his efficiency or fluency in oral read- 
 ing. A considerable degree of skill in oral reading is entirely 
 compatible with very poor proficiency in real reading for con- 
 tent. Similarly, many people think that a good command of for- 
 eign language accent is synonymous with command of the lan- 
 guage itself. It does not follow. 
 
 Good oral command may very well be an objective in itself, 
 apart from and in addition to the reading objective. If so, then 
 
 
 
 ae tae, ee = ee See 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 467 
 
 the skilfully devised methods of the phonetician are not only 
 helpful but indispensable. In that case, not only is it desirable 
 that the pupil shall learn the use of a visual phonetic alphabet, 
 but it is necessary that he shall be drilled in vocal exercises until 
 his vocal apparatus as a whole becomes adjusted to the new uses. 
 Such practice is no part of the language-arts procedure, but an 
 instance of pure practice teaching of the first sub-type. It may 
 be desirable, and often is, but the teacher must not confuse this 
 objective with the reading objective. 
 
 On the other hand, vocalization seems to be intimately a 
 _ contribution to the acquisition of language-use sense. Reading 
 probably always involves that subconscious utterance which is 
 sometimes called inner speech and which seems to be bound up 
 fundamentally with the thought process itself. Competent gram- 
 marians say that many forms which enter into the grammatical 
 structure have a phonetic significance. Hence, all through the 
 three stages which we have studied, practice in oral reading, 
 provided it is not practice in mere word pronunciation, is a great 
 help, and perhaps an essential in acquiring that language sense 
 which ultimately leads to the reading adaptation. In so far as 
 the use of phonetic devices is an aid in achieving this purpose of 
 oral reading, they should be used, but they should not be allowed 
 in this present connection to become an end in themselves. 
 
 In the first stage in modern language, there is a good deal of 
 natural practice in vocalization. High-school pupils, at the aver- 
 age age of fifteen, will not prove so adaptable as younger chil- 
 dren at the age of nine or younger. Their vocal habits have be- 
 come more firmly established. But they are nevertheless capable 
 of learning effectively in the presence of a teacher who has good 
 vocal command himself and is willing to exert such influence as 
 
 ~ hehas. 
 
 In the second and third stages, there should be a great deal 
 _ of reading aloud. It is not essential that all the content read 
 shall first be vocalized. That would be wasteful of time, and it 
 would quickly degenerate into routine. During the second stage, 
 
468 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 perhaps one of the board paragraphs will be read aloud daily. 
 The teacher reads fluently and with natural expression, but not 
 too rapidly. If the selection is Latin, he does not attempt to read 
 with the clipping utterance of a modern language, but rather 
 bears in mind that Latin is rich in vowel sounds, sonorous, and 
 when well read has been said to suggest the tramp of the Roman 
 legions. He then reads again, and the class follows him in uni- 
 son, the teacher’s voice dominating. The purpose is not prima- 
 rily to train pupils to read aloud but to give them practice in 
 vocalizing a series of language meanings. As the class gains con- 
 fidence, first one and then another is called upon to read orally. 
 The reading pupil is not interrupted to call attention to false 
 quantity or false phrasing. Rather when he has finished, the 
 teacher reads over the defective passage and the pupil follows 
 him. In the end, the proficient pupils may be called upon to lead 
 the class in unison practice. In the third stage, the class will 
 read aloud less frequently but the pupils are advised that read- 
 ing aloud at home will help them greatly. Perhaps one day in 
 five on the average is set apart for prolonged practice. 
 
 Throughout the stage of silent reading, in class, from books, 
 the emphasis is upon much reading rather than upon intensive 
 reading. The teaching problem is to furnish the basis for so 
 much practice with content which has a meaning and appeal of 
 its own that the principle of initial diffuse movements may have 
 full swing, under motivation which originates in interest in the - 
 content read. The foregoing statement of principle should of 
 course not be taken as advice to encourage or accept negligent, 
 or half-hearted, or effortless reading. An essential part of the 
 teacher’s task is always tc be on the hunt for suitable reading 
 material. 
 
 Free reading.—Silent reading in class is, however, far from 
 being the whole story. In addition, the class should be exposed 
 to an abundance of free voluntary reading out of class. From the 
 beginning of the course, in French for instance, long before pu- 
 pils have made much progress in class reading, there should be 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 469 
 
 placed on a suitable table in the classroom a stock of French 
 reading material, not school exercise books but books and peri- 
 odicals made to be read. Such material should be really exposed 
 to the class and the class to it. This does not happen when books 
 are placed in rows in a bookcase, behind closed doors. Assum- 
 ing the material to have been well selected and effectively dis- 
 played, the teacher will find that first one and then another pupil 
 is lingering about the book table and trying to read French. As 
 the stage of silent reading from books comes on, pupils will often 
 become enthusiastic in practicing their developing power to read, 
 and the results will, of course, effectively reinforce the learning 
 which takes place in class. As a matter of fact, children so 
 treated do read in abundance, often an incredible amount. Now 
 the formalist can quickly kill an incipient intellectual interest of 
 this sort by becoming unduly critical as to whether the pupils are 
 “reading thoroughly.” It is not essential that they should read 
 thoroughly. If they are reading voluntarily what they desire to 
 read, that is quite sufficient. The class silent reading under con- 
 trol will care for that purpose of thorough reading which is wise 
 thoroughness. Thoroughness, by the way, applies to mastery of 
 the objective and not primarily to performance on exercise 
 work. If the pupil reads for a book report, in most cases he will 
 not read at all unless forced to do so. If he reads for credit, his 
 reading must be checked up and the whole pedagogical purpose 
 of free reading is lost sight of. On the other hand, free reading 
 which is really free gives us the best possible evidence of ap- 
 proaching mastery of the true learning product, because it en- 
 ables us to observe the behavior of the pupil in an unsupervised 
 and unconstrained situation. The pupil who is really reading 
 will disclose to the teacher in manifold ways the reality and 
 extent of his reading. He will wish to talk about his reading. He 
 will bring difficulties to the teacher. He will talk over the book 
 he would like to read next. 
 
 In Latin, the problem of free reading is of course more diff- 
 cult, for the reason that the material is much less abundant. 
 
470 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Nevertheless, the industrious teacher will find a great deal. At 
 least, copies of all the books which contain the material to be 
 read later may be left on the table together with copies of the 
 classics. 
 
 The reading adaptation.—The stage of silent reading, with 
 its associated writing and collateral free reading, is obviously the 
 foundation of the first course, the course which leads to the read- 
 ing adaptation. The time required may be six months, a year, 
 two years. Time-to-be-spent is not the primary consideration, 
 and it is certainly not a valid method of evaluating progress. 
 After perhaps six months, the teacher begins to observe the free 
 reading habits of pupils more closely, with the purpose of watch- 
 ing for signs of approach of the reading adaptation. Presently, 
 he notes that a certain pupil becomes absorbed in books contain- 
 ing non-technical discourse of ordinary difficulty, the standard 
 perhaps of a popular story written for the average reader in a 
 modern language. The pupil shows little of the puzzled brow 
 which is associated with deciphering, he seeks not for the lexicon 
 nor for annotations. His features show much the same play of 
 interest which is exhibited when he reads a similar English selec- 
 tion. We observe him as he turns the pages. He does so at inter- 
 vals corresponding rather closely to what would be the case if he 
 were reading his mother-tongue. As he turns the page, his eyes 
 seek the upper lines and he reads on. He does not pause and 
 gaze about the room as though he were summoning resolution 
 for a fresh start. If we profile his application for twenty minutes, 
 the result is a straight line with occasional momentary distrac- 
 tions. After several observations of this sort we feel confident 
 that the pupil is reading. We may assure ourselves by observing 
 the eye movements on one or more occasions. If they show the 
 characteristic reading fixations, our first impressions are con- 
 firmed. We are further assured when we note that all the recent 
 reading tests have shown few if any mistakes. The pupil has fin- 
 ished the course and is excused from further attendance in class, 
 but he is admonished to come to the teacher periodically to re- 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 471 
 
 port what free reading he is doing and otherwise to confirm the 
 teacher’s judgment. If he proposes to go on with the language 
 and a section in a grammar course is open, he is allowed to enter 
 that. If no section is open, he waits for one. Other pupils will 
 require a longer period of development before the objective is 
 attained. A month later, two or three perhaps have mastered. 
 Later still others; and perhaps some will run over into the second 
 year. And then there are the non-learners, subjects for special 
 study. 
 PROBLEM CASES 
 
 The slow learner or the non-learner in a foreign language 
 presents many of the same learning maladies which we have 
 found in our study of the assimilation period in the science type. 
 In some respects, he presents difficulties which are peculiarly 
 language difficulties. Some obstinate cases for which remedial 
 work is indicated in the sciences are hardly worth either the 
 pupil’s or the school’s time and energy in the languages. After 
 all, the learning oi a foreign language is the learning of an art 
 which may contribute to the fundamental adjustments to envi- 
 ronment which we call education but it is not itself one of those 
 adjustments. The pupil may use French, for instance, as the key 
 to whole storehouses of assimilative material in the arts and sci- 
 ences and social intercourse, to which his mother-tongue does 
 not give him access, and that is valuable, but it is not determina- 
 tive of the possibility of an educated existence in the world. 
 
 Our first concern is the slow language learner who is natively 
 such and not slow merely because of lack of application or some 
 other correctable defect in his learning process. Such pupils 
 make steady progress and ultimately achieve the learning prod- 
 uct of the course as truly and as well as do the rapid learners. 
 Their needs are ordinarily sufficiently well met by grouping the 
 class in fast and slow sections. The problem of the rapid learner 
 is much like that of his slow contemporary and is met in the 
 same way. In order to provide for both types and the various 
 gradations between, it is ideally desirable to have as many sec- 
 
472 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tions in the reading course as the registration and administration 
 exigencies will permit. Under these conditions, a new section of 
 beginners is started every few months, let us say at least every 
 semester. The pupil who then becomes identified as a rapid 
 learner is placed in the fast section. In turn, he may in excep- 
 tional cases find his way into a section which is still farther on 
 the road toward the course objective. 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to remind the reader that Course I, 
 the reading course, is not conceived as a course which neces- 
 sarily conforms to the traditions of the school calendar and is 
 thereby limited to the academic year. Some pupils may reach 
 the reading adaptation in less than a year and some may require 
 nearer two years. The difference between June and September 
 is not other than the difference between April and May, except 
 that the long summer vacation may introduce a period of more 
 or less loss of power gained. 
 
 As in the case of supervised study in the science type, slug- 
 gish learning or non-learning may be traceable to poor sustained 
 application. The pupil is not natively slow, but he will not apply 
 himself. He takes only a languid and perfunctory part in the 
 essential class exercises. His mind is elsewhere. It is, of course, 
 important that the teacher shall identify and correct his habit 
 before accepting the pupil as a slow learner. Otherwise, he will 
 presently prove to be simply the tail of the slowest section as he 
 is now the trailer in a relatively fast section. It is a volitional 
 problem which requires vigorous personnel work by the teacher 
 and perhaps by the personnel staff of the school. 
 
 The problem case may be a decipherer in his mother-tongue. 
 See problem cases in science type assimilation period, chapter 
 xvi, page 285. Conference with teachers of the content subjects 
 will probably reveal that he is slow in the assimilation period 
 and possibly a non-learner. His language-arts inhibitions will 
 have carried over from English and he is not likely to learn a 
 foreign language until they have been removed. Corrective or 
 remedial treatment in the content subject, where such treatment 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 473 
 
 is essential, is likely to go far toward the removal of his inhibi- 
 tions in foreign language. In most such instances, the case will 
 probably be best handled by dropping the pupil out of foreign 
 language until the defect has been remedied, allowing him to 
 enter a section which begins later, perhaps the next year. 
 
 Sensory difficulties with either vision or hearing are of 
 course peculiarly inhibitory of progress in a language section. 
 Of the same order is the case of the stammerer. Vision can usu- 
 ally be remedied. The remedy of hearing defects is more diffi- 
 cult. Stammering can now be corrected in many if not most 
 cases. If the hearing is so defective as to amount to a serious 
 impediment, the pupil would best be advised to forego learning 
 to read a foreign language unless his need is imperative. Of 
 course, he might still acquire the reading ability in a course con- 
 ducted on special principles. The stammerer would similarly 
 best be advised to drop the language course, at least until his 
 defect has been remedied. 
 
 Nutritional disorder and low level of general health of 
 course present the same obstacles to language learning as they 
 do throughout the process of education, and the same principle 
 applies to the emotional cases discussed in chapter xvi. 
 
 There remains that class of cases which are usually con- 
 signed to the limbo of “‘no language ability.” Except in rare in- 
 stances of peculiar language maladies which are likely to reveal 
 themselves earlier in learning to read the mother-tongue if they 
 appear at all, and subnormal children, it is perhaps doubtful that 
 there is such a thing as congenital language inability. However 
 that may be, it is certain that many cases usually classed as na- 
 tive inability are in fact either correctable or remedial on some 
 of the counts enumerated above or on others not listed, provided 
 the pupil’s educational needs make it worth while to make the 
 attempt. 
 
 GRAMMAR 
 
 Quite as important as the teaching itself is the sequence of 
 
 courses provided. 
 
474 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 On the principles to which we adhere, the first course has | 
 for its single objective ability to read. For different individuals, 
 the time required for attaining the objective may differ greatly. 
 As we have seen, objectives which require attention to isolated 
 elements of discourse, if included in the course the objective of 
 which is the use of discourse in its fundamental purpose, will 
 tend to set up the language-arts inhibition and either slow up 
 the learning process or divert it into a process of acquiring de- 
 ciphering or transverbalizing ability. For many pupils, the read- 
 ing course is all that is essential or even desirable. It is the for- 
 eign language contribution to a general education. The pupil 
 has now an implement which he can use in assimilating the con- 
 tent of books and other material printed in language other than 
 his own, and in securing a more immediate contact with the life 
 and thought habits of alien races. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be and frequently is desirable to 
 utilize the foreign tongue for the purpose of reading at the level 
 of advanced culture the literature of another people or for the 
 purposes of exact scholarship. In either case a process of train- 
 ing is called for, the objective of which is putting the student in 
 possession of the refinements of meaning and an understanding 
 of the principles of the discourse structure. Thus does he be- 
 come capable of an independent and critical attitude toward the 
 exact meaning of what he reads and what he writes. A distinct 
 course in grammar is called for conducted on science type princi- 
 ples. (See chapter xiii.) Similarly, a companion course is indi- 
 cated, the purpose of which is essentially a study of the exact 
 meanings of words as they appear in reading material selected 
 for the purposes of the course. 
 
 It should be noted, however, that both these courses, and 
 especially the grammar course, have very practical and definite 
 objectives. They are not offered for any vague developmental or 
 disciplinary purposes. Grammar is learned in order that the 
 pupil may acquire certain understandings of sentence structure 
 which enable him to grasp more exactly the meaning of what he 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 475 
 
 reads, not for the purpose of giving him exercises in mental 
 gymnastics. Thus the units in grammar can be more intelli- 
 gently selected and focused upon the objective intended. If a 
 given unit meets an essential need for the understanding of dis- 
 course, it is used. Otherwise it is excluded as non-essential. 
 
 THE LITERATURE 
 
 Just as the course in grammar is necessarily distinct in 
 method and in objective from the reading course, so the courses 
 in literature proper are distinct from either. The objective in 
 the reading course is a language-arts objective, in the grammar 
 course it is of the science type, in literature it is an objective in 
 appreciation. There is no pedagogical objection to the use of 
 pieces of literature for silent reading purposes in the third stage 
 of the reading course, provided the content has its own immedi- 
 ate appeal. Such, however, is not often the case. It is notably 
 far from true when the attempt is made to use the Commentaries 
 of Julius Caesar and the Ovations of Cicero as assimilative ma- 
 terial in developing a reading ability in Latin. Again pieces of 
 literature may be used as basal material in studying the refine- 
 ments of word and form and syntax meanings, but in that case 
 the purpose is linguistic and not literary. 
 
 In general, literature courses in modern languages should be 
 conducted in accordance with the principles set forth for the 
 conduct of English literature in the appreciation type, and we 
 shall add no further comment. 
 
 Courses in Latin literature, or Greek if it is still found in the 
 school, present problems of their own, largely because there is 
 not available a sufficient body of reading material for a low 
 gradient leading through the reading course and into discourse 
 of the complexity which the classical writers use. Hence, in the 
 reading of Cicero, for instance, there is a language-arts problem 
 as well as one in appreciation. For this reason, the following 
 
 suggestions are contributed. The Catilinarian Orations are used 
 
 
 
 as our point of departure. 
 
476 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Now the Orations against Catiline deal with an episode in 
 Roman life which has had its counterpart again and again in the 
 later history of the world and even in our own times. The 
 speeches themselves are the denunciation of a master of invec- 
 tive directed against a man who is conceived to be a scheming 
 politician engaged in capitalizing the discontent of the times for 
 his own aggrandizement. To read them effectively is to catch 
 the meaning of the conspiracy itself, to sense the point and effect 
 of the speeches, perhaps to form some opinion of the value of 
 Cicero’s apology for the execution, and withal to experience the 
 tale as it was told two thousand years ago by one of the world’s 
 greatest orators. Similarly, in reading the Archias we are read- 
 ing a memorable eulogy of culture and of the man of letters. In 
 reading the Manilian Law we are dealing with a forensic, in 
 intent much like a speech in our own Senate uttered in support 
 of a pending measure. To read the speeches with these things 
 in mind is very different from using the Latin text as an exercise 
 in transverbalization and syntax. 
 
 In conducting the reading of the Catiline, our first task is to 
 see that an adequate picture of the times and of the setting of 
 the oration is drawn. This may involve one or more presentations 
 at the hands of the teacher, and it certainly will involve the read- 
 ing and discussion around the table of several books which deal 
 graphically with the period and with the events. In the end, the 
 class approaches the reading of the Latin itself with an intelli- 
 gent appreciation of what it is all about and hopefully with some 
 curiosity as to how Cicero made out and what he had to say. 
 
 Taking the first oration, the teacher makes a clear presenta- 
 tion of the argument as a whole and then perhaps of the section 
 which it is proposed first to read. This first section is read aloud 
 by the teacher, and then teacher and pupils read in unison. It is 
 difficult to get too much of this oral reading, provided it is well 
 done and is not allowed to become a matter of routine. 
 
 The class is then asked to study the passage and to make 
 an outline of the points which the orator is making, all in the 
 
TECHNIQUE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE 477 
 
 classroom. As in the silent reading, the class is advised to read, 
 not translate, several times if need be, until the meaning begins 
 to clear up. 
 
 Finally, using the principles of the silent reading stage in 
 the reading course, the meaning is brought out by specific 
 questions centered upon the meaning. When this has been done 
 and not till then, questions may be raised touching obscurities 
 of meaning, but these are made plain by explanation and not by 
 translation. In similar fashion, the whole oration is covered, and 
 the other orations. 
 
 Bearing in mind the principle that this is or should be an 
 appreciation course primarily and a language-arts course sec- 
 ondarily, its value in the secondary curriculum should be judged 
 on appreciation principles. If there is probably something of 
 appreciation value in Cicero for the pupils who are to pursue 
 the course, then there may be some sound educational reason for 
 offering the course. If the pupil is reading Cicero only because 
 successfully passing the course will give him the necessary cred- 
 its for the next step in his institutional routine, then it is not 
 likely that any educational product will appear. 
 
 Much the same situation is found with respect to the reading 
 of Virgil or other poets. If the pupil has actually acquired the 
 reading adaptation, he will still experience much the same kind 
 of difficulty which he encounters in reading some of the more in- 
 volved poetry of his mother tongue, different in degree perhaps 
 but not different in kind. The same procedure is followed as in 
 the case of the Ciceronian Orations, adapted of course, to the 
 peculiar requirements of poetical expression. Reading aloud, 
 which is important in the orations, becomes trebly important in 
 poetry, especially in the form of metrical rendering of the con- 
 tent. Sense of value, which is vaguely felt as one perceives the 
 meaning of the content, becomes acute and lasting as the rhythm 
 and cadence make themselves felt. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 HE composition adaptation is reached when the pupil 
 has arrived at the stage at which he customarily ex- 
 
 presses a coherent stream of thought in correct language 
 forms, without focal consciousness of the discourse itself. Like 
 all the true learning products, the adaptation amounts to a 
 change in the pupil himself, a change which is the result of long- 
 continued growth. His attitude is one of unconstrained desire 
 to express himself clearly and correctly and his command of 
 correct usage is such as to enable him to do so. Such is the 
 teaching objective. 
 
 Now it ought to be borne in mind that the expression of a 
 coherent stream of thought implies intellectual coherency in the 
 source from which expression issues, namely the mind of the 
 writer. Hence the attainment of the adaptation is a function 
 of the student’s whole education. The contention so often heard 
 that the most reliable mark of the educated man is the character 
 of his discourse, especially his deliberate written discourse, has 
 the best of foundations in our study of the educative process 
 itself. And we see clearly again the very important principle 
 that some of the best training in composition must of necessity 
 come out of its use in the mastery of the subjects which are 
 found especially in the science type of teaching but also in the 
 appreciation and practical arts types. Further, we see how it is 
 that the adaptation must in the nature of things come slowly 
 as the result of a long process of intellectual growth. 
 
 It is very important to distinguish between the adaptation 
 itself and both developing facility and the associated skills. 
 
 Even the young child has considerable skill in oral discourse 
 and perhaps some rudiments of skill in writing. He improves 
 
 478 
 
 
 

 
 TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 479 
 
 from year to year and under favorable conditions may perhaps 
 improve indefinitely. Few productions, of acknowledged literary 
 merit even, are incapable of improvement. The line of the child’s 
 improvement is not a straight line. It is full of periods of little 
 development, and, owing to the interference of growth implica- 
 tions discussed later, it has not infrequently periods of tempo- 
 rary regression. But along the line somewhere the adaptation 
 takes place. Below that level the pupil cannot be trusted to ex- 
 press himself as well as he knows even. Above that line, he can 
 be so trusted. 
 
 Again, long before the adaptation level has been reached, in- 
 dividual pupils will begin to reveal signs of the associated skills. 
 This pupil is notably clearer in exposition than most, in spite of 
 the fact that he spells poorly and is frequently guilty ot gross 
 grammatical errors. Another has a striking facility in descrip- 
 tion, another presents a rich content, another writes rapidly, and 
 so it goes. 
 
 Now, in the school which is obsessed by the rank-in-class 
 stereotype, the teacher feels impelled to “recognize” these vari- 
 ous qualities and facilities, and in the end the objective is lost 
 sight of entirely. Instead there is necessarily substituted a gra- 
 dation of judgments of performance in the English classes and 
 the inevitable passing grade standard. Even the most highly 
 graded performers may have missed the adaptation. They fre- 
 quently do so. In any case the adaptation will be reached only 
 by the accidental few. 
 
 The most effective enemy of progress toward the true learn- 
 ing product is our old acquaintance, the lesson objective and the 
 lesson-learning attitude. The adaptation is not reached until the 
 pupil has gone through the transformation in terms of which he 
 customarily writes clearly and correctly whenever he has occa- 
 sion to write. The routine of teaching and administration which 
 evaluates lesson performance in the composition class and neg- 
 lects composition performance elsewkere rapidly builds up an 
 entirely false attitude in the pupil toward his learning and sets 
 
480 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 up a formal performance objective in the place of the true learn- 
 ing product objective. In general, he feels clearly that when he 
 has satisfied the composition teacher in a particular course or 
 even in a particular month in that course, it is an injustice to be 
 required to use what he has learned in his writing in other classes 
 or even in the same class at an earlier period. His whole attitude 
 toward learning is a purely commercial one in which he under- 
 stands the teacher’s part to be the setting of tasks and his part 
 to be the acceptable performance of those tasks, in return for 
 which he is entitled to certain credits. That the performance of 
 tasks should leave him in possession of certain powers for gen- 
 eral use seems not to enter the comprehension of the typical les- 
 son-learner in this field, or indeed in any other field. 
 
 The first step in preventing the development of the lesson- 
 learning attitude or in breaking down the attitude if it has be- 
 come established, is to require the pupil to use what he has 
 learned whenever he writes. The first step, though essential, is 
 not, however, enough. Faithfully carried out, purely as a matter 
 of routine, it soon becomes formal and the pupil tends simply to 
 broaden his conception of lesson performance. Whereas before 
 he had only the English teacher to satisfy, now he recognizes 
 that he has others as well to satisfy. The second step is then to 
 convince him, by direct attack on the attitude itself, that he 
 should desire to write well, not because the school requires it but 
 because it is a part of his education. It is comparatively easy 
 to teach pupils to spell and punctuate correctly, to grasp and 
 apply correct principles of grammar, to apprehend and apply 
 correct principles of usage, but it is often exceedingly difficult 
 to develop in them what may perhaps be called a discourse con- 
 science. Nevertheless, this is the critical step on the road which 
 leads to the learning product sought. The pupil who fails per- 
 sistently to respond becomes a remedial case of the volitional 
 type. 
 The student of mental and intellectual processes, and the 
 literary critic as well, can analyze the adaptation and tell us the 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION = 481 
 
 elements which can be discovered. Indeed, to some extent we 
 have herein done so. Pedagogically, however, the adaptation is 
 a unitary matter. Either the pupil can write and does write in 
 the sense in which we have defined the adaptation, or else he 
 cannot, or more probably does not. If he is growing in his gen- 
 eral intellectual content and organization thereof, his style will 
 steadily become more mature as he grows older. In the end, he 
 may rise to the level of expert performance along some line. But 
 from month to month, the test is, Does he write in such form 
 that the qualified reader can catch his meaning without being 
 interrupted by meaningless sentences, ungrammatical expres- 
 sions, incorrect usage. Analysis of the adaptation throws valu- 
 able light on the teacher’s problem, but, if the teacher substitutes 
 for the adaptation itself a succession of element objectives, the 
 chances are that the adaptation will never be attained. For the 
 rule of the law of initial diffuse movements with steady elimina- 
 tion of random efforts, is substituted a series of proficiencies in 
 elements which may or may not coalesce in the single proficiency 
 and attitude required. The school inevitably tends to fall back 
 on the rule of percentage achievement. In the minds of the 
 teacher and pupil alike, the forest becomes lost in the trees. 
 
 INTERFERENCE OF MATURING PROCESS 
 
 The interference of the maturing process in the pupil sets 
 up what may conveniently and not inaptly be termed a moving 
 goal. As the pupil grows in intellectual breadth and in coherency 
 of his intellectual content, he has more meanings to express, his 
 meanings are more complex, and he requires new usages and 
 discourse forms for the expression of his meanings. Conse- 
 quently, he tends to become involved in sentence structures and 
 word usages which are awkward and crude and for which he 
 often needs new criticism and help, either from the teacher di- 
 rectly or from a manual, and a rich assimilative experience of 
 purposeful writing. He finally, nevertheless, arrives at the stage 
 of intellectual maturity. He has made contact with his whole 
 
482 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 intellectual horizon, he has acquired the ability to think coher- 
 
 ently and systematically in many fields, his command of dis- 
 course is sufficient for all needs which are likely to arise, outside 
 of the special calling to which he is now prepared to devote him- 
 self. When he has reached the corresponding stage in his general 
 volitional life, we say that his character has been formed. Simi- 
 larly, in the present connection, he has arrived at man’s intel- 
 lectual status and his discourse expresses his maturity. 
 
 This principle of the moving goal has certain specific, prac- 
 tical applications. 
 
 If we provide real composition situations for the young 
 child as soon as he has reached the reading and handwriting 
 adaptations, he is soon expressing himself in written English at 
 mastery level within the range of his usable vocabulary and the 
 formal requirements of his very simple discourse. His paper is 
 made up of short simple sentences, but the meaning is clear, the 
 words are used correctly and spelled correctly, the punctuation 
 and capitalization requirements are very limited but they are 
 
 applied correctly. The instruction needed to bring him to this — 
 
 point is very simple; there is not much to teach. He is launched 
 on the stream of growth which leads at last to maturity. 
 
 As his intellectual content and stock of meanings expand, the 
 chief requirement is a limited amount of individual instruction 
 needed to keep him at mastery level as his discourse needs ex- 
 pand. The most difficult problem and the region in which the 
 most instruction is called for is spelling. The reason is found in 
 the fact that even at kindergarten level the child’s usable vocabu- 
 lary far outruns the images of conventional spellings which he 
 has acquired. Hence more or less artificial means must be re- 
 
 sorted to in order to establish correct images. Hence again, the — 
 daily exercise in spelling, a pure practice type of learning to — 
 
 which we shall turn our attention presently. 
 
 Now, this is the stage of development at which schools tend | 
 to depart from the requirements of normal growth and set up — 
 
 wasteful and formalistic teaching. Spelling is made an end in 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 483 
 
 itself and the child is drilled on the images of words which will 
 not become a part of his use vocabulary for years. Similarly 
 punctuation and grammatical usage courses are set up and the 
 pupil is taught a memoriter performance long before his develop- 
 ing discourse needs find places for the usages taught. Worse 
 than all, he is “promoted” from grade to grade in terms of his 
 lesson performance on spelling lessons, language lessons, and the 
 like, quite without regard to functional use in natural discourse 
 situations. 
 
 The expansion of the pupil’s discourse, if indeed it expands 
 at all, is strictly a function of his expanding intellectual content. 
 The latter depends upon the richness of his real intellectual con- 
 tacts as they are found in wide and varied reading, in the genu- 
 ine study of geography, history, nature, elementary science, 
 civics, and other content subjects, and awakening interest in 
 those fields. It depends further upon a rich assimilative writing 
 experience growing naturally out of the need of expressing 
 meanings in these several fields. Thus does the vocabulary ex- 
 pand, and thus the simple sentence gives place to the compound 
 and the complex sentence with increasing inclination to use 
 modifiers and dependent clauses. All this means that he blunders 
 in usage and blundering is in itself a sign of learning health. He 
 cannot manage his expanding discourse. He must become famil- 
 iar with the mechanics of punctuation and he must learn to sense 
 the need of certain principles of agreement and consistency in 
 his use of words and word forms. 
 
 Hence the problem of determining the content of usage in- 
 struction as such becomes a matter of examining the writing of 
 different pupils and identifying the usages which have become 
 functional and which need corrective teaching. As the pupil 
 grows into later needs these are in their turn met. If he does not 
 grow, it is of no manner of service to teach him principles which 
 he does not use. As he approaches maturity, he applies his own 
 corrective learning. 
 
484 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 EVIDENCE OF ADAPTATION 
 
 When has a pupil, perhaps in the senior high school or junior 
 college, learned to write, that is, when has he reached the mature 
 adaptation? The question is a difficult one and it can perhaps 
 best be answered through the aid of concrete illustration. 
 
 I have three manuscripts submitted by adult persons dealing 
 with a subject which requires somewhat severe expository treat- 
 ment. I am a qualified reader of the content which is set forth. 
 
 The first of these papers has the subject matter well organ- 
 ized; that is to say, the topic is well developed from point to 
 point, so that I can follow the argument. It is grammatically 
 correct: my mind does not hesitate, as I search for the sequence 
 of pronoun and its antecedent, for instance. The vocabulary is 
 adequate: the meaning is nowhere obscure because the writer 
 has not the words with which to express himself. The spelling is 
 correct throughout. The punctuation is sufficient for the clear 
 expression of the meaning intended: I am not obliged to stop in 
 order to see just where a certain clause belongs. The writer has 
 undoubtedly attained the adaptation which is characteristic of 
 the educated man. 
 
 The second paper deals with the subject in a more precise 
 fashion than the first. Consequently, the argument is more 
 searching and critical. Otherwise, it is much like the first save 
 that it has several faults in spelling. I note, however, that in 
 every case the words misspelled are correctly used later. This 
 person too has the adaptation. If the paper were being consid- 
 ered for publication, the editor would probably return it with 
 the request, ‘Please proof for spelling.” 
 
 The third paper is the most extended of the three. It is inco- 
 herent; that is to say, the several logical steps in the argument 
 are confused and there are introduced many pages of irrelevant 
 matter. The vocabulary is inadequate; the writer falls back on 
 such expressions as “that thing” and upon colloquial and slang 
 expressions which do not convey his meaning. He uses sen- 
 tences which say what he does not mean and others in which 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 485 
 
 clauses are mutually contradictory. There are several glaring 
 faults in grammar and spelling on every page. This writer 
 clearly has not the writing adaptation. The reader cannot make 
 out the meaning unless he is willing to approach the task much 
 as would be the case if he were attempting to decipher an ancient 
 inscription in a foreign language. We turn the paper back with 
 the injunction to put it in literate form. After two attempts, a 
 paper is finally submitted which is entirely acceptable. It is not 
 that the writer does not know, but simply that he has no compo- 
 sition conscience. He has never become convinced that the adap- 
 tation in question is a part of the equipment of the educated man. 
 His mind is replete with content, he is intellectually interested in 
 the studies which he is pursuing, but he has never experienced 
 the severe training in organizing his intellectual content which 
 thoughtful writing alone gives. He is not willing to hold himself 
 to the task of doing as well as he knows. He is a graduate of an 
 institution of college grade, but in his high-school and college 
 career he has simply won credit for lesson performance in Eng- 
 lish classes. The papers which he has submitted in other courses 
 have been graded for content in the courses pursued and the 
 instructors have dismissed his composition failings as no part of 
 their concern. 
 
 Are the first two papers of equal value? Clearly not. The 
 first is superior in some respects and the second in others. If we 
 were judging one hundred papers instead of three, we should 
 find no two of equal merit as a matter of performance, but we 
 should be obliged to set up several series of graded excellencies. 
 This paper in point of organization stands near the top, but in 
 point of spelling it is one of the worst in the group. This one, in 
 aptness and originality of expression is quite unusual, but its 
 grammar leaves much to be desired. And so on. We might go 
 farther and examine some standard works of acknowledged lit- 
 erary merit and we should find much the same story. The truth 
 of the matter is, the question is irrelevant. The important ques- 
 tion is not relative rank, but evidence of the adaptation. 
 
486 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 What evidence then shall we admit? Teachers who are 
 themselves qualified judges can apply the test with which this 
 chapter begins, and as the meaning and purport of the test have 
 been developed and will be further developed, with a degree of 
 precision sufficient for purposes of actual progress in training a 
 generation of pupils who can write the English language. 
 
 Just what imperfections can we admit and still hold that 
 we have evidence of the adaptation? It is not a question of per- 
 centages or of minimum acceptable errors per page. The mo- 
 ment we accept any such standard, we fall back on the passing 
 grade as acriterion. The issue is, does the student normally and 
 habitually express himself coherently and in correct language 
 forms without laborious construction of every sentence or does 
 he not do so. 
 
 This student’s papers are customarily coherent and clear, 
 but we find in a given paper several instances in which he lapses. 
 We have evidence of the adaptation so far as this element of co- 
 herency is concerned, but this particular paper is an instance of 
 faulty performance. If we call his attention to the fault, he cor- 
 rects it. 
 
 Another’s papers are characteristically badly organized and 
 clumsy and incoherent in their structure. Some are better than 
 others, but in every case he corrects faults only after being told 
 where they are and how to mend them. We have evidence that 
 the adaptation has not taken place. 
 
 This student’s paper has a few instances of misspellings, of 
 bad punctuation, or of faulty grammar. The same opportunities 
 occur several times in the same paper, but the student reacts 
 correctly in each. Again we have evidence of the adaptation and 
 of faulty performance. He has not adequately proofed his work. 
 
 Another paper shows the same faults, but they occur in ev- 
 ery instance in the paper in which there is an opportunity. If a 
 word is misspelled once it is misspelled every time it occurs. If 
 we find one “run-on” sentence, we find many. We have evidence 
 that the student to whom the paper belongs has not attained the 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 487 
 
 adaptation. Coherent writing in correct form is not character- 
 istic of him as an individual. 
 
 _ TEACHING 
 
 From the standpoint of teaching technique there are then 
 two major considerations to be kept in mind, the development of 
 the power of self-expression and the related power of correct ex- 
 pression. 
 
 The power of self-expression, as we have seen, is chiefly a 
 matter of meanings to express and of severe training in such ex- 
 pression. Hence, we find the foundation of English composition, 
 not in composition classes, but in the courses which the school 
 offers in subjects which belong to the science type, the apprecia- 
 tion type, and the practical arts type. These are the fields in 
 which the pupil is expanding his ideational content and organiz- 
 ing it into coherent systems of thought which are capable of be- 
 ing expressed in coherent discourse. We have already discussed 
 the principles at work in our treatment of the science type, and 
 shall barely summarize them here. In the presentation test, in 
 the organization, in the oral and written recitation, in various re- 
 ports on special voluntary projects, the pupil has an abundance 
 of assimilative discourse practice. He enters this field in the 
 early grades as soon as the primary adaptations have become 
 established, and he does not leave it as long as he remains a stu- 
 dent, perhaps long beyond the stage of the mature composition 
 adaptation. The relation between his practice in writing and his 
 learning in the subjects which he is studying is a mutual one. He 
 finds in these subjects almost his only genuine opportunities for 
 motivated expression of meanings in abundance, and his prac- 
 tice in writing out his meanings is by all odds his best opportu- 
 nity for the clarification of thought and the establishment of the 
 appropriate science type, appreciation type, or practical arts 
 type adaptations. 
 
 Correct usage.—We turn then to the other major element of 
 the discourse complex, the matter of correct writing, that Is, 
 
488 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 usage. The amount of space in this discussion which we devote 
 to instruction in usage is disproportionate if we consider the 
 relative values or the time element. The proportion of teaching 
 time per pupil instructed in usage is perhaps one-twentieth, or 
 even much less, when we compare it with the pupil’s writing ex- 
 perience in the content subjects. Its relative value in developing 
 composition power is perhaps still less. 
 
 The form in which the educated man of today expresses 
 himself is the product of a long evolutionary process. We often 
 use the term “conventional use,” but strictly speaking there are 
 few conventions in language. What we call correct usage is what 
 it is, not because scholars have agreed to use certain forms, but 
 because the latter are best adapted to the accurate expression of 
 meaning. The educated writer for instance is distressed by the 
 incorrect use of the partitive in the expression “‘best of any,” not 
 because he has learned from a manual that it is wrong but be- 
 cause he senses that it expresses an impossible thought. It may 
 very well, however, be true that a manual first called his atten- 
 tion to the incongruity of the expression. Furthermore, language 
 is still evolving because the meanings which have to be expressed 
 are evolving. The present stage in which good discourse finds 
 itself is a sort of end result in the racial application of the law of 
 initial diffuse movements. If we could sufficiently motivate the 
 growing child and furnish him with a sufficient breadth and in- 
 tensity of intellectual experience, it is altogether probable that 
 he would eventually write correctly with no usage or language 
 instruction whatever. Unhappily, that is an ideal which is, at 
 present at least, scarcely realizable in the school. What may be 
 called the strategy of technique is, however, to keep as close as 
 possible to the line of evolution, with a maximum of intellectual 
 contacts and motivation and a minimum of usage training. 
 
 Our first need is a working list of correct language usages in 
 terms of errors commonly made. A good many analyses of in- 
 correct writing have been made and these have been compared 
 with the discourse of educated, non-professional writers. The 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 489 
 
 result is a considerable number of brief manuals of usage. It is 
 well for the teacher of composition to have several of these on 
 his desk, and it goes without saying that he should be thoroughly 
 familiar with their content. It is convenient to make a memoran- 
 dum of the usages for which we must be on the lookout in the 
 form of numbered brief notes, after this fashion: 
 
 1. Capital first word 
 
 2. Period at end 
 
 3. Question mark in interrogative 
 
 10. Words in correct use as to meaning 
 12. Run-on sentence 
 18. Restrictive and non-restrictive clauses 
 
 And so on, 
 
 Now, we begin to get some writing even in the primary 
 school. As the secondary period comes on, we receive more and 
 more. Bearing in mind that the pupil’s natural writing rather 
 than his English exercise work is both the point of departure and 
 the final test, the papers which pupils write in other than usage 
 periods are examined for errors in usage. 
 
 We shall find in the first place that the most common type of 
 error is in spelling. This matter is set aside for another kind of 
 teaching. 
 
 Next, we shall perhaps find that some papers, aside from 
 spelling, are impeccable so far as they go. The sentences are 
 simple and perhaps there is no occasion for paragraphing. The 
 pupils to whom the papers belong write as well as their intellec- 
 tual content makes necessary. The capitalization is correct and 
 the punctuation is good. They do not set off relative clauses with 
 commas, but they use no relative clauses. Such limited use of 
 grammatical principles as they make is correct use. For the 
 most part they come from homes in which there is a good deal of 
 reading done and a customary use of good English. These pupils 
 
490 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 are subjected to no instruction whatever. The day when they 
 will need to use forms which they do not now use is not antici- 
 pated. When that day comes, we shall see what needs it brings. 
 Meantime, they continue to get much practice in writing in nat- 
 ural situations, that is, in situations in which they have a mean- 
 ing to express. Most of these situations will, as we have seen, 
 appear in connection with other school work. 
 
 Most of the papers, however, show incorrect usage to a 
 greater or less extent. Not many different kinds of mistakes, be- 
 cause their discourse is not yet sufficiently developed to make 
 many such possible. Nevertheless, we do find a considerable 
 number. Some of them are characteristic of the class as a whole, 
 but most of them are revealed by some individuals and not by 
 others. 
 
 The mistakes which appear in many of the papers give us 
 our basis for class instruction, and for one or more periods we 
 devote ourselves to each in turn. The teaching here is a succes- 
 sion of very thin science type units. The five-step procedure is 
 not at all needed; the content of the unit is not extensive enough 
 for that. Instruction is mainly presentation, assimilative exer- 
 cises, teaching test, and reteaching. The concrete case here cited 
 will serve as an illustration. 
 
 “T see most of you use such forms as this”: (reads from a 
 paper). “I see it in James’s paper”: (reads) “and in Nellie’s” 
 (reads). “Now the correct way is this’: (Writes on the board 
 several of the sentences in correct form.) Explains at length 
 until she feels satisfied that the pupils have caught the notion. 
 A series of missing word sentences, or unpunctuated or uncapi- 
 talized sentences, is then given to make sure that the instruction 
 has registered. If the teaching has not registered, the teacher 
 tries to find the difficulty and reteaches until it does register. A 
 large number of practice sentences is then given for assimilative 
 experience, and these exercise papers are turned back until all 
 have learned to use the right form in the right place. Finally, 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 401 
 
 the original papers (perhaps history stories in this case) are re- 
 turned for correction and rewriting wholly or in part. 
 
 At the end of this experience the teacher announces that the 
 pupils will write the appropriate rule, which she dictates, in 
 notebooks, which are kept for the purpose, with one or more il- 
 lustrative sentences. The pupils are then reminded that they 
 now know that principle of usage and will be expected to write 
 correctly, so far as it is concerned, in the future. They are re- 
 minded that they have their notebooks for help whenever they 
 are in doubt. And they subsequently are all held responsible for 
 correct use by having any paper whatsoever turned back with 
 the simple admonition, “There is a mistake in language which 
 you know better than to make; find it and correct neatly before 
 you hand in the paper.” Thus the pupil builds up a composition 
 conscience and likewise a handy keeper of his conscience in the 
 
 form of his own manual of usage. 
 : Much the same procedure is followed with the individuals 
 whose errors are peculiarly their own, but instruction is indi- 
 vidual rather than of the group. A concrete notion of the class 
 period devoted to usage, or language if the customary term is 
 preferred, may perhaps be gained from the description which 
 follows. 
 
 In the first place, the class does not necessarily meet for this 
 purpose every day, nor does the whole class meet. The teacher 
 has been reading papers written in the content subjects or else- 
 where and at length has accumulated a stock of errors which 
 calls for a campaign of instruction. Perhaps all children in the 
 room need some teaching, perhaps a few need none at present 
 and busy themselves about other tasks, possibly teaching is 
 called for only with a few corrective problem cases. Let us as- 
 sume that all or nearly all require some specific instruction. 
 
 A class period or, it may be, several periods are devoted to 
 group teaching on common errors. Then for several days the 
 teacher meets the class for individual teaching. This, be it ob- 
 served, will usually be simple corrective teaching requiring on 
 
492 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the whole less time on each usage item to be dealt with than is 
 the case with the more formidable errors which call for group 
 teaching. For instance, here is a sixth-grade boy who turns in a 
 paper which is excellent in content, in arrangement, and, except 
 in one particular, in usage. He has used the apostrophe for pos- 
 sessives in all his plural nouns. Evidently he did not fully catch 
 the idea when that principle was taught. Simply a minute or two 
 at the teacher’s desk will set him right. Eventually, it may be 
 after a week or more, all individual pupil cases are cleared up 
 and the usage class is suspended for some days. 
 
 Now devoting a class period to individual teaching in this 
 manner implies good foremanship on the part of the teacher. 
 Let us visit first a very poor teacher and then a very good one. 
 
 The first room chances to be one in which most of the chil- 
 dren are in the sixth year of school life. It might have been the 
 eighth, or the fourth, or the twelfth, for that matter. The teach- 
 er is at her desk and down one aisle is a long cue of children, 
 each waiting his turn. These pupils are twisting and turning and 
 occasionally indulging in incipient ‘‘rough-housing.” A few of 
 the pupils who are at their desks are intently reading, some of 
 them books from the shelves and one or two of them are ab- 
 sorbed in cheap juveniles. The majority of the class are lolling 
 over their desks and in the adjoining aisles, apparently playing 
 but actually tortured by that peculiar boredom which makes the 
 schoolroom a daily nightmare to so many children. Occasion- 
 ally, the teacher looks up and remarks “I must have better or- 
 der.”’ No visible result except a series of curious stares at the 
 general region of the teacher’s desk. “‘Tom, you go to work or I 
 will send you to the principal’s office.” Tom stares vacantly at 
 his arithmetic for a few minutes. 
 
 Of course this is a sheer waste of time and indeed much 
 worse. 
 
 The next room has children of about the same age as the 
 first. At the beginning, there is a moment of confusion, as the 
 children select their occupations for the period. In less than two 
 
 ee ee 
 
 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION = 403 
 
 minutes, everybody is absorbed in his individual task, and a 
 pupil has passed to the desk at a nod from the teacher. Both this 
 pupil and the teacher are intent upon the pupil’s paper for five 
 minutes and then another pupil takes the place vacated by the 
 first. Two minutes. In a thirty-minute period eight pupils pass 
 through this individual instruction and the teacher makes not a 
 single comment addressed to the class. We note the occupations 
 of the class. Several are at work on their papers or their lan- 
 guage notebooks. Two have books from the library which they 
 are using in the preparation of special papers which they expect 
 to submit later, one in geography and the other in history. They 
 brought the books to class with them. Three are hard at work 
 on arithmetic. Six others, with guide sheets before them, are 
 reading either geographical or historical material. One is work- 
 ing at an individual spelling list. Three are reading useful books 
 in elementary science and one a volume of Useful Knowledge 
 taken from the library. 
 
 Now in this room there is no waste of time. The teacher will 
 need less than one week to finish this particular block of usage 
 items. We make some inquiries among the pupils. ‘“‘Why are 
 you studying arithmetic?” “I am up in composition but arith- 
 metic comes hard to me.” “What are you doing?” “Making up 
 a paper on what the English thought about our Revolution.” 
 “Why do you do that?” “Well, I like to, I guess.” To another: 
 “How do you know what to do when the period begins?” “Why, 
 this is what we always do.” The time not utilized for usage in- 
 struction by pupils who do not at present need it is devoted to 
 the most natural thing in the world, working on what they do 
 need or on that in which they have acquired a present intellec- 
 tual interest. And so all these children are moving on toward ed- 
 ucational self-dependence. 
 
 Meantime, the follow-up is faithfully observed, in the man- 
 ner which we have already described, in the papers submitted in 
 subjects other than English. 
 
 A useful, perhaps essential, device in the teaching of compo- 
 
494 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 sition and correct usage is the oral reading of written papers. 
 There are two good reasons. In the first place, the vocalization 
 of what has been written is a very important element in building 
 up language and composition sense. A pupil will frequently crit- 
 icize an incorrect use by stating that ‘it does not sound right.” 
 Of course he is quite right. Much of the structure of correct dis- 
 course has been built up in response to the requirements of vo- 
 calization, either audible speech or that inner speech which 
 seems to accompany all thought and its expression in written 
 form. In the second place, as the pupil’s vocabulary expands, it 
 will be found that he uses some words in perfectly correct mean- 
 ings but in strange and bizarre pronunciations, simply because 
 as a matter of fact he has never heard the words pronounced. 
 Effective vocalization of spelling lists will undoubtedly do much 
 to build up a phonetic sense, but it will not do enough. Hence a 
 good deal of reading aloud. 
 
 Now there is a wide difference between perfunctory exer- 
 cises in oral reading, which used to be so common, and the real 
 reading in a genuine audience situation of something which the 
 pupil has produced. Hence, in the lower grades of the secondary 
 school and well up into the junior high school region, it is desir- 
 able to seize upon all appropriate situations for the reading of 
 papers in geography, history, science, community life, and other — 
 content subjects. The practice may well be continued, less em- 
 phatically perhaps, throughout the period of general education. 
 Special reports on topics in which individual pupils have become 
 interested, good written recitation papers, especially those 
 which use a relatively rich vocabulary, accounts of interesting 
 vacation trips and the like suggest themselves. Of course long 
 experience in the oral recitation contributes to this need in the 
 same sense in which the oral reading of the written paper con- 
 tributes. 
 
 The question is frequently raised in classes of teachers, 
 “What about teaching the use of the dictionary?” 
 
 This ts simply one of the major items in usage teaching. 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION —§ 4os5 
 
 Simple enough if brought in when the pupil’s expanding vocab- 
 ularies have developed a real need of it and not different from 
 other items in that respect. 
 
 At about fifth- or sixth-grade level, a considerable number 
 of pupils will be fairly likely to have found a good many words, 
 especially geographical terms, which they are inclined to use and 
 which they will be inclined to pronounce almost anyhow. It is a 
 distinctly favorable symptom if the pupil does so pronounce, 
 because it tends to show that he is free from the language-arts 
 inhibition. The functional need of some teaching in the use of 
 the dictionary is called for. Accordingly, the teacher presents 
 the unit, one which in content by the way is much more like a 
 true science type unit. The essence of the instruction is, ‘This is 
 the way we find out how to pronounce an unfamiliar word.” 
 
 A familiar word is placed on the board with the conventional 
 diacritical workings. The teacher pronounces, pointing to each 
 syllable and marked quantity and accenting as she does so. Sev- 
 eral words are treated in this way, the class following in unison 
 until the teacher feels that the idea has registered. Perfect con- 
 trol technique required. She now follows the same procedure 
 with some unfamiliar words until again she is satisfied that the 
 art has been caught. Finally, she places on the board a list of 
 many words, properly marked, and tests the class individually 
 to make sure that all have learned. The group of slow learners is 
 then segregated for reteaching. Thus the presentation. The 
 class is now given a list of many words, taken from their geogra- 
 phies or other subjects, for assimilative practice and told to find 
 the pronunciations. They are then gathered for class exercise, 
 not unlike a daily recitation, and practice upon the words which 
 they looked up. Now this class exercise is in itself a test but only 
 incidentally so. Its major purpose is that of assimilative prac- 
 tice. The process is kept up until the teacher is satisfied in the 
 cases of one after another that all have mastered. Henceforth, 
 the new-found ability must be used and considerable corrective 
 teaching is likely to be found to be necessary. That is, some pu- 
 
496 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 pils will still need to be sent to their glossary or to the dictionary 
 to look up words which they mispronounce. 
 
 It should be noted most carefuliy that the learning product 
 here is the use of diacritical markings as a help in discovering 
 the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. It is not the teaching of 
 word pronunciation itself. Hence the exercise of common sense 
 and good judgment is called for. If the routinist makes a point 
 of requiring the children to look up the pronunciation of literal- 
 ly every new word, he or she will quickly build up a set of study 
 inhibitions. If successful, simply a crop of little pedants will be 
 generated. If on the other hand, the teacher pronounces for the 
 pupil every time he raises his hand for help, the all too familiar 
 result will be the production of a new lot of grown-up babies. 
 The teacher must sense when to pronounce a new word for the 
 class, if the study situation is in full swing, and when to tell the 
 pupil to look up a new word if mere indolence inclines the latter 
 to rely upon the teacher. 
 
 This process of instruction in correct usage goes on from 
 month to month and year to year, never allowing specific instruc- 
 tion on an item of usage to anticipate the child’s discourse use of 
 the item. The pupil is never taught a principle of punctuation, 
 for instance, until his papers show that he needs it, no matter 
 how strongly the teacher, with the prestige of organized knowl- 
 edge rather than the pupil in mind feels that “they ought to 
 know it.” It will be noted that as early as the sixth year of school 
 life some pupils come less and less often into the class group or 
 to the teacher’s desk for instruction. They are finding their own 
 way and keeping their usage parallel with their developing dis- 
 course. By the end of the eighth grade, in a school which has 
 faithfully and intelligently followed the appropriate teaching 
 procedure, there should be few pupils left who still are obliged 
 to come frequently to the teacher for instruction. The pupils 
 who have thus been automatically released are at the first pla- 
 teau of the typical learning curve on their climb to the level of 
 mature adaptation. They still occasionally blunder, their style 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 407 
 
 is appropriate to the still immature character of their intellec- 
 tual development, but it is improving as their cultural breadth 
 expands and becomes organized. In brief, they write correctly 
 in the main but their discourse is that of the schoolboy or school- 
 girl. See that they have a handy manual and good dictionary of 
 their own, that they use both, that they do not allow themselves 
 to lapse into bad habits, that they have the abundant writing 
 suited to the requirements of thorough learning in science type, 
 appreciation, and practical arts subjects and then leave them 
 alone. Progress in the high school will depend much more upon 
 the fidelity of teachers in the subjects last named than upon any- 
 thing the English department can do. 
 
 TESTING 
 
 As is the case in all language-arts subjects, teaching itself is — 
 usually testing. The issue from day to day is, Is the teaching and 
 the learning which is done in the composition period appearing 
 as a true learning product in the writing which the pupil does 
 when he is not writing English exercises as such? If it is so ap- 
 pearing, then progress is satisfactory. Otherwise specific re- 
 teaching, including reiterated emphasis on the principle that 
 whatever the pupil is taught is to be learned for the sake of use, 
 is called for. 
 
 Nevertheless, here as elsewhere it is important from time to 
 time to inventory the progress of the class and make a study in 
 the concrete for the sake of the veracious picture it affords of the 
 true situation. For this purpose, a series of papers, one or more 
 for each pupil, written in a wholly unsupervised situation, that 
 is, papers which are in no sense English exercises, is chosen. 
 With the standard list of usages in hand, the teacher checks, 
 first, the number of opportunities for correct use of the princi- 
 ples which each paper shows; and, second, the number of in- 
 stances in which the pupil reacts correctly. The percentage of 
 correct reactions is then computed. The resulting exhibit may 
 look something like the tabulation here presented in Table XV. 
 
498 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Our problem is now to study the results in order to see what 
 they can tell us. 
 
 We note first of course B, C, E, H, J, and K. These pupils 
 differ widely in the number of opportunities but they all react 
 correctly. H and K use a relatively complex discourse and they 
 manage it correctly. C and J still use an extremely simple form, 
 but what they use they too manage correctly. So far as progress 
 
 TABLE XV 
 Pupil Fale ont ayaa 2 Per Cent Correct 
 Avice 60 52 
 pS Rican Aiek Ne 50 50 
 AS hitch oot tee 20 20 
 Mad b Strek betwies 80 32 
 | Dyelpahey aegammaadea te 58 58 
 LAE) Gk Bee ew 46 45 
 ON ay ee ae 66 22 
 Toe Ava es be 72 72 
 Lis Biot tee eae g 30 12 
 ( Re ieee 18 18 
 HPL cab e oe 64 64 
 ee ete Ae 16 I 
 
 
 
 in correct writing is concerned, the latter need give us no con- 
 cern, but we shall do well to consider their general intellectual 
 growth. Are they reading widely and interestedly? Are they 
 lesson-learners in science and history? Perhaps we shall find lit- 
 tle cause for comment in any of these fields. It may be that they 
 will always use a form of discourse which is so simple as to give 
 little opportunity for incorrect usage, but then some of our best 
 state papers have shown that characteristic. It may be, as far 
 as we can learn, that their reading and general intellectual 
 growth is normal. If so, let them alone: their discourse will ex- 
 pand sufficiently to care for their needs and, as far as this exam- 
 ination shows, they can be trusted to learn to manage correctly 
 whatever they write. On the other hand, it may be that they are 
 uninterested and sluggish in all their content subjects. If so, the 
 region of corrective measures is in that field. 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION 499 
 
 H is a careful and studious boy who comes from a cultured 
 home, is accustomed to language which is finished and accom- 
 plished in its management of thought, and withal is himself rap- 
 idly growing intellectually. Let him alone. B, E, and K show 
 much the same characteristics as H, but in the cases of B and E 
 to a markedly less degree. 
 
 D, G, and I are apparently lesson-learners. It is well, how- 
 ever, to settle this question before proceeding farther. Accord- 
 ingly the pupils are tested on the principles which they misuse, 
 in sentences set up for that purpose. Thus we discover whether 
 or not in fact they need reteaching. One or more of them may 
 need some reteaching and that is accordingly done. In general, 
 however, they do well under teaching but do not make the appli- 
 cation. We thus identify the aspect in which they are problem 
 cases and know just where to attack. 
 
 Of the three D is known to be an omnivorous reader and is 
 interested in his content subjects. His discourse is developing 
 more rapidly than he is willing to learn how to manage it. In his 
 case, the emphasis will be placed at first on training him in in- 
 tensive reading in the assimilation period of the science type and 
 in the organization step. 
 
 L is a non-learner. His discourse is very simple and he re- 
 acts correctly only to a single opportunity. What he writes is 
 less than half a page. He makes only two sentences and the di- 
 vision between them is incorrectly identified. He is now in his 
 fifth school year, came to us two years ago from another school, 
 and has been more or less a problem in all subjects. Verdict: a 
 remedial case, probably of the experiential type, requiring re- 
 medial treatment. 
 
 F is developing at a fair rate. His single error is an over- 
 sight which any mature writer might make. For all practical 
 purposes, so far as usage training is concerned, he belongs in the 
 same class with B, C, E, H, J, and K. 
 
 A is developing well on the expressional side but he is care- 
 less. He is not a lesson-learner, but he has not fully made the 
 
500 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 learning adaptation in terms of which he does as well as he 
 knows. We thus separate this defect, make him conscious of it, 
 and proceed on the same principles as those followed for devel- 
 oping sustained application and reading skills. (See chapter ix 
 and chapter xvi.) 
 
 Now it is very easy to completely misapprehend the bearing 
 of the percentages which appear in the last column of the tabula- 
 tion. The reader accustomed to the practice of scoring will tend 
 to seize upon them and exclaim “Here is something definite; we 
 can now draw a dividing line.” On the contrary, the percentages 
 are in themselves nothing definite. They do not enable us to 
 draw dividing lines and thus separate the linguistic sheep from 
 the goats. They are simply means of making differences stand 
 out somewhat more clearly and of attracting our attention more 
 vividly to the several pupils. It is only when they thus induce us 
 to study the individual pupils that they become valuable. On 
 the next inventory, H may show the F characteristics but that 
 will not at all alter our judgment of his essential learning condi- 
 tion. If he should later show the relation between opportunities 
 and correct usage which A shows, and if we then conclude that 
 he is getting careless, it will be occasion for action. But 87 per 
 cent as compared with 98 per cent or 100 per cent is in itself no 
 ground for action. On the other hand, 40 per cent and 33 per 
 cent lead us to suspect lesson-learning, but lesson-learning is 
 not demonstrated until we raise the issue itself in the test we 
 have described. In brief, we cannot set up a standard score and 
 say, “Above this we are satisfied; below this we are not satis- 
 fied.” When we do so, we adopt all the unrealities of the pass- 
 ing grade. 
 
 Thus far, we have dealt with a situation in which it is as- 
 sumed that systematic development in the use of English as a 
 tool of expression will begin as soon as the pupil has established 
 the reading and handwriting adaptations and that he will con- 
 tinue in the same school system until the mature adaptation has 
 become established. High schools and junior colleges, however, 
 
TECHNIQUE IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION sor 
 
 usually receive pupils from schools which are not parts of the 
 same system to which they belong. Such pupils are therefore 
 pretty likely to be at all stages of development, from that 
 reached by H in our tabulation down to that reached by L. 
 
 It is evident folly to conclude in the abstract, “These pupils 
 need a course or courses in composition” and then to conclude 
 that about three high-school units of a school year each should 
 serve the purpose. The educational situation is ignored, the 
 learning products are disregarded, the needs of individual pupils 
 are overlooked. All are dumped together into a mechanical rou- 
 tine. Our best schools no longer follow that practice. They pre- 
 test the entering class and at least form sections in accordance 
 with the disclosures of the pre-test. A great deal, however, 
 hangs on the nature of the pre-test. The issue is not, Does the 
 pupil know certain principles, but rather, Does he manage cor- 
 rectly the discourse which he writes. Hence, the appropriate 
 form of pre-test is in the nature of the inventory which we have 
 exhibited. Assuming that such an inventory were made and that 
 the disclosures were in proportion such as we have found in the 
 exhibit on page 498, more than 50 per cent of the class would 
 be assigned to no composition class in the high school. They 
 would be faithfully watched, however, in all content subjects, 
 would receive much writing practice therein, and some of them 
 might later be assigned temporarily to a corrective section in 
 English writing. This would especially be the case in the not un- 
 likely contingency that a pupil of the C or J type should begin 
 to expand and organize his ideational content into a more com- 
 plex form. In that case he might begin to take on the D charac- 
 teristics and would probably need some specific teaching. Nev- 
 ertheless, at high-school level such a pupil should be required to 
 use his manual and help himself to the maximum of his capacity. 
 Teaching a pupil what he can learn for himself always results in 
 volitional involution rather than evolution, in increasing depen- 
 dency rather than self-dependence. 
 
 Capacity in clear, accurate, and correct expression is, more 
 
502 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 than any other attainment which the pupil acquires, a reflection 
 of his total education. As a man thinketh so is he and as a man 
 thinks so he expresses himself. The chapter which we thus bring 
 to a close is of necessity, more than any other, an expression of 
 the educational theory upon which the whole volume is founded. 
 Education is a development of the individual by successive 
 adaptations. Training a pupil in the art of self-expression 
 through the use of language is a process of intelligently guiding 
 his whole intellectual evolution and of utilizing practice in self- 
 expression as the chief instrumentality in applying such guid- 
 ance. If there is any place in the school to which the term gen- 
 eral intellectual discipline is applicable, it is here. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 
 CHARACTERISTICS AND OBJECTIVES 
 
 N learning which falls under the science and practical arts 
 i types, progress seems to be strictly through the process of 
 reflection. The objectives are insight in the one case and in- 
 sight associated with the manipulation of materials or appliances 
 in the other. The pupil does not learn except as he ponders upon 
 the situations to which he is introduced. In the appreciation 
 type, the good, the beautiful, and the true are presented to the 
 pupil in such form that he can accept them and adopt them into 
 his scheme of values. In the language arts, the pupil practices 
 with the reception and expression of meanings through symbolic 
 discourse until he reaches adaptations in terms of which he re- 
 ceives or expresses meanings in discourse without inhibition. 
 There is, however, still another form in which learning arises 
 through sheer repetition with little or no thought element in- 
 volved. To this type we assign the designation “‘pure practice.” 
 Now learning in all the types is largely dependent upon prac- 
 tice. The long assimilation periods which appear in the other 
 types are essentially practice with assimilative materials, but in 
 each of them there appears either the perception of meaning in 
 some form or the reception or expression of meanings as an es- 
 sential element of the learning process. In the new type which 
 we are discussing, there is apparently no appearance of meaning 
 as such as a part of the learning process. To be sure, there may 
 be meaning as part of the motivation: we should not undertake 
 to learn to swim, for instance, unless the art had a meaning for 
 us in terms of some kind of ultimate utility. The art itself, how- 
 ever, has no thought content but is simply a process of neuro- 
 
 593 
 
504 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 muscular adjustment. Similarly, in fixating the image of a word 
 spelling, the word itself of course has meaning but the meaning 
 is not important in establishing the image. The fact that the 
 word has meaning is important in making its spelling a perma- 
 nent possession, for otherwise it would have no functional use. 
 As far as practice is concerned, we can picture to ourselves its 
 use in learning somewhat in accordance with the following clas- 
 sification. 
 Science type subjects 
 Appreciation subjects 
 Practical arts subjects 
 | Language-arts subjects 
 
 Assimilation 
 
 Practice 
 Repetition or P : ‘ 
 drill ure-practice subjects 
 
 Nevertheless, pure practice, not assimilative practice, is our 
 main reliance for the development of the skills associated with 
 all the types which have bases in meanings. Given, for instance, 
 a certain stock of mathematical adaptations, the practitioner in 
 their use acquires a marked facility in applying them to all kinds 
 of situations which he is called upon to solve. Similarly, the 
 physician who is equipped with a stock of adaptations appro- 
 priate to all ordinary cases becomes expert or skilled through 
 much practice in applying them to the cure of patients presented 
 in his ordinary experience of human maladies. In dealing with 
 the ordinary round, he is probably much more skilful than his 
 more learned colleague who has had less experience. Again, ex- 
 pert workmanship in the field of the practical arts is dependent 
 upon much repetition in the application of adaptations whic! 
 the artisan has acquired. 
 
 The application of repetitive practice to the attainment of 
 skill in situations in which a great deal of reflection is required 
 may perhaps be made more convincing to the reader by citing 
 common experience in the development of skill in such essential- 
 ly thinking games as chess or various forms of whist or some of 
 the better solitaire card games. Here the adaptation is in the 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 505 
 
 learning of the game itself. After a very simple learning process, 
 we discover that expertness depends chiefly upon practice. To 
 be sure, in the course of experience, additional adaptations are 
 found and mastered, but we find that facility and expertness 
 depend upon practice. If we intermit playing for a time, our 
 game falls off. If we resume, it catches up, even though the most 
 careful scrutiny fails to disclose that we have adopted any new 
 methods. 
 
 The instances cited then have to do with skills which are de- 
 veloped by practice upon the basis of adaptations acquired in 
 other types of learning. On the other hand, there are adapta- 
 tions which are themselves acquired by simple repetition and 
 these are the characteristic forms of learning which are found 
 in the pure-practice type. Further, it should be added, we find 
 skills which are developed by practice on adaptations of the type 
 last named as truly as are other skills developed in the adapta- 
 tions of other types. It is with the pure practice adaptations as 
 essential learnings in the process of general education that we 
 have to do in the present chapter. 
 
 Our objectives here are of two sub-types: (a) Neuro-mus- 
 cular abilities, (6) Automatic response to ideational or sensory 
 stimuli. 
 
 Adaptations of the first subtype are the most primitive 
 learnings which the adaptable organism acquires. We find illus- 
 trations, as we have seen, in walking, swimming, skating. We 
 might add to the list a great many purely physical accomplish- 
 ments such as bicycle riding, ball tossing, different forms of 
 dancing, and the like. Numerous items in the general field of 
 the practical arts and vocational training are pure-practice 
 adaptations, milking for instance. Harnessing a horse, however, 
 is a practical arts type of learning. We find few instances of this 
 subtype in the schoolroom, but we do find them in connection 
 with the language-arts type. The most conspicuous instances 
 are found when it becomes necessary to train the vocal organs to 
 an appropriate form of action in either a foreign language or in 
 
506 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 vocal music; and when the fingers must be trained to a needed 
 form of action on the keyboard of typewriter or piano. These 
 seem to be true pure-practice adaptations. Again, in the case of 
 penmanship, we have an art which is acquired subsequent to the 
 language-arts handwriting adaptation. It utilizes the art of 
 handwriting but as far as the learning process involved is con- 
 cerned, it seems to be essentially a different art entirely. 
 
 It is important to distinguish here between the pure-practice 
 adaptation in voice training, fingering, and penmanship, and the 
 language-arts adaptations with which they are associated. The 
 former are not language-art skills built upon the latter. They 
 are separable arts. The child learns to sing, that is, to give ex- 
 pression to a musical meaning. That is a language-arts product 
 achieved by language-arts methods. It subsequently becomes 
 necessary to modify the use which he makes of his voice. The 
 new objective is not a language-arts but a pure-practice objec- 
 tive. A child learns to express himself in handwriting and so 
 achieves a language-arts objective. His management of word 
 forms, spacing, rate, and the like are, however, all of them strict- 
 ly limited by his untrained neuro-muscular organism. In order 
 to train that organism, we must use the appropriate pure-prac- 
 tice procedure. And so with the voice training which may or 
 may not be required in the use of a foreign language or the fin- 
 gering which may be essential to expertness in typewriting. 
 
 Adaptations of the second subtype are found especially in 
 spelling, in automatic control of number tables and the number 
 space in arithmetic, and in purely memoariter control of such 
 matters as formulae, rules, and the like, and paradigms in gram- 
 mar, 
 
 TECHNIQUE 
 
 Teaching technique in the first subtype has much im com- 
 mon with language-arts technique. It is the same in that no re- 
 flection is involved in the learning process itself; it is different 
 in that the language-arts objective is a matter of dealing with 
 thought content while the pure-practice objective in itself has 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 507 
 
 no thought content. The language-arts inhibition has an ana- 
 logue in the pure-practice inhibition but in the former case the 
 inhibition tends to divert the learning process to a different 
 type of objective, namely deciphering ability, while in the latter 
 the inhibition tends either to be ignored altogether or else to hin- 
 der or stop the learning process. It does not divert the learning 
 process. The law of initial diffuse movements applies with per- 
 haps equal force to both types. 
 
 A certain swimming teacher gave this succinct and compre- 
 hensive piece of instruction, “Jump in and kick, kick, kick.” In 
 so doing he exhibited perfect comprehension of the learning 
 principle at work and avoided completely the introduction at the 
 outset of the pure-practice inhibition. His auditors were no 
 doubt conscious of what the art of swimming is, for they had 
 watched others. 
 
 Now if he had begun by giving his class a lecture on the 
 movements required in swimming, what you must do first and 
 what next, and had succeeded in making such instruction regis- 
 ter so that the learner on entering the water had undertaken to 
 learn as a conscious process in which the question, ‘What is the 
 first stroke and what next” was always focal, the inhibition 
 would have been set up, and no learning at all would have taken 
 place. In due season, most of the learners would have ignored 
 the instruction and begun practice under the stimulus of contact 
 with the water. On the contrary, what the teacher actually did 
 was to set at work the principle of initial diffuse movements with 
 gradual selection of the effective movements. In due season the 
 law had its way and the swimming adaptation appeared. 
 
 In the various experiments with ball tossing cited in the psy- 
 chological literature, the initial movements are crude—the balls 
 are dropped, sometimes none of the balls is in the air while the 
 learner is “thinking about it,” but little by little practice makes 
 perfect until the goal of subconscious performance is reached. 
 The old French teacher of drawing observed the same rule in an- 
 other type of learning. “All he ever said was ‘Continuez, mes en- 
 
508 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 fants,’ and you had to make the best you could of that.” 
 
 So it is with all teaching where the objective is a pure-prac- 
 tice objective of the first subtype. The learner is set to practice 
 with the goal itself as a focal content in consciousness. So long 
 as he practices with intent to achieve the goal he will eventually 
 clear up his random movements and arrive. Certain qualifica- 
 tions however need to be observed. 
 
 In the first place, the goal must be recognized and there 
 must be intent to reach the goal. If the pupil is simply given 
 formal exercise work, such, for instance, as two hours daily 
 piano practice, progress will depend upon the chance that the 
 learner discovers for himself the goal and thus establishes pur- 
 pose or intent. Hence, as an initial step in the learning, the pu- 
 pil must be made conscious of the goal by observing perform- 
 ance at the level of the adaptation sought. In the swimming 
 class, consciousness of the goal can be taken for granted, for 
 everybody knows what it is to swim. In the piano class, on the 
 other hand, it may be that a given pupil is wholly unconscious 
 of what it is all about. Consciousness of the goal should there- 
 fore be guaranteed at the outset. 
 
 You see how my fingers move on the keyboard. I do not have to 
 stop and think about where I place them. I play without noticing my 
 fingers. Now I had to practice a long time before I could do that. You 
 can already play very nicely these simple things, but your fingers are 
 not yet musical fingers and so I am going to give you some exercises to 
 limber them up. 
 
 Again, the pupil needs to be made conscious not only of 
 progress but of the nature of the progress. In penmanship, for 
 instance, he can always compare his product with that of the 
 penmanship scale, and he can keep a tabulation of the gain in 
 his rate. In pure-practice learning of this nature, however, there 
 tends to form after the initial spurt a long level of little improve- 
 ment. If the pupil is ignorant of this principle, he is apt to be- 
 come discouraged. If the teacher is ignorant of it, she will tend 
 either to think that the pupil has reached his maximum attain- 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 509 
 
 ment or else that he is not trying. Pupil and teacher alike, when 
 duly aware of the nature of the progress to be expected, will not 
 become discouraged and the pupil will keep patiently practicing, 
 confident that in due season the final spurt which leads to the 
 expertness required will come. 
 
 While the effect of making the learner focally conscious of 
 his movements is to set up the inhibition characteristic of the 
 type, there are often occasions when the pupil must be made 
 aware of circumstances which are in themselves inhibitory. Tar- 
 get practice with small arms is a pure-practice type of learning, 
 but if the learner is unaware of the influence of wind blowing 
 across the line of fire, he will be a long time making the requisite 
 adjustment, and gains made on a windy day will tend to spoil 
 shooting in a calm. Hence, the instructor makes the learner 
 aware of the inhibiting circumstance and the latter begins to 
 practice with conscious allowance for wind drift. If, on the other 
 hand, the instructor merely lectures on the theory without mak- 
 ing specific application to the practice in hand, such as “Aim up 
 wind about so much and then creep in” the learner will profit 
 little or nothing. The principle is illustrated in the experiment 
 cited in Judd’s Psychology of High School Subjects, pp. 268 ff. 
 Here two groups of children practiced shooting at a target under 
 water. One group was instructed in the principles of refraction 
 and how the apparent displacement is produced, while the other 
 group was left to its own devices. No difference in the learning 
 rate of the two groups was noted. The situation was the same as 
 would be the case if the swimming instructor should lecture on 
 the principles of buoyancy in the human body when it is in mo- 
 tion in water. Now, when the conditions of the experiment were 
 changed, after the first learning had taken place, by increasing 
 the depth of water, the group which was aware of the principle 
 involved and its practical bearing had a distinct advantage over 
 the other group. The French Canadian, in instructing his baffled 
 pupil in the deplorable art of shooting fish, makes the latter 
 aware of a necessary correction when he exclaims “You got hit 
 
510 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 heem where he ant.” Neither teacher nor pupil in this case 
 knows anything about the theory of refraction. In this whole 
 matter of inhibitory circumstances, pure practice teaching ap- 
 proaches the confines of true practical arts teaching. 
 
 In general then, the technique in this subtype is a process of 
 making the learner aware of the goal, of enabling him to check 
 and understand his progress, and of making him aware of inhib- 
 iting circumstances. Otherwise, the learner is left alone. 
 
 Objectives of the second subtype, that is, automatic re- 
 sponse to sensory or ideational stimuli are of course much more 
 common and much more important in the field of general educa- 
 tion than are those of the first subtype to which we have been 
 giving our attention. Among the objectives of the second sub- 
 type, the learning of spelling and automatic response to the fun- 
 damental number facts are preeminent. 
 
 SPELLING 
 
 Spelling is, of course, primarily a matter of usage in English 
 expression. In practice, the teaching of spelling has to be sep- 
 arated from the routine of usage teaching for two reasons. In 
 the first place, as we have seen, while the pupil’s discourse does 
 not evolve fast enough to make the teaching of the limited num- 
 ber of conventions which even the educated person uses at all a 
 formidable matter, his active word vocabulary at the beginning 
 of the secondary period has already evolved to the extent of sev- 
 eral hundred words and is still rapidly developing. The images 
 of correct spellings in much of his vocabulary are, however, 
 either vague or incorrect and he still has to develop the sense for 
 word forms upon which most of his later spelling will have to 
 depend. Further, while most if not all his usage principles are 
 the product of science type learning, in which thought processes 
 are involved, his spelling is the product of pure practice learning 
 in which images are established quite independent of thought 
 content. 
 
 Training in spelling should probably not begin until the 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING SII 
 
 reading adaptation has been well established, since otherwise 
 such training is apt to set up word consciousness in the field of 
 reading. 
 
 The initial problem is to decide upon some principle of word 
 selection which shall govern the formation of spelling lists. Now 
 if we recall the principle that the problem is to weave usage into 
 the pupil’s active discourse, both in usage principles and in spell- 
 ing, we find a ready basis in principle for the selection of such 
 lists. Such lists should ideally be made up of words which are in 
 the pupil’s active vocabulary, that is words which he uses, not 
 words which he understands but does not use. Hence, the pupil’s 
 spoken discourse and his written papers, especially the latter, 
 are the source from which we can best make our selections. The 
 reader is entitled to some explanation and defense of the prin- 
 ciple thus set up before going farther. 
 
 We are teaching the correct spelling of words in order that 
 the pupil may use them correctly. Here, as elsewhere in educa- 
 tion, we are engaged in the process of adjusting the pupil to a 
 world which is his world here and now. It is only by reacting to 
 this present world of his, as the pupil grows from year to year, 
 that he will eventually acquire the capacity for reacting to the 
 new world which he must meet in later life. Hence the process 
 of acquiring the correct spelling of words which he uses in his 
 discourse is part of the process of adjusting him in terms of his 
 discourse to the world which he at present encounters. The pu- 
 pil makes a correct spelling his own in proportion as he uses it. 
 Otherwise, it becomes simply a part of his stock of lesson-learn- 
 ing. Whether it then simply fades out of existence as a memor- 
 iter acquisition or is carried on as a mere eruditional content, the 
 result is much the same. In neither case is it a contribution to 
 the stock of adaptations which in the end make him an educated 
 person. The first of the two possibilities is the more likely to oc- 
 cur: the word is simply memorized and the memory soon fades. 
 
 The spelling book of the older day was an excellent illustra- 
 tion of the prestige of organized knowledge, of the confusion of 
 
512 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 education with erudition, to which we have frequently referred. 
 Here were some spellings which with sufficient motivation and 
 practice could be memorized. The youth who could spell down 
 his competitors was acclaimed by the naive laity as a marvel of 
 education. It mattered not that some of the words were tech- 
 nical expressions, whose meaning the child could not compre- 
 hend either then or later, and that other words had meanings 
 which were comprehended to be sure but were no part of the 
 child’s present discourse. That day has largely been left behind. 
 Our standard spelling lists are now much better arranged to 
 meet the discourse needs of the average child. Nevertheless, the 
 principle itself still remains. It boots not to assign a word which 
 is part of the active vocabulary of the average child in the sixth 
 grade in the United States, if it is no part of the active vocabu- 
 lary of Willie Jones in the sixth grade of the Washington School 
 in Boston or Chicago or Seattle. 
 
 Still less is it wise to assign that word to Willie if it is part 
 of his vocabulary and if he already uses not only it but most 
 words correctly. To do so is not only a waste of time but is to 
 further Willie’s conviction that learning is successful perform- 
 ance in the classroom. Hence, the principle of economy in teach- 
 ing and the steady inculcation of right notions of educational 
 values. Economy goes farther than avoidance of words which 
 have already been taught and learned; it covers also words 
 which have been learned but not taught. From the beginning 
 of school-life children pick up the correct spelling of many 
 words, perhaps most words, and in later life the educated person 
 applies the process to nearly all words. 
 
 Now, the pupil’s active vocabulary expands as his intellec- 
 tual contacts expand. If he is the child of a cultivated family, 
 his vocabulary will tend to be much richer than that of his con- 
 temporary who belongs to the home of meager intellectual life. 
 If another reads widely, his vocabulary will expand more rapid- 
 ly than that of his playmate who reads not at all. If certain chil- 
 dren are studying content subjects under a procedure which 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 513 
 
 calls for much reading and stimulates a good deal of discussion, 
 their vocabularies will become enriched more rapidly than will 
 those of other children whose daily routine is a matter of lessons 
 learned. The essential point to be kept in mind in organizing 
 spelling lists is that the normal enrichment of vocabulary arises 
 chiefly out of the enrichment and organization of ideational con- 
 tent and only incidentally out of words considered in isolation. 
 
 As soon then as a group of children has definitely reached 
 the reading adaptation and has begun to write, the problem of 
 the word list is reached. For some time, there will be compara- 
 tively few misspellings, for the reason that the active vocabulary 
 is composed of easy words and is still rather limited. There will 
 be some misspellings, however, enough to make a spelling pro- 
 gram desirable. There will be fewer, in proportion as the process 
 of oral reading has been kept at the proper equilibrium between 
 good vocalization which contributes to reading progress and un- 
 due study of words in isolation which tends to set up the deciph- 
 ering attitude. Instruction will be largely individual corrective 
 work. 
 
 As soon as the pupils have begun to read widely and to get 
 broader contacts in various directions, perhaps at third-grade or 
 fourth-grade level, their active vocabularies will tend to expand, 
 or rather perhaps many words will begin to transfer from the 
 passive to the active vocabulary. The teacher who is unaware of 
 the principle at work becomes appalled at the pupil’s bad spell- 
 ing. As a matter of fact, he spells as well as he did before, but he 
 is using new words which he has not learned to spell. A more 
 systematic program becomes necessary. The ideal plan is to 
 make a study of the pupils’ written papers and to prepare word 
 lists for each pupil. It goes without saying that such papers 
 should be found in the regular paper work of the content sub- 
 jects. If several different papers for each pupil are utilized, we 
 shall get a fairly complete picture of his present working vocab- 
 ulary. A more expeditious but less exact plan is the following. 
 
 A standard word list scientifically determined for the ap- 
 
514 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 proximate grade under consideration is taken and the words 
 found therein are carefully checked by the teacher and only the 
 words retained for teaching which she is sure are in the active 
 vocabularies of the greater portion of the class. To the list thus 
 formed are added other words which she is sure are also to be 
 found in their active vocabularies. The teaching list is thus built 
 up. | 
 TECHNIQUE IN SPELLING 
 
 The list thus formed is divided into convenient blocks, let 
 us say of 25 or 50 words each. The first block is subjected to a 
 pre-test and this pre-test may take the time of the class in the 
 period set apart for the purpose for one or more days. In pre- 
 testing, the teacher dictates each word and then pronounces a 
 familiar sentence in which the word occurs in its proper mean- 
 ing. Thus: “There.” “There are thirty children in this room.” 
 “T place the book there.”’ At the conclusion of the test we shall 
 be apt to find a situation something like that pictured in Table 
 XVI. 
 
 Let us see what we can make out of the results. 
 
 In the first place, we note that 4 pupils miss no words. They 
 are accordingly released for other work or other interests. 
 Again, five words are missed by nobody. We have for the pres- 
 ent no further concern with them. 
 
 Nineteen pupils miss three words or less and to these pupils 
 we shall give some attention. In the cases of all who have missed 
 only one word we recognize pupils whose record of misses sel- 
 dom exceeds one or two words. They are individuals who have 
 fairly well developed word sense and we exclude them from the 
 group which is to be gathered for class teaching. They will work 
 on individual word lists of the words missed, and on the list as 
 a whole. The same is in general true of Nos. 6, 10, 15, 17, 24, 
 27, 30, and 31. They are also assigned individual lists. The re- 
 maining 6 of this group of 19 pupils are usually found to have 
 made as many or more misses on pre-tests. Their word sense is 
 still defective and they need the training implied in the presen- 
 
515 
 
 PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 
 
 TABLE XVI 
 PRE-TEST 
 
 
 
 ’ . 
 . ° 
 
 e ° 
 
 . e e 
 
 a 5 = 
 
 e e ° 
 
 e ° ° 
 
 ° e e 
 
 - js : 
 $ : 
 ° 
 
 Alrol el alt mi wat] WL OLnRN]To;al oj; xia 
 Hialalalilalalalalalalalwmalin!inIif&a 
 
516 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tation technique described below. Summarizing, we find in the 
 section of 32 pupils: 4 pupils who miss no words at all; 13 who 
 are given individual lists; and 15 who are assigned for group 
 teaching. 
 
 Turning now to the words, our attention is first attracted by 
 “prairie.” We suspect that it may not be in the active vocabu- 
 lary. The children, however, live in a part of the country where 
 the word is in frequent use, they are encountering it in their 
 geography, and we find it now and then in their papers. If not 
 actually present in their working vocabularies, it is on the point 
 of becoming so. Perhaps in the revision of this word list we shall 
 postpone it to a later month or perhaps year. However, we find 
 later that the word is missed but once in the final test on the 
 block (see page 521), while “blaze” is missed twice in the final 
 test, and “races” and “‘blot,’’ which showed no misses on the pre- 
 test, are missed once each on the final test. 
 
 Ten of the words which are missed at all on the pre-test are 
 missed three times or less. The indications are that these words 
 are not difficult at this stage and, if subsequent experience con- 
 firms the result of this pre-test, we shall move them back into 
 earlier lists, since all of them are probably in the active vocabu- 
 laries of younger children. For the present, we shall utilize them 
 in our group instruction, both because we shall do well to make 
 sure and because they are available for the purpose of develop- 
 ing word sense in terms of the images which we discuss below. 
 The same reasoning will apply to words which are missed more 
 than three times. 
 
 Seven words, namely, “sweeten,” “subtraction,” “sign,” 
 “skipping,” “strife,” “barley,” “bullet,” are distinctly hard 
 words for this section and at this stage, and in the cases of the 
 first five and last we can easily see why they are hard. We have 
 some doubt that “barley” is really part of the vocabulary of the 
 class in general. If it were left out, the pupils would probably 
 pick up the spelling later. Apparently the teaching as such pre- 
 sents no special difficulties. 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 517 
 
 To resume then, we have a teaching list of 20 words and a 
 teaching group of 15 pupils. 
 
 Let us turn now to the presentation in spelling. 
 
 Retention of the correct spelling of a given word seems to 
 be a matter of the establishment of a complex of four images. 
 We recall a spelling as a set of letters which have been seen to- 
 gether in a word form; associated with the same form vocalized; 
 with the letters orally named in a certain order; with a word 
 pronunciation and letter naming which have been heard; and 
 finally with the word as written. We may designate these sev- 
 eral images in brief as the visual, vocal, auditory, and handwrit- 
 ing images. The problem is to establish these images vividly and 
 to establish the associations between them. 
 
 The reader can verify the importance of the images by not- 
 ing his own reactions in the cases of words which are still vague 
 in his system of recall. We encounter such a word in writing. 
 Instantly our tendency is to make an effort to remember how the 
 word looks. Not satisfied, we call into operation our vocal or- 
 gans by spelling the word out. Or, if we have a brief forewarn- 
 ing of the use of the word and vainly endeavor to recall, the 
 act of writing itself will often clear up the difficulty and give us 
 confidence in the right spelling. In brief, we automatically call 
 to our aid all the possible images. If we are still not confident, 
 we cut the Gordian knot and look it up. It is interesting to note 
 how experience with many wrong images will tend to break 
 down the images which have been established. The teacher who 
 has to work with papers which contain many misspellings soon 
 loses confidence in his own spellings and finds himself going, half 
 ashamed, to the dictionary for the spellings which he really re- 
 calls perfectly well. 
 
 Now, the psychology of image establishment is familiar. It 
 is essentially a matter of vivid perception, of intensive repeti- 
 tion, and of long practice in use. Reflection plays no part, but 
 on the contrary, tends to set up an inhibition. If we say to the 
 pupil, “This is the right way to spell ‘business’: remember not 
 
518 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 to spell it ‘buisness,’ ” he will hesitate in embarrassed confusion 
 and more likely than not will react with the wrong spelling, 
 simply because the warning has made the wrong image the more 
 vivid. The adjuration “to think” may help in arithmetic; it is 
 apt to be a hindrance in spelling. 
 
 With the teaching list in hand then, the teacher selects a 
 very few words for the day’s practice. A good rule is perhaps 
 three in the third grade, four in the fourth, and not more than 
 five in any grade. The important consideration is not to attempt 
 to practice on so many words at a time that the images cannot 
 be made vivid and intensive. 
 
 The class is then gathered close to the board so that each 
 will have the board space to be used clearly in his field of vision. 
 All distracting drawings and writings are removed from the 
 board. The teacher waits until she has 100 per cent control tech- 
 nique. 
 
 Suddenly she turns and writes clearly and distinctly in syl- 
 labic form the word, sub-trac-tion. She pronounces clearly and 
 distinctly, slightly exaggerating the phonetic value of each syl- 
 lable. | 
 
 Several pupils are called upon in succession to do the same. 
 If the values are not vivid as the pupils vocalize, the teacher pro- 
 nounces again, perhaps several times. Finally, the class vocal- 
 izes in unison. 
 
 The teacher then says, “Write” and the pupils write the 
 word on small slips of paper. 
 
 Thus there have been presented vividly the four images and 
 all children have reacted to each of the four. 
 
 In many words the vocal image is especially important. It 
 is easy to see that many misspellings are traceable to bad pro- 
 nunciation. For instance, “subtraction” in our list is often vocal- 
 ized “substraction” and is more likely to be misspelled thus than 
 otherwise. Further, it is probably true that word sense is built 
 up chiefly through practice in vocalizing words whose visual 
 images are clear. Thus there is contributed a valuable element 
 

 
 PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 519 
 
 of language learning which cannot easily be acquired on lan- 
 guage-arts principles and likewise the basis on which independ- 
 ent spelling ability is built up. Obviously the pupil cannot go to 
 school all his days to learn the spelling of all the new words 
 which he encounters. Word sense once established, however, he 
 is inclined to apperceive new words in their correct spellings and 
 to react with correct spellings. In brief, in learning to spell 
 words he also learns to spell. 
 
 The process is continued with each of the words in the day’s 
 list and, when all have been thus presented, the papers are 
 turned and the teacher dictates the words in column as in the 
 pre-test, each word being followed by a typical sentence in which 
 it is used in its meaning. The pupils write the words, but not the 
 sentences. Thus the teaching test. If the spellings of the class 
 as a whole on this teaching test, ignoring the definitely identified 
 _ problem cases, are less than 97 per cent correct or thereabout, 
 | the test results are analyzed. If misspellings are scattered 
 among the words of the day’s list, then the list as a whole is 
 made the list for the next day. If, on the other hand, the misses 
 are limited to one or more words, these words only are made 
 parts of the list for the next day. The reader will perhaps raise 
 the question, Does not this process waste the time of the great 
 majority who have learned the words? We think not. Let us re- 
 call that the learning process here is quite as much a matter of 
 learning to spell as learning to spell words. In other words, prac- 
 tice in building up fundamental word sense is as valuable as rec- 
 ognition of right spellings of individual words. Words which are 
 already recognized are on the whole more valuable for this pur- 
 pose than those whose images are still vague. The pupils who 
 were selected for teaching by the pre-test are pupils whose word 
 sense is evidently still in the process of formation. The dividing 
 line of 97 per cent has no significance in itself; it simply allows 
 a reasonable margin for errors which are in the nature of slips 
 of the pen rather than true misses. 
 
520 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 And so the process is continued day by day until the teach- 
 ing list has been exhausted. 
 
 Meantime, the pupils who have been released from group in- 
 struction are studying their individual lists with the understand- 
 ing that they will be recalled for the final block test. They are 
 told to study their words in much the same manner in which 
 the class studies the list set for group instruction and not to give 
 over until they are sure that they can spell each word right un- 
 der any and all circumstances. Such pupils will ordinarily ac- 
 complish the task in a fraction of the time which the teacher de- 
 votes to the class group and opportunity is given for reading or 
 other study. High motivation is thus set up and it is motivation 
 of the right type, since it is obviously in terms of mastery of a 
 learning product rather than in terms of relative performance 
 on a test in which few if any actually master. 
 
 When the group teaching has been completed, the class as a 
 whole is brought together for the final test on the block as a 
 whole. Typical results are exhibited in the following inventory 
 in Table XVII. 
 
 Let us see what the exhibit has to tell us. 
 
 Pupils 7 and 13, who were released entirely after the pre- 
 test, justify themselves on the final test. Pupil 14 does not jus- 
 tify himself. Pupil 12 was released on the pre-test but is absent 
 on the final test. We note the miss of Pupil 14 on the word “‘be- 
 low” and conclude that the miss was a real one, since he spells 
 it with two l’s. He is given this word for individual practice. 
 We shall watch this tendency to make a miss on the final test 
 not made in the pretest and shall perhaps on later blocks include 
 him in the presentation group for practice on the images. 
 
 Pupils '6;'10, 45, 17, 18, 19; 20,(22, 23) 2427, /30angeas 
 were released for individual study. All but Pupil 20 make per- 
 fect scores on the final test. Pupil 20 misses one word on the pre- 
 test and a different word on the block test. It may have been a 
 slip of the pen in the latter case, but we note him as possibly 
 needing image training. He practices “races” further. We may 
 
521 
 
 PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 
 
 TABLE XVII 
 Biock FINAL TEST AND ComMPARISON WITH PRE-TEST 
 
 | 
 B 
 a 
 
 im 
 ysowTY 
 
 
 
 I0,... 
 
 II...» 
 
 I2.... 
 
 ai anrecraks 
 
 Thisss a2 
 
 rS.. 
 
 
 
 
 
 * A =Pre-test. 
 
 B=Block Test 
 
THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 522 
 
 TABLE XVII—(Continued) 
 
 Worps 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 SLRS QL IMAlP SIMI M[A Aim mpPe Miami M( Mm [ Aisi Ale MAP mpmMiem palma lyae [alicia 
 
 i : 2 : 3 : ; : = ie} =[o}-[> fe e[-f-]-f-[efe|ef-|¢[-]¢[-]¢[-]-faI 2 
 
 . . . ° ° . « . ° . . ° 
 e ° e e . e . ° e © 
 
 e e e . e 
 
 . . ° 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 523 
 
 find on the next block test that he plays the same trick. In that 
 case, we shall regularly include him in the class practice group 
 for a time. Thirteen pupils who work on individual lists, three 
 words or less each, make 26 misses on the pre-test and 1 on the 
 final test; the 15 pupils in the class presentation group make 67 
 misses on the pre-test and 5 on the final block test. Evidently 
 the pupils who were released and held responsible for a few 
 words each accepted the responsibility very fairly well. The 
 15 pupils who compose the class presentation group missed 3 
 words on the final test which were not missed by the same indi- 
 viduals on the pre-test. 
 
 There are no problem cases in the group. Pupils 1, 11, and 
 25, who might reasonably be suspected on the showing of the 
 pre-test, exhibit satisfactory learning. Pupil 1 makes an aggre- 
 gate of 2 misses on the several teaching tests (not shown here) 
 and the other two make none at all. 
 
 Let us turn now to the word misses on the final block test. 
 “Blaze” is missed four times on the pre-test and twice on the 
 final test, but both the latter misses are at the hands of pupils 
 who did not miss the word on the pre-test. The same situation 
 appears in the cases of all words but one which are missed on 
 both tests. The trouble is not with the words but with the pupils. 
 The exception is “prairie,” in the case of which the one miss on 
 the final test is made by a pupil who missed the word on the pre- 
 test. Since the misses on this word drop from 20 on the pre-test 
 to 1 on the final test with only two misses on teaching tests, evi- 
 dently the word is not difficult. 
 
 Now, we might have found one or more problem pupils, chil- 
 dren who are responsible for the greater part of the misses on 
 the daily teaching tests and who come through with as many or 
 nearly as many misses on the final test as on the pre-test—some- 
 times more on the former. These people have to be set aside for 
 study. 
 
 Or we might have found one or more words which show sim- 
 ilar characteristics. Such words are spelling “demons,” and they 
 
524 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 are included in the next teaching list and so on until they are 
 conquered. If a “demon” is in the active vocabularly of chil- 
 dren, the earlier it is attacked the better. There is no sound jus- 
 tification for deferring a word to a later year simply because it is 
 difficult. Such a word, if in the active vocabulary, will become 
 steadily more a “demon” through practice on defective images. 
 If it is not in the active vocabularly, it will not be taught until it 
 appears therein, but neither will an easy word. 
 
 There remains the issue, will the pupil use the correct spell- 
 ings which he has thus learned in his ordinary discourse? Hence 
 what we may call the functional test. Now, there is obviously no 
 possibility of a functional test if we have been teaching words 
 which are not in the pupil’s active vocabulary. To apply the 
 functional test, we must examine the written work of pupils, util- 
 izing, as far as we can, writing which has been done in wholly 
 unsupervised situations. 
 
 We shall find that some pupils use correctly words which 
 have been cleared up in the spelling lessons and others do not. 
 Misspellings found in the discourse of the latter are pretty apt 
 to fall into either one of four classes. 
 
 1. The pupil can spell the word correctly but will not make 
 the effort. 
 
 2. He intends to spell correctly but is careless. 
 
 3. He has learned the correct spelling only as an exercise 
 in spelling and the spelling does not transfer to use. In other 
 words, he exhibits the lesson-learning attitude. 
 
 4. He has not learned the correct spelling. 
 
 In general, the invariable practice should be to glance rapid- 
 ly over all papers submitted and hand back papers which show 
 inexcusable spellings, with the simple injunction, ‘There are 
 some inexcusable misspellings in your paper; correct them.” 
 Such action will probably be included in the injunction to cor- 
 rect inexcusable errors in usage discussed in the last chapter. It 
 should of course be accompanied by admonitions on the subject 
 of carelessness and slovenly work in general. The associated 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 525 
 
 teaching objective is volitional in character: we are focusing on 
 the inculcation of ideals of carefulness and thoroughness as well 
 as upon spelling. If the tradition grows up, as it rapidly will if 
 all teachers are faithful and diligent, that careless and slovenly 
 work will simply not be accepted at all, the type of paper repre- 
 sented by the first two classes noted will rapidly disappear. The 
 vigilance of all teachers cannot, however, safely be relaxed from 
 the beginning of the secondary period to the end, or to the point 
 at which the pupil’s character has become definitely formed. 
 Education is a stern process for the learner as well as for the 
 teacher and it is long before the youth ceases to be inclined to 
 choose the pathway of least resistance. 
 
 It is not easy to identify the lesson-learner and to be reason- 
 ably sure that we have differentiated him from the careless pu- 
 pil. Let us bear in mind that lesson-learning seems to be in itself 
 rather a definite attitude toward learning. The pupil does not 
 realize that what is learned in the classroom has any relation to 
 what goes on outside the classroom. There are various symp- 
 toms which can be noted. 
 
 In the first place, such a pupil is likely to be a lesson- 
 learner in other subjects in which it is easier to identify him by 
 direct testing. (See chapter iv.) 
 
 When a paper is handed back for correction, the lesson- 
 learner will sometimes change words and usages which are en- 
 tirely correct, in his random attempts to satisfy the teacher. A 
 variety of indications of this general type will often disclose to 
 the observant and thoughtful teacher the character of the learn- 
 ing. 
 
 In studying the problem, the results of a specific test, taken 
 in connection with other evidence, will often disclose the type. 
 For this purpose, a list of review words is made up and dictated 
 in column. At a later period, the same words are dictated in sen- 
 tences. The lesson-learner will show a tendency to spell words 
 correctly when they are dictated in column and to misspell when 
 they appear in sentences, or at least to spell distinctly better on 
 
526 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the column test than on the sentence test. The true non-learner, 
 on the other hand, misspells about equally in the two tests and 
 for the most part the same words. 
 
 When the lesson-learner is definitely identified, he becomes 
 a problem case in this particular sense, usually corrective rather 
 than remedial in type, and the teacher sets to work to make him 
 realize what he is studying for. 
 
 The process of distinguishing the non-learner from the les- 
 son-learner and from the careless or indifferent pupil has thus 
 been noted in part. The non-learner is further likely to be re- 
 fractory on both the teaching tests and the final test, while the 
 other classes show a clean record on both. The non-learner is 
 not necessarily a problem case, but rather a slow learner. If he 
 shows steady improvement, the latter is probably the case. He 
 is always kept in the class presentation group and in addition he 
 makes up a list of words for individual study. On the other 
 hand, the non-learner may show little or no improvement and in 
 that case he becomes a remedial case. 
 
 For the sake of the most thoroughgoing teaching and inten- 
 sive study of the individual pupil problem, it is convenient and 
 desirable to tabulate results on each block of words in something 
 like the fashion suggested by the scheme which is exhibited in 
 Table XVIII. We then have a sheet for each block for each pu- 
 pil. The sheets are gathered in a loose leaf binder and thus an ac- 
 curate record is assembled for the study of pupil progress and 
 for the study and rearrangement of word lists. 
 
 If this program of systematic training is faithfully and intel- 
 ligently carried out, what may be expected? Of course the an- 
 swer will depend somewhat on the school and upon its constitu- 
 ency. It will depend most of all upon the richness of the intel- 
 lectual background which the school is able to build up through 
 a good kindergarten-primary, abundant reading material and 
 well-organized courses in the content subjects. It will depend 
 upon these elements in the experience of the pupil because upon 
 them in turn depends the growth of the child’s active vocabu- 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 TABLE XVIII 
 ———————<———_—_—————————————————=—=—==—==_==—=" 
 BA Mi ts, ca rat. Teen) eh 
 
 Words Pre-test pt chaos F perc 
 DuPAULOME ss Ssiec dais vteas 
 i OLE trae ve SUR I 
 B. SWOCTED. 0.6 wiedn ces 
 4. Subtraction......... 
 SHU AZOY Ce bai eds oes eee 
 Sr PAE are cists Mies len Neeoee 
 y alge a On ON SAREE ee x 
 Bettie ax dw de cls diclats — 
 Riot PAAR MTC ae Cl a oles oh Po 
 ro, Skipping .........;. a 
 FSP OUMOUL Savuiey oni’ sit x x x 
 TAD EOIOW. 1a) semen eles bh 
 ERMINBCOS ge 5 citiers « Sxl ole & | 
 SBE Pig a dead hoards x aves 
 TREO OW Sica o ais tikes ahs 4% 
 BO nt Vet ie Nis Gud atenia 42 
 TINE oe WEEE: 2, As whl 
 BS Wine ys 62 ESA x ra 
 TO? OMSesi ce ec acc ee ey 6 nha 
 DOE TCACD SF uid eas os «kt aE 
 Be OEY cs N lalla. en 
 ie SATS hs Re Op Ne hi foes SEA 
 BUTTE es ees eas x 
 SAU VERMET Occ et nc esas x 
 
 
 
 527 
 
528 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 lary. Assuming that these matters are provided for much as 
 this volume proposes, an outcome like the following may be 
 looked for. 
 
 1. There will be a period of much teaching required in the 
 earlier years of the secondary period, let us say, the third and 
 fourth grades and well into the fifth, as the process of training 
 overtakes the active vocabulary, in respect to both recognition 
 of single correct word spellings and to training in word sense. 
 
 2. During the fifth grade or thereabout, the number of pu- 
 pil releases on successive teaching lists will begin to show a 
 steady increase and so will the number of words omitted on suc- 
 cessive blocks of words and the number of pupils working on in- 
 dividual lists. Correspondingly, the number of pupils in succes- 
 sive class presentation groups will show a steady decrease. 
 
 3. By the end of the sixth grade there will be few if any 
 children left in the spelling classes save problem pupils who still 
 show defective word sense, defective recognition of correct spell- 
 ings for the active vocabulary, and a defective spelling con- 
 science. An occasional misspelling may be found among the re- 
 leased pupils, and this will continue to be the case more or less 
 throughout life, but there will be no systematic misspelling. 
 Such occasional misspellings are ordinarily traceable to that pe- 
 culiar lapse known as a “slip of the pen,” or else to a sort of 
 overlooking of an individual word. As in the case of usage prin- 
 ciples, it is not a minimal allowable number of such slips or 
 oversights which is the criterion, but rather the revelation which 
 they offer, all the evidence being considered, as to the real char- 
 acter of the individual’s spelling adaptation. If the pupil or 
 older person regularly makes such slips or oversights, we must 
 conclude that he cannot spell. The pupil has learned to spell 
 when he uses correctly all words which he has learned, when he 
 effectively desires to spell all words correctly, when he verifies 
 all spellings of which he is uncertain. 
 
 What if we find, as we do find, a good many instances of 
 chronic bad spelling in the seventh and later grades? 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 529 
 
 The prima facie assumption is that teaching in the earlier 
 years has not been faithfully and intelligently done. Especially 
 is it probable that the earlier teachers have ignored or have been 
 lax about the functional test and have not cleaned up their cor- 
 rective cases. Or it may equally well be that they have been lax 
 in accepting papers in content subjects which contain careless or 
 indolent misspelling. Or again, it may be that content subject 
 teachers in the junior or senior high school or college are accept- 
 ing careless papers and are thus breaking down spelling morale. 
 
 On the other hand, a sudden access of intellectual interest in 
 junior high school subjects may have rapidly expanded the ac- 
 tive vocabulary beyond the rate at which the pupil’s organized 
 spelling adaptation will take up new words. This is especially 
 apt to be the case when a pupil passes from a formalistic ele- 
 mentary school to a junior high school in which he suddenly en- 
 counters a broad range of intellectual content. In general, in this 
 case two courses are open. Hither the chronic bad spellers are 
 identified as true problem cases of the experiential type and a 
 remedial group is organized for application of the normal spell- 
 ing technique, or else each deficient pupil is required to form an 
 individual word list and hold himelf responsible for repairing his 
 deficiencies. In no case is a regular course in spelling organized 
 on the vague plea that “pupils at this age need it.” When a 
 school adopts such a course it assumes a responsibility which be- 
 longs to the pupil and it may rest assured that similar provisions 
 will be equally appropriate up to and including the graduate and 
 professional level. A course is organized for deficients only when 
 such pupils are positively identified as such. Pupils are not in- 
 cluded when their defects are simply the result of carelessness, 
 of expanding active vocabulary, or of the negligence of content 
 subject teachers. The principle is, find out where the trouble is 
 and focus efforts upon its correction. 
 
 The senior high school should have no deficient spellers ex- 
 cept identified remedial cases. Nor should it accept such on the 
 
530 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 complacent theory that they must be remedial cases because 
 they do not spell. 
 THE REMEDIAL CASE 
 
 The corrective cases have already been dealt with. In an es- 
 sential sense, the whole teaching procedure is founded upon 
 identification and correction of faults in the normal learning 
 process. There remain the definitely remedial problems. 
 
 Now these remedial cases may be traceable to causes which 
 make the pupil a defective learner in any school subject. A given 
 case may be mental and traceable to the fact that the pupil is 
 of subnormal mentality. If so, he has no place in the school for 
 normal children. It may be learning: the pupil has not mastered 
 spelling when he should have done so, or it may be he is an ob- 
 stinate case of lesson-learning. The cause may be emotional, or 
 physical, or volitional in the general sense. If so, the pupil is 
 quite as likely to be deficient in other subjects as in spelling. It 
 may be psycho-physical, a vision or hearing case. If that is so, 
 the consequences may rest with peculiar weight on spelling. 
 
 A true defective learner of the remedial type peculiar to 
 spelling is pretty apt to be a pupil who has some trouble with his 
 word image formation, and such trouble is in turn likely to be 
 traceable to defects in vision or hearing, speech or handwriting. 
 
 A pupil who has defects in vision or hearing may still learn 
 to spell because he has compensatory advantages. Defect in 
 vision, for instance, may be offset by singularly acute hearing or 
 kinaesthetic images. The loss of learning power traceable to 
 sensory defects may be made good by unusual determination. 
 In general, however, defects in any of these sensory fields handi- 
 cap the learner and may well result in non-learning. If then we 
 find a pupil whose misses on teaching and final tests are ab- 
 normal and if he shows little or no improvement, we shall begin 
 to study him as a remedial case. 
 
 1. His medical examination is looked up to see what his rec- 
 ord was on vision. If his vision is found to be poor, remedial at- 
 tention consists in persuading the parents to provide treatment 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 531 
 
 by a competent oculist or in securing the appropriate relief 
 through other agencies than the family. It may be stated in 
 passing that, while the routine medical inspection will be likely 
 to disclose all ordinary defects in vision, there are sometimes 
 obscure defects which can be reached only by the specialist in 
 this field. 
 
 2. Similarly, hearing is canvassed. Remedial treatment in 
 this field is much less likely to be effective, because poor hearing 
 is often due to lesions which cannot be repaired. Something can 
 often be done, however. In cases where defective hearing which 
 does not approach deafness is established, a simple reseating of 
 the pupil so that the presentation can be taken at maximum au- 
 dibility is usually helpful and may in time solve the learning 
 problem. 
 
 3. Speech defects, by interfering with the development of 
 normal word sense, may be causing difficulty. Early treatment 
 by a specialist in this field is of course eminently desirable. Such 
 treatment is, however, often not obtainable and sometimes it is 
 ineffective. In any case, the retention of such a pupil in the pres- 
 entation group in which so much emphasis is placed on vocaliza- 
 tion is unlikely to be productive of learning and it may cause 
 positive mischief. Accordingly, we fall back on the other images, 
 especially vision and handwriting, and arrange a program of in- 
 dividual practice. 
 
 4. Defective handwriting is probably the cause of much bad 
 spelling, especially when the pupil has never attained the hand- 
 writing adaptation and still draws instead of writes. When we 
 reflect that practically all bad spelling is bad written spelling, 
 the handwriting image, both in its visual and in its kinaesthetic 
 aspects, looms large. Hence, when the pupil draws instead of 
 writes, or writes illegibly, he tends to fail to form the images 
 which he uses in the discourse which reveals his actual spelling. 
 
 The appropriate remedial treatment is obvious. The hand- 
 writing should be remedied for its own sake and because it tends 
 to inhibit learning in spelling as well as in the whole language- 
 
532 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 arts field. The pupil is sent to the remedial teacher to begin his 
 handwriting over again. Especially should inquiries be made to 
 make sure that a normally left-handed pupil is not being made 
 to write with his right hand. 
 
 Of course the handwriting defect is not strictly psycho- 
 physical in character, but, in its tendency to block the formation 
 of the handwriting image, the outcome is much the same as 
 would be the case if it were psycho-physical. 
 
 5. The foregoing by no means exhausts the list of the causes 
 which underlie the behavior of the so-called congenital bad 
 speller. 
 
 The large majority of pupils, however, who are in reality 
 remedial and not simply corrective cases and who do not classify 
 as mental, experiential, physical, emotional, or volitional cases 
 are remediable under one or more of the heads above enumerat- 
 ed. There remain unusual and obscure maladies or mental mal- 
 adjustments which no doubt occasionally influence learning 
 under any type and which lie beyond the scope of the present 
 study. 
 
 THE NUMBER FACTS 
 
 The automatic use of a definitely limited field of number 
 combinations seems to be fundamental to any assimilative ex- 
 perience whatever in the field of mathematics. We refer to the 
 addition combinations of the digits, sometimes called the num- 
 ber space, and to the multiplication table up to 12. The estab- 
 lishment of such adjustments to automatic use is, like spell- 
 ing, an instance of pure practice learning of major importance. 
 The reader should, however, have in mind a clear distinction be- 
 tween such automatic use and the fundamental number con- 
 cepts. 
 
 Fundamental to any possible thinking in mathematics is the 
 presence in the apperceptive mass of the primary concepts of 
 number itself and of those combinations of number into other 
 numbers which are obtained by adding, taking from, multiply- 
 ing, and dividing. Such primary concepts arise to some extent 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 300 
 
 out of the natural experience of childhood and to some extent 
 the appropriate experiences must be provided in the early school 
 life. These primary concepts are not the processes of addition, 
 subtraction, multiplication, and division, nor is the concept of 
 fractional parts coextensive with the notion of fractions. Now 
 the acquisition of the primary concept does not call for the ap- 
 plication of any of the types of teaching which are appropriate 
 to the secondary period. It is a matter of providing experiences 
 out of which certain ideational content can arise and not a mat- 
 ter of organizing experience into coherent attitudes toward the 
 world or into systems of thought. Practically speaking, the dan- 
 ger is that the pupil will learn to deal with figures before he has 
 acquired the ideas of which figures are the symbols. Mastery, 
 however, does apply, and an essential part of administrative 
 technique is to make sure that children in fact do have these pri- 
 mary concepts before they pass on to the stage of pure practice 
 learning with which we have to deal in this chapter. (See also 
 chapter xili, p. 209.) 
 
 The objective in this particular portion of our field has been 
 defined by implication above. Concretely, it is substantially 
 that the pupil shall practice until such a combination as 4+-7 
 brings the instant response 11 and such a one as 87 brings the 
 instant response 56. To put it in another way, the pupil who has 
 mastered such automatic response has the image 56 in mind 
 whenever he encounters the relation 87. Further, the re- 
 sponse is subconscious, or at least not focal. When the pupil has 
 occasion to use the facts, as he does have occasion whenever he 
 encounters an arithmetical situation, an ideational stimulus calls 
 forth the appropriate number-fact response without interrupt- 
 ing the stream of thought which is applied to the problem itself. 
 The reader can verify the principle by testing his own automatic 
 responses. He will find that he can utilize such responses while 
 thinking of something else. The experience is especially striking 
 when one is repeating verbally sentences or whole passages 
 which from long repetition have become automatic, a very famil- 
 
534 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 iar poem for instance. Not only can one do so while an entirely 
 different stream of thought occupies the focus of consciousness, 
 but it requires a definite effort to attend to the thought of such 
 a passage while it is being repeated, even though there is at the 
 time no other particular content focal. 
 
 Now, a teacher in the later grades of the elementary period 
 or even in the high school who comes upon a problem case in 
 arithmetic frequently gives the verdict, “Does not know his 
 tables,” and the verdict is justified. The defect is likely to be 
 one of three types. 
 
 1. The pupil in truth does not know. He cannot tell what 
 87 is because he has no system of recall which will give him 
 the answer. 
 
 2. More often, even if he has the answer, he is obliged to 
 set up a cumbersome system of recall. Such pupils will ordinar- 
 ily be found to be repeating the table until they come to the re- 
 quired combination. They can recall only if they set up the 
 rhythm in which they learned. You often see their lips moving 
 as they rapidly repeat 8X1 is 8; 8X2is 16; 8X3 is24; ... 
 and so on until they reach 8X7 is 56. Naw this pupil is Seat! 
 capped in his essential arithmetical learning, which is a process 
 of severe reflection, because his attention is distracted from re- 
 flection to the recall of number facts. At the best, he is a slow 
 worker on assimilative material; at the worst, his learning is in- 
 hibited altogether. 
 
 3. Occasionally, perhaps more often than we think, the pu- 
 pil responds with more or less facility to the number facts, such 
 as 87, but he is unable to use them in the reflective process be- 
 cause he is dealing only with figures and his figures do not stand 
 for number concepts. Most problems require judgments in 
 which number relations are the terms. For instance, the pupil 
 has to decide whether 440 8 is greater or less than 5,280-1.5. 
 He guesses because neither set of figures stands for any sort of 
 valid reality in his mind. The writer was once visiting a school- 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 535 
 
 room in which a class was glibly dealing with facts relating to 
 linear measure. Inches were being converted into feet and feet 
 were being added to other feet and inches. Thinking to test out 
 the presence of the underlying concepts, I asked the children 
 several questions, amongst others how tall they thought I might 
 be. One youngster hazarded a guess of 30 feet. These youths 
 were a sophisticated lot and I cherish no illusions that the an- 
 Swer was inspired by an exaggerated opinion of the superintend- 
 ent of schools. Rather, the children were dealing with figures, 
 and their manipulation, for which there was no conceptual foun- 
 dation. 
 TECHNIQUE 
 
 Once sure of the conceptual foundation, the process of mak- 
 ing the responses automatic is a piece of pure practice, in which 
 the pupils are trained to respond automatically. 
 
 No doubt, if there were time enough and motivation suffi- 
 cient for the purpose, all the number facts would be rendered 
 automatic in the manner which is theoretically best, that is, by 
 repeating them in concrete problem situations. So does the 
 worker at the vocational level who is dealing constantly with 
 such facts as are best used automatically. The calculator, for 
 example, sometimes finds that he is retaining in memory without 
 effort the logarithms of numbers which are frequently used. But 
 there is not time enough in the process of general education for 
 this natural method of learning to operate, there is not motiva- 
 tion enough, and there is too much distraction in other equally 
 important interests. Hence, a specific, artificial technique must 
 be set up. 
 
 The first stage, begun in the primary school simultaneously 
 with the forming of number concepts, is the learning of the num- 
 ber space and the tables as a mere matter of recall. The tech- 
 nique developed out of long experience and customarily used in 
 schools is perhaps as good as any. The same system of image 
 formation used in spelling is applicable. The child establishes 
 images of 4+6=10; 8X4=32; 32--4==8, and so on, as the 
 
536 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 result of many experiences visualized, heard, voiced, and writ- 
 ten. Further he establishes them in a series of sequential frame- 
 works of number concepts. 
 
 4A+I=5 4XI= 4 
 4-+2=6 4X2= 8 
 4+3=7 4X3=12 
 4+4=8 4X4=16 
 
 Further still, he establishes them as subtraction and division as 
 well as addition and multiplication. He practices until the 
 teacher is sure that he has his system of recall established and 
 can use it forward and backward, as multiplication or division, 
 addition or subtraction. — 
 
 We need not go into the testing of this stage in detail. The 
 method of testing which we have explained in spelling particu- 
 larly, and indeed in both the science type and the language-arts 
 type as well, applies here. The essence of the matter and the 
 purpose of testing is an inventory of the pupil’s reactions which 
 will disclose: first, the points at which reteaching needs to be 
 done; second, the pupils who have not yet mastered and the 
 items in which non-mastery exists; third, the pupils who have 
 mastered. The scored test of the class group performance is not 
 only wholly valueless for teaching purposes but it is often posi- 
 tively harmful and misleading. It is misleading because it iden- 
 tifies neither the pupils nor the items which need reteaching. It 
 is harmful because it tends to set up in the minds of teacher and 
 pupils both the passing-grade and the part-learning attitudes 
 toward learning. | 
 
 As soon as the number facts have thus been learned, both as 
 conceptual content* and as systems of recall, the process of 
 building up automatic facility begins. One hundred twenty-one 
 
 *It should not be inferred that the entire range must be built up, by specific 
 concrete experiences, as a body of conceptual content. Rather, the pupil practices 
 with concrete material in the simple combinations which can easily be visualized 
 
 and otherwise concretely experienced until the teacher is satisfied that he has gen- 
 eralized the notion of number as distinct from the symbols of number. 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 5a7 
 
 facts in the number space and 169? in the multiplication table 
 constitute the field. If we add the related subtraction and divi- 
 sion facts the number is doubled. The crux of the matter here is 
 practicing response without time interval sufficient for conscious 
 recall. 
 
 The quick perception devices with which most teachers in 
 the early grades of the elementary school are familiar are the 
 appropriate means. Probably the most serviceable device is the 
 flash card. For this purpose the facts to be practiced are printed, 
 or plainly written in round hand, on cards large enough for the 
 purpose. The card and its inscription should be plainly visible 
 from any part of the room. 
 
 The teacher selects a small pack of cards and exposes them 
 one aiter another for a fraction of a second each, the class re- 
 sponding in unison. Thus “78” is the number fact exposed. 
 The class responds “56.” There must be 10o per cent control 
 technique and the movement of the cards must be smooth, clear, 
 and rapid. At the moment of exposure, the card must be held 
 perfectly still. The group under training must be so seated or 
 gathered that the card is plainly and easily visible and so that it 
 will not need to be moved laterally to bring it within the lines of 
 vision of different pupils. The teacher will need to practice her- 
 self in exposing the cards until she can do so rapidly and with 
 entire facility. 
 
 Now it may be necessary at first to practice with a single 
 card until the pupils fall into step and make the instant response. 
 The tyro in this work, in the moment of awkwardness at the be- 
 ginning, often holds the card in view until she gets the response 
 as a matter of conscious recall. Of course this is no training at 
 all. Better begin with a card such as 22 to which the children 
 
 * Experimentation seems to show that, while many children infer the bond 
 2-+-1, as a matter of automatic response, from the bond 1-+2, and the bond 4X3 
 from the bond 34, others do not. Hence, for mastery purposes, the teacher 
 needs to check learning on each bond on both its aspects. Further, to omit the 
 
 bonds which include o is to leave a gap in learning which often proves singularly 
 troublesome later. 
 
538 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 will respond as a matter of course, and then slowly increase the 
 number of cards. If the response is not instant, the card is 
 thrown one side into a pile by itself and it is included in the prac- 
 tice for the next period. The children respond in unison, and, if 
 some individuals tend to lag the fraction of a second and thus 
 hang on the responses of the others, it does not greatly matter. 
 They are practicing, and the defects in their practice will be cor- 
 rected in the period of individual training which comes later. 
 
 It is convenient to divide the cards into packs, each pack 
 corresponding to a block of number facts, using much the same 
 system which has been described in the case of spelling. The 
 facts most often used at the stage at which the children are at 
 present working in arithmetic are used first and the several 
 blocks are mastered in succession. 
 
 After the warming-up period, during which the pupils are 
 getting into the swing of the practice, the teacher will note as 
 she runs through a pack that certain individuals respond in- 
 stantly to every card exposed. These children are released for 
 the present. Others about whom she is not certain are given a 
 period of individual practice, and, if successful, they in turn are 
 released. And so on until the group under training is reduced 
 to the problem cases, who are set aside for special study. 
 
 As the process of training goes on in this way, testing also 
 goes on: testing of the pupil on automatic response; retesting 
 the recall, apart from automatic response; and appraising the 
 relative difficulty of individual fact items. A written test of au- 
 tomatic response is obviously impossible. 
 
 The training of children in this ultimate mastery of the 
 number facts should not be thought of as a process antecedent 
 _ to the reflective learning which arithmetic proper implies. (See 
 chapter xiii.) Much as the teaching of correct spelling is a proc- 
 ess of weaving correct spelling into the pupil’s discourse, so the 
 development of automatic response to number facts is a matter 
 of weaving such use into the reflective processes which the child 
 uses in his assimilative experience in the mastery of arithmetical 
 
 
 
PURE-PRACTICE TEACHING 539 
 
 principles. Hence, the training is likely to continue from the be- 
 ginning of the secondary period in arithmetic for a year or more. 
 The situation is unlike that found in spelling in two important 
 respects. In the first place, training in the latter is applied to an 
 ever-growing active vocabulary, while training in the number 
 facts is limited to a maximum field of 580 items. In the second 
 place, the vocabulary becomes active only over a period of years, 
 while most if not all the number facts are needed by the pupil as 
 soon as the study of arithmetic begins. 
 
 OTHER USES 
 
 While spelling and automatic response to number facts rep- 
 resent the chief use to be made of our second pure practice sub- 
 type, practice in automatic response, there are numerous in- 
 stances in which the principles of practice in one or the other of 
 the subtypes can be usefully employed. In general, wherever 
 training in rapid manipulation or automatic response is needed, 
 this teaching type applies. Ordinarily this form of teaching is 
 used only after some fundamental adaptation has been made in 
 one of the other types. It is apt to be more serviceable in the 
 field of special education, notably in vocational training, than in 
 the field of general education. Typical instances are enumerated 
 below. 
 
 1. Rapid and accurate footing of columns of figures, and 
 other calculations, which are used frequently enough to justify 
 special training. This process is of course subsequent to mastery 
 of the fundamental arithmetical principles. 
 
 2. Developing speed and accuracy in typewriting. 
 
 3. Numerous specific processes in the field of practical arts 
 where skill is to be built upon the foundation of a practical arts 
 adaptation. 
 
 4. Certain cases in factoring, notably the forms x?—y’, x°+ 
 2xy-+y’, ax*+bx-++C, which are of such frequent occurrence 
 that it is sometimes worth while to develop a semi-automatic 
 skill, that is to say such familiarity that the characteristic situa- 
 
540 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tions are readily recognized and the manipulations rapidly per- 
 formed. 
 
 5. Paradigms in foreign language after the reading adapta- 
 tion has been formed, sometimes in a grammar course. (See 
 chapter xxv.) The training process here is strictly parallel to 
 that for developing automatic response to number facts. 
 
 6. Rules and formulas. This field used to be greatly over- 
 worked, so much so that a rule was often learned quite apart 
 from the underlying adaptation. Of late years, perhaps the pen- 
 dulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. It is some- 
 times true that a rule or a formula thoroughly memorized makes 
 the difference between an adaptation which can be put to instant 
 use and one which cannot. Probably the best illustration is the 
 circle formulas, c=2z7r and a=zr’. The adaptation here is a 
 logical conviction that there is a necessary relation between the 
 circumference and area of a circle and its radius. Perhaps it is 
 essential that the student shall convince himself that as a matter 
 of fact these relations are expressed by the formulas with which 
 we are familiar. The use of this relationship, however, becomes 
 almost as important in various studies of the secondary period 
 as the multiplication table. Hence, it is a matter of economy to 
 make the formulas a matter of automatic response and perma- 
 nent retention. 
 
 
 
PART IV 
 ADMINISTRATIVE TECHNIQUE 
 
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CHAPTER XXVIII 
 THE INTEGRITY OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 S we have developed our study of the teaching process, 
 
 A first as control technique and then as operative tech- 
 
 nique, we have also been dealing from point to point 
 
 with another phase of teaching activity which has to do with the 
 
 study of the individual pupil, with his guidance, and with the 
 control of the progress of his educational development. 
 
 The school is a unit in its influence upon the pupil. Every 
 experience which he has in the school tends to modify his atti- 
 tude toward life. Such experiences may be organized and fo- 
 cused upon common objectives or they may be leit to inhibit or 
 counteract one another. Under the baneful influence of the fac- 
 tory mental stereotype, the school may be forgetful that it is 
 dealing with organisms in the shape of human beings and act as 
 if every pupil were a piece of plastic material capable of being 
 wrapped up after each operation and of being found unchanged 
 when it may be convenient to apply the next. The pupil is indeed 
 plastic, but growth in manifold directions goes on whether the 
 school operates or not. Unless the needful administrative pro- 
 cedure is properly conceived and adequately carried out, the 
 educational product is purely in the hands of chance—it may be 
 brilliant success and a normally adjusted personality or it may 
 be wretched failure and a perverted, unhappy, and vicious per- 
 sonality. 
 
 In the hypothetical school consisting of Mark Hopkins and 
 his pupil Garfield, or in the very real Drumtochty School under 
 old Domsie, all these phases of technique coalesce in the person- 
 ality of a great teacher. Unhappily, perhaps, society is long past 
 that possibility. The school is organized and must be organized 
 on the principle of division of labor, but there is all the differ- 
 
 543 
 
544 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ence in the world between the school which is a sort of pedantic 
 factory and one which is in some degree an expansion of Mark 
 Hopkins or of the old humanist. In the one, the pupil encounters 
 a series of more or less erudite lesson-hearers, periodically is fed 
 into some testing machine, and occasionally, if he is very good or 
 very bad, has an interview with a person who is classified as an 
 administrative officer. In the other, the whole pupil goes to 
 school to every teacher, to his personnel officer, and to the prin- 
 cipal of the school or his assistant. Each of the latter in a school 
 which is at all well organized to secure true educational products 
 is wholly teacher or, if you prefer, educator. True, this person 
 may be using history and ariother mathematics and a third phys- 
 ics as media of education, while a fourth is studying the pupil 
 quite apart from any course, and a fifth is occupied with arrang- 
 ing a pupil’s schedule or interviewing a teacher or parent. Nev- 
 ertheless, to the extent that they are all teachers, and teachers 
 in the same sense of the word, the school succeeds or fails in its 
 principal mission. 
 
 It seems passing strange that anybody should feel it neces- 
 sary to point out the principle. In point of fact, however, the 
 tendency of schools to become organized upon that theory of the 
 division of labor which is appropriate to the factory is so marked 
 that when one speaks of administration in a group of school peo- 
 ple the latter are apt to think of the duties of the principal or 
 superintendent and not of those of the teacher. Conversely, 
 when we speak of teaching, the administrator often thinks only 
 of the testing of the results of those who work in the classroom. 
 Students come to the university to prepare themselves for “ad- 
 ministrative” positions. Courses which go to the root of the 
 problem of teaching make small appeal to many such since they 
 feel that they are not destined to teach. Similarly, courses 
 which are primarily administrative in character are seldom elect- 
 ed by those who are expecting to teach, albeit they will have 
 every day, or should have, a number of administrative problems 
 to meet. Now an administrative problem in the school means 
 
 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF THE SCHOOL 545 
 
 nothing except it is related to teaching; a teaching problem 
 means nothing except as it is related to the growth of pupils. 
 The fundamental profession is teaching. True, one may special- 
 ize in that aspect of teaching which is found in the preadolescent 
 period, another in science- or language-teaching; another in the 
 control of pupil conduct; another in case work; but all are prac- 
 ticing the fundamental art of teaching. 
 
 Administration is usually confounded with what is more 
 properly called “executive management.” The school has rela- 
 tions with the community. It is probably intrusted with the ap- 
 plication of some portion of the law of the land. There must be 
 provided funds for its maintenance and systematic controls for 
 the expenditure of such funds must be set up. There are various 
 activities ancillary to the process of teaching, such as operation 
 and maintenance of the school plant, which must be carried on. 
 There must be some means of judging the qualifications of teach- 
 ers and of employment and dismissal. Hence arises the require- 
 ment of executive management usually associated with the prin- 
 cipalship or presidency or superintendency, and acting under a 
 board of control which represents the body politic. 
 
 The actual functional relationship of the major activities 
 concerned with administrative technique proper may be approx- 
 imately depicted in the diagram which follows. It is of course 
 true that in the small school the executive will also be the co- 
 ordinating teacher and the personnel teacher and perhaps also 
 a classroom teacher as well. Or one or more classroom teachers 
 may also be assigned to co-ordinating and personnel work. We 
 are discussing functions and not persons. 
 
 The function of co-ordination of teaching implies, not only 
 the intelligent and scientific arrangement of courses, schedules, 
 and the like, but it implies a much more important function, 
 namely, the recruiting, development, and often training of the 
 teaching staff and the supervision of the teaching itself. In the 
 small school, a single person may cover the whole field and unite 
 this duty with those of the executive. In a large school, the co- 
 
546 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ordinating function may also require the services of a teacher 
 in each department and, it may be, one or more assistants to the 
 co-ordinating officer as well. 
 
 Now the technique of this officer is not only that of a teach- 
 er, in so far as he comes directly and indirectly in contact with 
 pupils, but even more so as he comes in contact with the teaching 
 force. In other words, his relations with the teaching body are 
 
 Executive 
 
 Classroom teacher Co-ordinating teacher Classroom teacher 
 Classroom teacher | | Classtoom teacher 
 Pupil body 
 Classroom teacher ge 
 [Reading-room teacher] Personnel teacher | Remedial teacher | 
 Pupil-examining teache Visiting teacher 
 FIG. 11 
 
 rather those of a teacher than those of a commanding officer. 
 There is very little in this volume which deals with the princi- 
 ples of teaching which does not also apply to the principles of 
 supervision. When the supervisor has before him the need of 
 getting a classroom teacher to do a certain thing in a certain 
 way, his problem is one of convincing the latter—in other words, 
 of generating a learning product, of bringing about an adapta- 
 tion. He may command, and in that case he gets a lesson-learn- 
 ing product. His task is not done until he has developed what 
 may be called “‘pedagogical responsibility.”” He cannot check up 
 by frequent inspection alone. The classroom situation when the 
 supervisor is present is wholly different from what it is when he 
 is absent, unless indeed the teacher is in the attitude of confi- 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF THE SCHOOL 547 
 
 dence characteristic of the pupil who is taking a valid education- 
 al test. The teacher who is concerned chiefly to please the super- 
 visor is in the same impossible attitude as the pupil who is study- 
 ing only for credits. The situation differs only when we en- 
 counter the remedial case. The person who either cannot or will 
 not teach cannot expect to be continued in the charge of pupils 
 while slow remedial measures calculated to make him an effec- 
 tive teacher are undertaken. But a corrective problem case in 
 the teacher as well as in the pupil? Assuredly. Even the modern 
 industrial enterprise no longer maintains a scrap heap for work- 
 men who are at all possible. It does not pay. 
 
 It is a rare case, indeed, that the training of a young teacher 
 can be dispensed with as soon as he has taken his degree in edu- 
 cation and received his appointment to the teaching staff. The 
 most that the school of education can do is to train him into the 
 capacity of sound and effective methods of educational study, to 
 put him in possession of the technology of his calling, to equip 
 him with that body of knowledge and capable use thereof which 
 makes him an educational scholar. His professional school 
 should not perhaps grant its degree until it has good assurance 
 that the candidate is adequately equipped with the academic 
 matter which he proposes to use in teaching. But beyond that, 
 he must be assimilated into the teaching force of which he has 
 become a member, he must for a long time to come be trained 
 in the practice of teaching, and, under ideal conditions, his su- 
 pervisory officer should be capable of guiding him in his further 
 professional and academic study until youth has hardened into 
 the mature habit of taking it for granted that study is never 
 ended. In the use of his academic material, the young teacher, 
 especially at the high-school and junior college level, will tend 
 to be unwise in what he teaches, and he must learn wisdom at 
 the hands of his own academic department. Just as the pupil’s 
 general education ends when he has arrived at educational self- 
 dependence, so the period of training in service for the young 
 teacher who holds both professional and academic degrees ends 
 
548 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 only when he arrives at pedagogical maturity and trustworthi- 
 ness based upon conviction and not upon conformity. 
 
 The function of co-ordination necessarily includes the se- 
 lection and nomination of the new members of the teaching staff. 
 For the executive to intervene here, unless on very special occa- 
 sions, is not unlike that supervision of study which consists in 
 doing the pupil’s work for him. 
 
 If the foregoing reasoning is sound, it follows that all mem- 
 bers of the staff who are intrusted with the function of co-ordi- 
 nation and supervision should themselves be persons of un- 
 doubted educational scholarship, of the necessary academic 
 scholarship, and of professional maturity. Obviously, they 
 should further possess personalities capable of leading their fel- 
 lows. So far as actually organizing and guiding a teaching force 
 is concerned, well-nigh hopeless conditions are necessarily cre- 
 ated when an immature young man or woman is made responsi- 
 ble for the co-ordination of a school. Manners may be never so 
 charming, personality never so winning, cleverness never so ad- 
 mirable; teachers can neither be trained nor guided nor stimu- 
 lated by one who is not himself an educator and a tried-and- 
 tested teacher. 
 
 In the organization of the modern school, the personnel 
 teacher has an extremely important place. True, every person 
 who teaches at all is perforce concerned with the individual 
 problems of his pupils. Nevertheless, there must be provided in 
 some form teachers who specialize in the study of the personal 
 problems of boys and girls just as others specialize in the use of 
 mathematics or science or language as media of education. To 
 the former come the personnel and problem reports and records 
 referred to in the chapters which follow. In their hands is the 
 working up of case studies and the assignment of remedial work. 
 From the accumulation of evidence in their case folders is the 
 decision touching the fundamental educational growth of the 
 pupil and of ultimate educational maturity. In their hands is, or 
 should be, the government of the pupil body itself and the pro- 
 
 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF THE SCHOOL 549 
 
 tection of the school’s morale. They carry on most of the inter- 
 views with parents when pupils have become general school 
 problems rather than problems in specific subjects. Finally, they 
 are the co-ordinating agency for the school’s system of pupil 
 advisers, and in their hands rests the final responsibility in the 
 case of conduct cases. 
 
 In a large school, the personnel officer requires a consider- 
 able staff. Ideally, there should be an assistant personnel officer 
 for perhaps every five hundred pupils beyond the first five hun- 
 dred. There are further needed a competent teacher who has 
 specialized in educational and psychological testing, a medical 
 inspector, and a teacher who has specialized in modern social 
 case work. We reiterate the principles that all such staff special- 
 ists should fundamentally be teachers, that they should have the 
 teacher’s point of view, that they should have acquired what 
 may be called “school sense” by actual experience in the class- 
 room. The results of an intelligence test, a reading test, any edu- 
 cational test, when contemplated with eyes that have become 
 accustomed to watching pupils in the learning situation, look 
 very different from the same results when viewed simply as sets 
 of raw scores, be the statistical analysis never so skilful. The vis- 
 iting teacher who is skilled in systematic social work may con- 
 tribute valuable findings on conduct cases, but most conduct 
 cases start life as learning cases, and half his professional world 
 is closed to the eyes of the social case worker who is not also a 
 skilful teacher possessed of a sense of teaching situations. The 
 number of such staff specialists needed of course varies with the 
 size of the school and still more with the character of the school’s 
 constituency. Up to an enrolment of five hundred at the most, in 
 an average school constituency a single personnel teacher should 
 be able, with the assistance of the school physician, to perform 
 all the necessary testing and visiting and interviewing. 
 
 The government of a school is not a military problem nor 
 yet an old-fashioned police problem, though at times the pupil 
 
550 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 body may require a great deal of policing. Good order can 
 doubtless be secured by anybody who is possessed of the neces- 
 sary personal address, but not self-control and a sense of con- 
 duct values. Government, like all else connected with the school, 
 is concerned with learning products. It is therefore a teaching 
 problem. Every teacher in the school is a responsible factor in 
 the government of the school or else he is not a teacher. The per- 
 sonnel officer with his organization is the appropriate co-ordi- 
 nating force here, just as the supervisor of instruction is the co- 
 ordinating force in that field, but co-ordination is his function 
 and not direct action. The.teacher who refers all his conduct 
 problems to the personnel office is a weak teacher, and the school 
 which is organized on such a basis simply ceases to be a school 
 at all—it becomes merged in the personality of its personnel 
 officer. 
 
 Government implies morale. With increasing enrolments 
 and preoccupation with academic teaching, the tendency in large 
 high schools and colleges is to try to devise some machinery 
 of constraint which will operate automatically. It cannot be 
 done. A multitude of environmental influences operate upon the 
 school—athletics, debates, a great many so-called extracurricu- 
 lar activities, the home, the community, the press. There are 
 no extracurricular activities, and nothing which influences the 
 tone and public opinion of the school is remote from its educa- — 
 tional concern. Athletics or fraternities are as much matters of 
 the curriculum as language or science. For the most part, these 
 things are examples of the appreciation type of teaching and the 
 personnel staff are the teachers. Every year we are treated to 
 scandals which bring some school or college into entirely unde- 
 sirable publicity. With rare exceptions, the causation lying back 
 of the incident is a period, longer or shorter, of neglect of school 
 morale or of operation under the delusion of automatic control. 
 Either the school has become slack or else it has not been sys- 
 tematically organized to care for this major element in its life. 
 In the end, publicity is deprecated because it “injures the good 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF THE SCHOOL 551 
 
 name of Alma Mater.” If Alma Mater had looked after her 
 character, her reputation would have taken care of itself. 
 
 The mastery formula is as applicable to the government and 
 morale of the school as to any of its classroom activities. The 
 general policy of the school is the teaching. The behavior of the 
 pupil body is the tested result. The personnel officer who ap- 
 proaches his task in a scientific spirit is ever observing, noting, 
 checking up the evidences of group morale. He finds undesir- 
 able tendencies here and there. He follows them back to the 
 causation which is at work. He modifies his policy to meet the 
 situation. 
 
 It is probably no more true that strong personality is needed 
 in the chief personnel officer than it is needed in every other 
 teacher, but the consequences of employing a weak teacher here 
 are more fatal and far reaching, and are apt to be more spectac- 
 ular than in other cases. Too often a person is appointed who 
 comes with academic credentials and, it may be, creditable at- 
 tainments in the staff work required by the function, but not 
 possessed of the strength of character requisite for the control 
 and guidance of a student body in which may easily be several 
 stronger personalities. The board of education thrusts its head 
 in the sand and declares that all is well. The outcome is what 
 we too often see: a school or college in fact committed to the 
 guidance of a few strong students, immature and possessed not 
 only of the normal self-assurance of youth but of a cockiness 
 born of their sense of real superiority. The end result is a de- 
 plorable lowering of moral standards in the whole younger gen- 
 eration in the community. Far better close the doors of the in- 
 stitution than to trust its pupil guidance to a weak man or a 
 weak woman. 
 
 As we have followed the teaching process through its various 
 phases and types, we have discussed in each the features of ad- 
 ministrative technique which are essential to the attainment of 
 the learning products and the care of problem pupils. It remains 
 to consider the principles which apply to the school as a whole 
 and to all the types of teaching. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 | “( HE foundation of administrative technique we conceive 
 to be in a clear apprehension of the terms ability, ad- 
 justment, performance, behavior and in a just evalua- 
 tion of their relative significance in the educative process. 
 
 By “ability” is meant the resources of every kind which the 
 individual has within himsélf and which enable him to learn. 
 The term must be allowed to include all types of native ability 
 and all types of acquired ability as well. 
 
 By “adjustment” we refer to the modifications which have 
 been made or are being made in the individual’s attitude toward 
 his environment and in his capacity to deal with his environ- 
 ment. While the ease with which he makes a new adaptation, ac- 
 quires a new bit of learning, will depend upon his ability at the 
 time, the ability is one thing and the adaptation is another. 
 
 By “performance” we mean the use which the individual 
 makes of a given learning product on a given occasion, not the 
 use which he is able to make but the use which, as a matter of 
 fact, he does make. Again, performance will doubtless depend 
 to some extent upon ability and upon the adjustment already 
 made, but performance, adjustment, and ability are still notions 
 to be kept distinct in our thinking. Further, performance always 
 depends, more or less, upon circumstances—motivation, bodily 
 condition, emotional state, for instance—and upon skill in the 
 art required by performance. For example, I have three stu- 
 dents in a professional course. All three have mastered the prin- 
 ciple which I have been developing. The difference between the 
 three in the ease with which they have learned, and in the peda- 
 gogical exertions I have been obliged to employ in making the 
 idea register, depends upon the range of individual ability in the 
 
 | 552 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 553 
 
 particular learning situation in which the three have found them- 
 selves. They now submit papers of widely different values as per- 
 formance, and I know why. The first returns an excellent report; 
 the second a well-written but meager paper; the third a prolix 
 jumble of badly written paragraphs. The first student is inter- 
 ested and feels inclined to develop the subject. The second feels 
 no corresponding impulse. The third is as interested as the first, 
 and, otherwise tested, has a competent understanding of the sub- 
 ject matter; but he woefully lacks skill in English composition. 
 So it frequently is with a scored test in reading or arithmetic or 
 French or any other subject; the test performance is not evi- 
 dence either for or against the presence of the fundamental 
 adaptation or series of adaptations. 
 
 The tendency of teachers and administrative officers, espe- 
 cially in recent years, has been to exalt ability and performance 
 and to leave adjustment out of account. Of course, the exact re- 
 verse is the only possible educative procedure. Adjustment or 
 learning, adaptation or the learning product, is entitled to the 
 center of the stage. Measurement of either ability or perform- 
 ance is valuable only as it makes possible analysis of the condi- 
 tions which are essential to the learning process and of the re- 
 sults of learning. 
 
 By “behavior” we mean the pupil’s general conduct of his 
 school life and out-of-school life. Strictly speaking of course, 
 performance is behavior, but for the purposes of our discussion 
 we prefer the broader meaning of the term, that which it has in 
 ordinary conversation. There is an element of behavior as well 
 as of performance in the three students’ papers referred to 
 above. In the first and third we recognize an element of specific 
 intellectual interest motivating much the same behavior, al- 
 though the performance is widely different. In the second, we 
 note a different type of behavior, traceable to a lack of specific 
 intellectual interest. Again, we observe that a certain pupil is 
 unfailingly courteous in all his relations with his fellows and 
 with the teachers. This is behavior, and it is traceable to adjust- 
 
554. THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ment somewhere in the background. Another pupil exhibits the 
 characteristic of sustained application in all he has to do, and 
 this is behavior. If our minds were centered on the fidelity with 
 which he applied himself to a certain task, we should be think- 
 ing of his performance on that task. If we were observing the 
 process of his transformation from scatterbrain methods of 
 work to the habit of sustained application, adjustment would be 
 in our minds. In the long run, behavior is the final evidence of 
 the presence of the series of adaptations which constitute adjust- 
 ment. 
 ABILITY 
 
 The individual pupil, as we meet him at a given level, say 
 the end of the junior college period, is an almost infinite com- 
 plex of abilities and ability levels. Some of his ability traits are 
 inherited and are probably incapable of essential modification. 
 Others are inherited, are capable of modification, and may or 
 may not have been modified. This student comes to us with a 
 rich and varied ideational background, capable of assimilating 
 almost any new idea which we may present, while the boy who 
 sits next to him in class has an extremely meager background, 
 so much so that the intellectual atmosphere of the college class- 
 room is only less strange to him than would be the streets of 
 New York to the Eskimo. Another youth has acquired an ef- 
 fective body of study methods and his mate has not. Another, 
 still, has never actually mastered the essential mathematical 
 thinking processes. Another is still handicapped by an essential 
 defect in his primary reading adaptation. Another is still at a 
 childish stage of volitional evolution. And so the tale runs. The 
 illustrations cited are by no means fanciful; they are drawn 
 from actual analyses verified by corrective or remedial work. 
 Such an analysis can of course be made at any level of school 
 work, and the principal differences between the lower and the 
 higher levels will be found in the fact that a young child has not 
 had the time to acquire the range of inabilities which his older 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION S35 
 
 schoolmate has taken on, nor is he in the presence of learning 
 problems which require so great a range of abilities. 
 
 Now it is entirely possible to devise tests of a comprehensive 
 character the results of which will correlate with the test results 
 revealed by progress in the ordinary type of lesson-hearing 
 school, which has no place for either corrective or remedial 
 teaching. This has been done with such ingenuity that intelli- 
 gence tests now give us, on the whole, our best prognosis of suc- 
 cess in the type of school referred to. In other words, if we keep 
 on with the kind of teaching to which the pupil has been accus- 
 tomed all his days, we shall continue to secure a result which is 
 much like that previously secured, and a properly devised test 
 will indicate what that result will probably be. What boots it to 
 know that a given pupil is of a given level of ability, indiscrim- 
 inatingly assigned, when even a modicum of hard pedagogical 
 thinking, on the evidence of the test results themselves, will dis- 
 close the principle that lack of ability consists to some extent of 
 elements which can be and should be corrected? 
 
 The unconvinced counters with the query, ‘““How does it 
 happen that some of these children succeed and others do not, 
 when they have all alike been exposed to the same teaching, un- 
 less it be that fundamental, native, unmodifiable differences are 
 accountable for the very defects which you think might be cor- 
 rected?” As well inquire, ‘“How does it happen that some of 
 these children have had measles and others have not, unless it be 
 that native differences in susceptibility account for the matter?” 
 The analogy is illuminating and can be pressed far. 
 
 In the main, children escape infectious diseases because 
 they happen not to have been exposed to the specific infection. 
 Similarly, some children succeed in school because they have 
 been fortunate in their homes and in the teachers who guided 
 their early steps. They happily caught the right ideas at the 
 right time and caught them right. The contrary is true of others. 
 
 A certain child is exposed to an infection and does not con- 
 tract the malady because his general health is so aboundingly 
 
556 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 good that his body defenses throw off the germ; another whose 
 general health is not so good comes down with the disease. Nev- 
 ertheless the latter’s physical condition is subject to remedial 
 treatment such that he will throw off the next infection. Simi- 
 larly one pupil in a class is in good physical, emotional, and voli- 
 tional condition, and responds readily to instruction; another is 
 less happy and makes a defective response with lasting results. 
 Nevertheless, the latter’s condition can often be remedied and, 
 in that case, he becomes the learning peer of his classmate. 
 Finally, a child is prone to pick up every infection which ap- 
 pears in the community, simply because he has inherited an or- 
 ganism which will not throw off infection. Similarly, some pupils 
 in a class learn with difficulty or not at all, simply because they 
 have inherited a brain structure which works badly. 
 Classification.—It is perhaps useful to make a brief survey 
 of the elements which at any time enter into the complex of 
 learning capacity in the pupil which we call “ability.” For this 
 purpose, we utilize the classification exhibited below, not be- 
 cause there is something fundamental in this particular form, 
 but because it is convenient for practical purposes as a guide to 
 our analysis of pupil difficulties. The divisions are in the order 
 which we should properly follow in investigating a problem case. 
 t. Psycho-physical elements 
 Conditions of the nervous and muscular organism by which stim- 
 uli are received and reactions are carried out. Vision, hearing, 
 speech control, co-ordination, reaction-time are illustrations 
 2. Physical-health elements 
 General condition of the bodily organism affecting reaction qual- 
 ity. Other things being equal, the pupil who is possessed of sound 
 bodily health will learn best 
 3. Experiential elements t 
 a) General apperceptive mass, that is, the extent of ideational 
 content which is presented to the assimilation of new ideas 
 6) Organized intellectual content of mind, that is, the learning 
 products which have been acquired and correlated and which 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 557 
 
 are available to the pupil for thinking his way through new 
 situations—what we ordinarily call “preparation.” Reading 
 ability and elementary mathematical ability seem in practice 
 to be the most important 
 c) Methods and habits of learning and study 
 4. Emotional elements 
 Personal “feelings” toward learning. Confidence, interest, antipa- 
 thies toward teachers, admiration of teachers, normal or abnormal 
 attitudes toward classmates, overvaluation of self, inferiority feel- 
 ings, are illustrations 
 5. Volitional elements 
 Attitude toward effort. Standards of achievement and perform- 
 ance, get-by attitude, the whole series discussed in chapter xxi, are 
 illustrations 
 6. Mental elements 
 Inherent learning capacity, apart from other factors in ability, 
 traceable either to inherited qualities in the central nervous sys- 
 tem or to the interference of physical malady in the development 
 of the latter or to the presence of specific native traits. We may 
 keep in mind four distinct terms 
 (1) Subnormality 
 (2) Degrees of normal mentality 
 (3) Disordered mentality 
 (4) Special gifts 
 
 The mental element —Now the tendency of teachers in all 
 the ages has been to attribute all inabilities to lack of ability of 
 the sixth type. If I cannot succeed in teaching this pupil this 
 unit, it must be because he lacks brains, especially if other 
 teachers have similar troubles. It is a very human sort of atti- 
 tude for the teacher to take, but its fallacy is so obvious as hard- 
 ly to require argument. The teaching may not improbably be at 
 fault, but, whether that is true or not, it is clearly evident that 
 many other explanations must be exhausted before we fall back 
 on native mental inability as the explanation. No observant 
 teacher can fail to recognize the antecedent probability of other 
 elements in the problem, and, as a matter of fact, there are too 
 
558 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 many cases within the reach of every teacher in which pupils 
 have passed from failure to marked success to justify an a priori 
 pessimistic conclusion. In actual laboratory practice, from the 
 kindergarten through the junior college, cases have yielded to 
 patient analysis and corrective treatment, in each of the types 
 listed above, save the sixth alone. What at first appeared to be 
 mental inability was found to be inability of another sort. 
 
 Nevertheless, mental ability is undoubtedly one of the ele- 
 ments to be taken into account, and here the distinction between 
 normality and subnormality is much more important to adminis- 
 trative technique than degrees in normality. Subnormality has 
 been defined in substance as inherent inability to make the ad- 
 justments which ordinary living requires. In pedagogical terms, 
 it implies non-educability. Apparently it is transmitted from par- 
 ent to child as a unit character. Now the psychologist in apply- 
 ing tests of mentality which can be scored is able to note no 
 abrupt change in the progression of scores as he passes from the 
 obviously feeble-minded to the obviously normal, and so on up 
 to the highest scores found. He finds that those who are identi- 
 fied on other grounds as being feeble-minded never show test 
 scores of the order which normal individuals show. He is justi- 
 fied, when he secures a score which is typical of the feeble-mind- 
 ed, in suspecting feeble-mindedness, but he draws no conclusion 
 of feeble-mindedness until he has corroborative evidence. The 
 pupil is not feeble-minded because he shows a low intelligence 
 quotient; he shows a low intelligence quotient because he is 
 feeble-minded. When the psychologist is able to say to the 
 teacher, ‘“This pupil is feeble-minded,” the teacher has a definite 
 diagnosis. Administrative technique probably assigns the pupil 
 to custodial care. When, however, the psychologist returns the 
 pupil with the verdict, ‘Low intelligence; will not go far,” he is 
 invading a field not his own. The teacher’s appropriate response 
 is, “That remains to be seen.” 
 
 From the teacher’s point of view, ‘‘border-line” cases must 
 be looked upon not as those of pupils whose mentality is in a twi- 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 559 
 
 light zone between normality and subnormality, but rather as 
 instances in which the psychologist cannot tell whether the pu- 
 pil is normal or feeble-minded. Critical observation of the na- 
 ture of the pupil’s learning reactions and study of the case by 
 searching case-history methods may in time tell the story. If the 
 pupil can make the adaptations which the learning products 
 found in the lower secondary period imply, we may conclude 
 that he is normal. If he cannot do so and we can see wherein 
 and why he cannot, we may justly infer subnormality. The is- 
 sue still is normality or subnormality. If the final verdict is sub- 
 normality, the teacher’s course is plain. If it is normality, the 
 teacher’s course is equally plain, but very much more difficult. 
 
 Normal children can learn. Some may require longer than 
 others; some require a great deal more assimilative experience 
 than others; but in the end all learn. The child who really 
 learns, but does so slowly and with difficulty, becomes at once a 
 problem case for study in other types of ability, defects in which 
 can often be corrected. Relative brightness and dulness are 
 terms with which every teacher is perforce familiar in the daily 
 practice of the schoolroom, but our evidence is usually drawn 
 from success in learning. We identify a pupil as bright because 
 he learns rapidly and well and then tend to allow ourselves to 
 conclude that he learns well because he is bright. We are far 
 from being justified as yet in concluding that mere brightness in 
 itself is the exclusive element in successful learning or even in 
 rapid learning. The appropriate course for administrative tech- 
 nique is to raise the question, ‘““Why does this pupil learn slowly 
 and with great difficulty?” and the corresponding question, “‘Is 
 the learning of this pupil who apparently learns quickly and suc- 
 cessfully real learning?” In brief, the base line to which queries 
 are referred is adjustment and not ability. 
 
 The unwarranted assumption that brightness and learning 
 capacity are necessarily synonymous and that relative bright- 
 “ness is revealed by the high intelligence quotient frequently 
 leads to the practice in administrative technique of spurring on 
 
560 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the high I.Q. The practice is, we think, founded on inadequate 
 analysis of the situation, and it may lead to unhappy results. To 
 be sure, if we know that a given pupil is not exerting himself as 
 he should, we have good ground for applying wholesome stimuli 
 whatever his I.Q. may be. On the other hand, a high I.Q., 
 coupled with defective learning, may lead us to set aside the 
 case for study; but it is the defective learning which is the occa- 
 sion for study and not the I.Q. Such study is equally appropri- 
 ate for the low I.Q. To conclude that a pupil who shows a high 
 intelligence quotient should forthwith on that ground alone, 
 without further analysis, be aroused to better performance is to 
 confound adjustment with performance and to make unwar- 
 ranted assumptions as to ability. 
 
 The issue of normality or subnormality and degrees of nor- 
 mal mentality must not be confounded with disordered mental- 
 ity. It occasionally happens, especially during the adolescent 
 period, that a pupil is found who is suffering from mental mal- 
 ady. Such cases, of course, are wholly beyond the province of 
 the teacher; they belong to the specialist in mental diseases. 
 
 Thus far in our discussion of mental ability as a factor to be 
 reckoned with in administrative technique, we have confined 
 ourselves to its relation to the learning process as such, to the 
 making of the adjustments which constitute general education. 
 There are undoubtedly other characteristics of the individual 
 which must be thought of generically as mental abilities, but 
 which are quite different from mere degrees of brightness or dul- 
 ness or relative success in learning. These are such individual 
 characteristics as originality, power of initiative, ingenuity, spe- 
 cial talent, creative genius. The teacher encounters them, or at 
 least their potentialities, and, provided indeed he is himself suffi- 
 ciently well endowed and educated to recognize them, one of the 
 most valuable services he can possibly render to society is to 
 identify such in his pupils and put the latter in the way of realiz- 
 ing them. So far as we can make out, such talents are inherent 
 and are the product of education only in so far as education fur- 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 561 
 
 nishes the media in which they can become manifest. That 
 teaching practice which in the long run gives the largest oppor- 
 tunity for such traits to develop is, other things being equal, the 
 best practice. Certain of such inherent characteristics undoubt- 
 edly contribute to the success of their possessors in learning cer- 
 tain subjects, and they probably inhibit success in other sub- 
 jects. To some degree, they can no doubt be identified by ap- 
 propriate psychological tests, but to assert that a high I.Q. at- 
 tained on a general intelligence test is an indication of genius or 
 near-genius is, to say the least, misleading. The distinguishing 
 mark of such gifts is their specific and often special character. 
 Any one of them may be present in a pupil who is not particu- 
 larly bright and who is not in general a markedly successful 
 learner. 
 
 As far as degree of mental ability in the normal pupil is con- 
 cerned therefore, it is important to distinguish between relative 
 brightness which, other things being equal, may contribute to 
 rate of learning, and special gifts which may or may not so con- 
 tribute but which are infinitely more valuable to society than 
 mere brilliancy in learning. In the end, the surest test of the 
 presence of either type of quality in the pupil is the result of 
 careful and patient observation in the schoolroom. Special psy- 
 chological test results may well attract our attention to a par- 
 ticular pupil as being unusually bright or specially gifted, but 
 we feel much more certain when we behold his behavior corrob- 
 orating the tests. 
 
 We have devoted an amount of space to the consideration of 
 the mental components of pupil ability quite out of proportion 
 to their relative importance, largely because it is this field in 
 which administrative technique is most likely to go astray. Of 
 all the elements of ability, mentality is least subject to modifica- 
 tion. Whatever may be the pupil’s mentality, provided he is 
 normal, degree of mentality or special gift is much less impor- 
 tant than the use which he makes of his endowment. Other ele- 
 ments of ability are largely matters of adjustment, arising out 
 
562 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 of either the normal learning of the classroom or out of correc- 
 tive or remedial treatment. 
 
 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 Even the very bright pupil must learn. People never inherit 
 education. An individual of large native gifts who remains un- 
 adjusted to the world in which he must pass his life is even more 
 dangerous to society than the dull person who is similarly un- 
 educated, and the former is on the whole more likely to become 
 an unhappy person. The learning of a naturally bright pupil 
 may take place more rapidly than that of the dull pupil, but in 
 the end adjustment in itself is as valuable in the one as in the 
 other, both to society and to the individual concerned. The dif- 
 ference in value to society consists in what the bright pupil or 
 the pupil with a special gift does contribute over and above the 
 requirements of general education—not what he might contrib- 
 ute but what he does contribute. Confusion of ability with ad- 
 justment not infrequently leads the teacher and the school to 
 adopt an attitude in which ability is rewarded rather than the 
 learning which ability should make possible. Not unnaturally as 
 a consequence, the pupil of parts comes to look upon himself as 
 superman and to delude himself into the belief that his fancied 
 superior talent is in itself the equivalent of production. One of 
 the most pitiful tragedies the schoolmaster has to contemplate 
 is the college boy or girl whom doting parents and teachers and 
 adoring schoolmates have persuaded that he or she is a “genius,” 
 
 The graded-school stereotype in pedagogical thinking lends 
 itself with singular facility to what may be called the “ability 
 fallacy.” The curriculum is apportioned to the successive grades 
 and similar subdivisions of the school career. In itself, this is a 
 convenient and suitable administrative arrangement, and work- 
 able if it is operated by a teacher possessed of school sense who 
 is unwilling to commit his thinking rights to people whose prac- 
 tical knowledge of school affairs is a vague recollection left over 
 from their own school days. But now comes the rage for testing 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 563 
 
 mental ability and determining mental age, again in its own 
 place and properly used an invaluable addition to the teacher’s 
 cabinet of professional tools. The fatal thing about the whole 
 arrangement is that grade levels can so easily be transmuted in- 
 to chronological age, and this in turn compared with mental age. 
 What more natural than to fit mental age to the normal age- 
 grade level? If the seventh-grade chronological age is normally 
 twelve and John has a mental age of twelve, obviously the sen- 
 sible thing to do with all convenient speed is to shift John to the 
 seventh grade, even though his chronological age is but ten and 
 he is in the fifth grade. And the results seem to justify the pro- 
 cedure; John does well in the seventh grade and very possibly 
 he has taken on a new interest in school. If ability and perform- 
 ance are the only terms in our administrative thinking, all con- 
 ditions are satisfied. Unhappily, however, the boy has either lost 
 all that he should have learned in Grades V and VI, or else, what 
 is more likely, he has only half-learned in the rapid process of 
 translating him from the fifth grade to the seventh. Mastery of 
 the true learning products is a slow process of growth, not the 
 factory process which the administrative procedure described 
 really implies. 
 
 _ It is true that the situation in which we found John required 
 attention. Critical observation of the case no doubt revealed the 
 true learning situation and the findings thereof were doubtless 
 verified by the results of the intelligence test. The appropriate 
 administrative procedure, however, was quite different, and to 
 this point we shall return in the next chapter. Meantime, suffice 
 it to remind the reader that the pupil must acquire the learnings 
 implied by the fifth and sixth grades if we would avoid malad- 
 justment later on. Careful probing of problem cases which are 
 primarily learning rather than conduct cases usually discloses 
 inabilities which are due to non-mastery of essential learning 
 products. May we illustrate. 
 
 Here is the case of a boy at senior high school level. He isa 
 problem in mathematics and of course in all subjects in which 
 
564 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 mathematics is an essential instrument of thought. He has an 
 I.Q. in the go’s. The school history shows that he has always 
 been “slow in mathematics,” and the school officers are inclined 
 to think that he is “dull normal.” The boy’s own testimony re- 
 veals the fact that his parents complacently accepted him as “no 
 good in arithmetic,” and he has come to believe this and more of 
 himself. Three hours of probing discloses to the investigator the 
 following story: In identification of mathematical situations as 
 exhibited in typical problems, he is better than the average. He 
 can talk intelligently and accurately about the mathematics of 
 certain aspects of banking in which he happens to be interested, 
 but he becomes hopelessly muddled in any kind of process work. 
 Given a column of figures to foot, he is abnormally slow and in- 
 accurate. So the investigator works back until he finds that the 
 pupil has no automatic control of the primary combinations. In- 
 stead, he has devised a system of counting, right enough in itself, 
 but one which cannot be used with the degree of facility which 
 accuracy and clear-headedness in the processes require. Handi- 
 capped in this fashion, he is of course inhibited in making adap- 
 tations to the whole series of number relations of which later 
 mathematics is largely the science. Inability is not inherent but 
 acquired; not a matter of mentality but of adjustment. 
 
 Sectioning classes-——The question of sectioning classes ac- 
 cording to ability, in the struggle for the advantage of homoge- 
 neous groups, has doubtless already arisen in the reader’s mind. 
 The response in general is, “Certainly classes should be sec- 
 tioned according to ability of students, provided we know what 
 abilities we are sectioning for.” 
 
 Classes may be sectioned on the disclosures of general intel- — 
 ligence tests. The result will be approximately homogeneous sec- 
 tions of a certain sort. So long as we have in mind performance, 
 and especially lesson performance, critical observation justifies 
 our sectioning again and again. If we spur each of the several 
 sections up to its maximum performance, we find that relative 
 performance the more justifies the sectioning. But now let us 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 565 
 
 turn from the performance standard to some convenient learn- 
 ing or adjustment standard, such as the rate at which individuals 
 master successive units of learning or make successive adapta- 
 tions. The result is materially different. Specific factors in abil- 
 ity have now a better chance to operate, especially those which 
 arise out of experiential background and volitional develop- 
 ment. The pupil who has developed a sort of complex school 
 brightness, which stands him well in hand on all sorts of per- 
 formance, is now obliged to work over and over until he has a 
 tested learning product. In carrying out an experiment in the 
 laboratory based on this issue, Beauchamp found that sectioning 
 his groups on their general-intelligence test scores would have 
 thrown 46 per cent into the wrong section if only two sections 
 had been made.* 
 
 In passing, we should comment upon a marked emotional 
 disturbance and inability which tends to be set up by the prac- 
 tice of sectioning on the basis of general-intelligence tests. Gen- 
 eral intelligence implies in the minds of the pupils inherent men- 
 tal ability. Now, when we raise questions touching inherent abil- 
 ity, we attack the very citadel of personality. We tend to con- 
 vince the high ratings that they are of better clay and thus set 
 up a more or less fatal false attitude toward learning, and, what 
 is perhaps worse, we induce the low ratings complacently to ac- 
 cept a fatalistic sense of inferiority. One pupil known to the au- 
 thor, a student of quite unusual special talent, whose college 
 Freshman intelligence rating placed him in the second section of 
 his class, for a long time accepted himself as “second class” and 
 adjusted his life accordingly. Another, a junior high school 
 problem case of the experiential type who had repeatedly been 
 tested for intelligence, came to the problem-case investigator in 
 a state of extreme worry because he feared that “something was 
 wrong with his brain.” 
 
 A more exact and reasonable basis for sectioning is found in 
 specific abilities of the experiential type—more exact because 
 
 1W. L. Beauchamp, Studies in Secondary Education, II, 24-26. 
 
566 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 we thereby relate ability to the specific adjustment sought and 
 more reasonable because we make clear to the pupil that his in- 
 ability is remediable and that he need not classify himself as in- 
 herently inferior or defective. We may, for instance, section 
 classes according to acquired ability in English usage. To do so 
 is simply to inventory the learning products acquired and to 
 adopt a convenient and rational method of making good the de- 
 ficiencies which are bound to exist. Still better, it is to convince 
 the pupil of the nature of the learning process. Our highest sec- 
 tion will probably be released altogether. Again, we may deter- 
 mine from experience the natural rate of learning in a foreign 
 language and section classes accordingly, leaving the sectioning 
 flexible enough to permit resectioning in case individuals correct 
 defective learning methods and improve in rate of learning. In 
 this case, we do not fail to make clear to pupils that a slow learn- 
 er is not a defective learner, and that there are sometimes ad- 
 vantages in being a slow learner. In a science, mathematics, or 
 history class we can explore the apperceptive mass specific to the 
 course contemplated and section accordingly. In such cases, we 
 shall find frequent occasion to introduce an elementary course 
 for one or more sections. In practical-arts courses, sectioning is 
 ordinarily unnecessary, for class work is naturally on an indi- 
 vidual basis. 
 
 Inability traceable to psycho-physical, physical, emotional, 
 or volitional sources usually appears also as inability of the ex- 
 periential type for the reason that inability which is making 
 learning difficult now has made it difficult in the past, and on 
 that ground implies a slow section for the pupil, coupled with 
 remedial attention. Apart from associated experiential defects, 
 none of the inabilities of these types is ground for sectioning. 
 Indeed, volitional retardation and sometimes emotional disturb- 
 ance are sometimes grounds for placing the pupil in a fast sec- 
 tion. In our laboratory-school practice, more than one case of 
 the volitional type at high-school level has been noted in which 
 
 ————————————— See 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 567 
 
 distinct remedial effects followed from giving the pupil a heavy 
 load—five subjects instead of four. 
 
 Maturity and adjustment —The pupil who is a rapid learn- 
 er, be the cause what it may, is undoubtedly harmed if he is in- 
 hibited from learning up to what is his normal rate. The infer- 
 ence, as we have seen, is apt to be that he should move through 
 the graded system at a more rapid rate. In certain cases this 
 may be the correct inference, while in others it is a false infer- 
 ence. “Learning,” as the term is here used, means intellectual 
 adjustment, but there are clearly other forms of adjustment. 
 One of the most important is adjustment to the usages of so- 
 ciety. Young people sometimes exhibit more rapid intellectual 
 than social development. That is what we mean when we speak 
 of a pupil as being bright, a rapid learner, possessed of notably 
 advanced intellectual growth, but somewhat of a baby still. We 
 are apt to note that he associates with younger children, or per- 
 haps withdraws from any association at all. At home he is still 
 “mother’s boy.”” Sometimes a corollary is slow physical devel- 
 opment; or it may be that his social maturing is normal for his 
 age and that he is intellectually precocious. In either event, the 
 sound procedure appears to be, not advancement to the standing 
 of his intellectual peers among the older pupils, but an expanded 
 curriculum on the principles explained in the next chapter and 
 continued association with children of his own social age. 
 Growth in the fundamental social adjustments arises out of con- 
 tacts with contemporaries and not out of classroom study. 
 
 On the other hand, certain individuals exhibit accelerated 
 social, and, it may be, a correlated physical development. In 
 such cases, movement upward to levels in which the pupil finds 
 his social contemporaries is of course indicated. These socially 
 precocious children impose a great deal of concern upon the ad- 
 ministrative technician, to the end that volitional and intellec- 
 tual growth shall keep pace with social development. Forcing is 
 not justified, but a great deal of hard work on the pupils’ part is 
 
568 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 justified. Fortunately, such pupils can usually bear a lot of hard 
 work. 
 
 The same principle appears, with added force, in the case of 
 the pupil who becomes intellectually retarded to the extent that 
 his classroom work has to be carried out in company with much 
 younger children. The consequences in the developing person- 
 ality are unhappy indeed. The moment it becomes clear that a 
 pupil is likely to be outstripped in the learning process by his 
 contemporaries, intensive pupil study and intensive corrective 
 or remedial work are called for. Thus it becomes evident that 
 adjustment rather than ability is the sound basis of sectioning, 
 and the case history rather than the intelligence test its most re- 
 liable instrument. 
 
 PERFORMANCE 
 
 As ability is apt to be confounded with adjustment in the be- 
 ginning, so is performance in the end result. Perhaps the clear- 
 est illustration of what is meant is to be found in the primary 
 school in early handwriting. 
 
 At some time during the first two years of school life we are 
 likely to find some children whose handwriting is already beau- 
 tiful in its legibility, regularity, and spacing. Measured by any 
 known standard, we should say that the child needed only to ac- 
 quire a good rate in order to achieve near-perfection. And yet 
 the child does not write; he draws. So far from the handwriting 
 adaptation having formed, it cannot be said that he even writes 
 at all. The teacher has ignored one of the fundamental laws of 
 learning in her quest of a performance result. The child in the 
 course of time forms the adaptation, that is, he learns an ari 
 which has the essential characteristics of handwriting, but how 
 deplorably he has deteriorated! Not at all; his crude third-year 
 writing is after all writing, while his beautiful result at the end of 
 the second year was something else entirely. At one period, he ~ 
 showed admirable performance but no adjustment; at the other 
 he shows adjustment but poor performance. In the second 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 569 
 
 instance, he has learned handwriting; in the first, he had learned 
 something else. Subsequently there can be built on his third- 
 year handwriting adaptation the penmanship skills. 
 Mathematics is prolific of instances of confusion between 
 performance and adjustment. Adaptations in elementary math- 
 ematics appear to be of two kinds: in one, we have the recogni- 
 tion of mathematical situations, what is commonly called “appli- 
 cation”—ability to see in a problem what processes are called 
 for; in the other, the manipulation of the processes themselves. 
 Perhaps no subject in the curriculum exhibits more evident loss 
 of what appeared to be learning. Students in the science and 
 practical-arts courses, particularly in the senior high school and 
 college, exhibit an ignorance of the simplest of mathematical 
 principles which is astonishing. Now, the classroom study of 
 mathematics is singularly apt to be performance learning rather 
 than adaptation, and this may remain as true of teaching which 
 follows the unit and supervised-study technique as of that which 
 uses the daily-lesson procedure. Exercises and problems are as- 
 signed. In the mastery technique, pupils are kept at work on 
 such until they can perform the operations; in lesson-learning, 
 of course, they simply perform the exercises and are graded on 
 performance. In neither case is the true unit of learning identi- 
 fied and the class kept at work on assimilative material until 
 the adaptation takes place. Learning to manipulate linear equa- 
 tions, for instance, is a very different thing from practicing with 
 assimilative material in a true study situation until a thorough 
 and fundamental conviction of the principle and doctrine of the 
 equation has arisen. The latter abides, and once established is 
 the base line from which the individual, after years have elapsed, 
 thinks back to performance. Performance rapidly fades out, 
 and, if no adaptation has been established, it disappears alto- 
 gether. The situation is much like that of the first-grade child 
 with his handwriting. In the latter case, the pupil has acquired 
 a certain performance ability but he has not learned handwrit- 
 
570 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ing. In the case of the high-school pupil in algebra, he has 
 learned how to manipulate but he has not learned the equation. 
 
 Again, in reading a foreign language, it frequently happens 
 that a pupil practices reading, or, it may be, what is usually 
 called “translation,” until he has attained a performance ability 
 which satisfies the teacher and is apparently the objective sought. 
 Nevertheless, his performance learning rapidly evaporates, sim- 
 ply because he has not made the language-arts adaptation which 
 was the real objective. 
 
 Of course, lesson-learning is the last word in performance 
 learning, for in that perverted school attitude the pupil simply 
 acquires skill in learning lessons, with little or no learning of 
 what the lessons stand for. 
 
 The performance quality of a pupil in any piece of learning, 
 but especially in mathematics and in the language-arts and pure- 
 practice subjects, is a baffling thing, for it may be based upon 
 adjustment and it may not. The curve of performance improve- 
 ment is apparently not very different before the adaptation 
 takes place from what it is afterward. In reading, for instance, 
 the pupil apparently improves in performance, as measured by 
 any performance test, from the beginning and continues to do so, 
 as long as he practices the art, up to a certain maximum skill; 
 and yet there is a point on the curve below which he has not 
 learned to read and above which he has learned to read. Thus is 
 performance easily mistaken for adjustment. 
 
 Hence, it becomes critically important to devise tests which 
 will identify the adaptation in the learning process as reliably as 
 possible. Some such tests have been suggested in our chapters on 
 operative technique. Nevertheless, it is doubtful if any test can 
 be devised which is wholly reliable, apart from confirmatory 
 symptomatology, such, for instance, as the eye movement which 
 is characteristic of the primary reading adaptation. In adminis- 
 trative technique, it is especially important that the teacher shall 
 not place too much reliance upon standardized tests which are 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 571 
 
 essentially performance tests. They are useful for many pur- 
 poses, but a given rating on any scored test whatsoever is decep- 
 tive, unless, indeed, the school is more interested in the perform- 
 ance of its pupils than in their educational growth. 
 
 BEHAVIOR 
 
 Ordinarily, the content of a performance test paper is more 
 important than the score, for after all a performance test is one 
 form of behavior and the behavior of an individual reflects his 
 adjustment. In this paper, we detect carelessness and low stand- 
 ards of achievement; in another, we note slowness which is mere 
 sluggishness; in another, we find evidence of lack of sustained 
 application. A comprehensive intelligence test of the language 
 type discloses not only these and similar defects but defects in 
 specific intellectual attainments—weaknesses in language, in 
 mathematics, in ideational content, and what not. Thus the spe- 
 cific adjustments needed can be identified and made. What is 
 true of performance tests is more widely true of the general be- 
 havior of pupils. In behavior we can find an inventory of educa- 
 tional needs and plan the pupil’s program. So long as we permit 
 the pupil by his actions to tell us of his educational needs, we 
 need never doubt that we are getting at the fundamentals in his 
 real education. 
 
 Ideally, an inventory of behavior is the starting-point of the 
 pupil’s educational program, and modified behavior is always 
 the final test of adjustment. We have found this principle at 
 every stage of our operative technique. The functional test of 
 learning in English writing is the character of the pupil’s papers 
 whenever he has occasion to write. In mathematics, it is com- 
 petent application to science; in science, ready use of science 
 principles in practical arts and elsewhere; in literature, his 
 choice of free reading; in conduct, the character of his daily in- 
 tercourse in school and out of school. 
 
 Hence the ultimate reliance of administrative technique is 
 
572 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the pupil record, in which is accumulated all the evidence avail- 
 able touching his behavior in school and out. As a matter of 
 fact, teachers customarily collect such evidence, but they do not 
 always verify and they seldom record. Consider the recess and 
 after-school informal conferences as one teacher meets another 
 in the corridor, restroom, or elsewhere. How we do talk over the 
 pupils! “Joseph Blank did such an interesting thing today. 
 Now, it seems to me that shows .”? “That child is having 
 an extremely difficult time at home. The family is much broken 
 up but is showing wonderful capacity to help meet the 
 situation.” ‘John Doe did a.curious thing in chemistry today.” 
 And so it goes. It is distressing to reflect how much of the best 
 kind of pedagogical evidence is lost through failure to record 
 and preserve such observations. Of course, teachers should train 
 themselves to observe critically, to verify chance bits of infor- 
 mation, to distinguish between the significant and the trivial. In 
 a word, observation has to be raised above the gossip level to be 
 worth while. But the value of pedagogical observation having 
 once been recognized, teachers trained to observe with purpose, 
 and the custom established of recording observations and drop- 
 ping them into the pupil’s case folder, the school rapidly accu- 
 mulates a body of material which is at once the best critique and 
 verification of mastery tests and the source of accurate judg- 
 ment touching the guidance and redirection of the pupil’s school 
 career. We speak here of the general case folder. Each depart- 
 ment has its particular behavior record, such, for instance, as 
 the free reading cards employed in estimating the pupil’s actual 
 progress in the cultivation of taste for good reading. 
 
 Nor is the pupil’s general case folder to be closed and com- 
 mitted to the archives of the school when the pupil graduates. In 
 truth, the record of the school’s total influence upon the latter 
 begins to be made up only after graduation. Hence, pupil follow- 
 up. The ideal school follows its graduates not casually but sys- 
 tematically. Evidence gleaned from the follow-up comes too late 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PUPIL ADMINISTRATION 573 
 
 to be applied to the school career of the pupil studied, but it 
 does not come too late to form the basis of amended school prac- 
 tice and policy. 
 
 If the individual case folder properly filled is the source of 
 the final judgments of administrative technique, the staff confer- 
 ence described in chapter xxi is the school’s appropriate admin- 
 istrative organization for systematic pupil study and for the col- 
 lection and application of judgments concerning pupil progress. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 
 
 cussed the principles according to which pupils must move 
 
 forward in the school career.. We have set forth the admin- 
 istrative stereotypes which have arisen out of the historical evo- 
 lution of the fundamental schools and have shown how for the 
 most part they do not furnish an adequate basis for the control 
 and direction of sound educational growth. We have considered 
 the educational implications of such administrative procedures 
 as evaluations of progress in terms of lessons learned and of edu- 
 cational determinism arising from wrong interpretations of the 
 facts of individual differences. We have traced from chapter 
 to chapter of Part III the administrative implications of mas- 
 tery of the units of learning. It remains to bring all the forego- 
 ing together in a system of administrative technique calculated 
 to appraise correctly and control and guide the process of ad- 
 justment as it must be furthered in the school. 
 
 |: nearly every chapter in Parts I, II, and III we have dis- 
 
 UNIT ORGANIZATION 
 
 From the time at which the child enters the period of study 
 which we call the “secondary school” to the end of that period 
 and thus to the end of the period of general education, his prog- 
 ress consists in making certain adjustments to the world in 
 which he finds himself, in learning how to make such adjust- 
 ments—which we call “learning how to study”—and in acquir- 
 ing the intellectual tools with the aid of which other adjustments 
 can indefinitely be made. From step to step, such adjustment is 
 made up of adaptations which we have called “unit learning 
 products” and of other accessory learning products which we 
 have called “skills” and which are apparently not in the nature 
 
 574 
 
 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 575 
 
 of adaptations. What are the fields of learning through the mas- 
 tery of which adjustment to environment takes place, it is the 
 province of the curriculum-maker to say. Whatever the fields 
 may be, each is made up of essential unit learnings or adapta- 
 tions which carry out the process of adjustment and which it is 
 the province of scientific teaching to identify. Each such list is 
 an objective set of principles to be discovered and verified by 
 severe analysis of the learning process and not a mere program 
 of studies policy which is preferred by the school administra- 
 tion at a given time. 
 
 The mastery of each such unit is the point of departure in 
 the administrative control of pupil progress. The units differ in 
 extent, and they differ in their nature as we pass from type to 
 type of teaching. In some subjects, of which the sciences are the 
 best example, there will be many units in each list. In others, no- 
 tably the language arts, there will commonly be but one funda- 
 mental unit in the list, with perhaps several accessory skills. 
 
 Each such list of units, whether one or many, of necessity 
 constitutes a course, but a given course has no necessary relation 
 to a school year or part of year or other period of time-to-be- 
 spent. The time required may be less for some sections and in 
 some years and more for other sections and in other years. The 
 time required for some courses is in its nature less than that re- 
 quired for others. The same subject, as for instance biology, 
 may require different types of courses, corresponding to differ- 
 ent types of adjustment, at different levels in the school. We 
 have not the space to study the nature of different courses by 
 enumerating all which may probably be given in the secondary 
 period; a few illustrations must suffice. 
 
 If we reduce the number of units in arithmetic to the abso- 
 lute minimum requisite for the adjustments required by general 
 education, we shall find that not one year but several are re- 
 quired for the completion of the course. But some sections will 
 complete the course in full earlier than others. It is absurd to 
 speak of ‘fifth-grade arithmetic,” for, if the course is at all well 
 
576 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 administered, the same units will not appear in the fifth grade 
 for any two sections, or for any two years for the corresponding 
 sections, in the same school. There are not three courses in 
 arithmetic, much less six or eight, corresponding to the num- 
 bered years of school life in which arithmetic is found, but a 
 single course. The pupil is not “promoted in arithmetic” from 
 grade to grade; rather, when he exhibits mastery of a unit, he 
 undertakes the next unit. 
 
 In the case of English grammar, on the other hand, mastery 
 of the essential learnings can ordinarily be achieved in less than 
 a year—in some sections in considerably less. When the course 
 is completed, it is dropped whether that goal be reached in June 
 or in the previous February. Nor does this or any other course 
 necessarily begin in September or in February; it begins in prin- 
 ciple whenever there is a section ready for it. Nor is there any 
 special sacred bond which attaches grammar to the fifth grade 
 or the eighth or the tenth. It is offered whenever there is a sec- 
 tion or several sections of pupils who have reached the point in 
 their language development at which they have come to need 
 and can utilize the particular type of adjustment which gram- 
 mar affords. 
 
 The same general reasoning applies to other subjects in the 
 science type. A qualification is, however, to be noted. In the 
 physical and biological sciences, and to some extent in others, 
 there are two different kinds of adjustment required by general 
 education without going over into the field of specialized train- 
 ing. These are: (1) the use of the science for generating intelli- 
 gent attitude which works out into intelligent behavior, and (2) 
 the use of the science as a systematic method of thinking. We 
 have dealt with the distinctions in our chapters on operative 
 technique. We reiterate the principle here as a reminder in its 
 administrative implications. The distinction is most clearly to 
 be seen in the physical and biological sciences where it has been 
 widely worked out in schools in terms of ‘“‘general science” and 
 “advanced courses.” In the general-science course we utilize 
 
 SE 
 
 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 577 
 
 units which are primarily calculated to put the pupil in an intel- 
 ligent attitude toward those aspects of the environment with 
 which the sciences deal. For instance, we acquaint him with the 
 principles which underlie the more obvious phenomena of me- 
 chanics, sound, electricity, combustion, decay, and those which 
 are manifested by living organisms. In the advanced courses, 
 we introduce him to physics, chemistry, and biology as organ- 
 ized sciences, which are essentially specialized systems of think- 
 ing. At one level, the pupil is being put in an intelligent attitude 
 toward the world “‘as is”; at the other, he is being put in pos- 
 session of adjustments which are calculated to enable him to in- 
 terpret the world as it may in his time come to be, or at least to 
 enable him to adopt something more than a passive attitude to- 
 ward the explorations of specialists. These two different levels, 
 which may correspond to the maturity levels reached during the 
 junior high school and junior college, respectively, imply differ- 
 ent kinds of courses and different kinds of adjustment. True, 
 the intellectual material used belongs to the same field of knowl- 
 edge at both levels; but pedagogically the courses are for the 
 most part as different as if one were physics and the other math- 
 ematics. They are in sequence only to the extent that the lower- 
 level course is an essential part of the apperceptive mass re- 
 quired by the upper-level course. 
 
 In the appreciation type, a succession of courses is not of the 
 upper- and lower-level type nor is the apperceptive sequence 
 so vital. We have already seen the administrative relation of 
 courses in that type in our chapter on the teaching of literature 
 (see chapter xx). 
 
 In language arts, French for instance, we have to do with 
 courses which, although they belong to the same general field of 
 knowledge, are pedagogically so unlike that they belong to en- 
 tirely different types of teaching. The first course is of necessity 
 always a course the objective of which is the reading adaptation. 
 The course has no relation to school years. As in the case of 
 arithmetic, some sections may reach the objective soon and 
 
578 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 others late. It is pedagogically meaningless to speak of French 
 I as a course which falls in the first school year of a sequence of 
 years. French I, defined as the course, longer or shorter, in 
 which the pupil reaches a given learning objective, has definite 
 pedagogical meaning. A course in French grammar has all the 
 administrative characteristics of the course in English grammar. 
 It is probably placed later in the pupil’s school career, not be- 
 cause there is any special appropriateness in assigning it to the 
 high school, but because in the circumstances of learning the pu- 
 pil ordinarily has no need for it until he has reached the higher 
 
 level. : 
 THE SCIENCE-TYPE SEQUENCE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Cone === Coune 1 F=f Course NT 
 
 FIG. 12 
 
 Sequence of courses.—The notion that knowledge can be 
 translated into education and the corresponding notion that the 
 school career of the pupil is essentially a matter of ground to be 
 covered have tended to assign a peculiar and undiscriminating 
 sanctity to sequence in courses. Conversely, the widespread 
 confounding of adjustment with ability has tended to set up an 
 equally undiscriminating laxity in the opposite direction. In 
 truth, severe adherence to sequence is essential in some types 
 and not in others. Figures 12-17 perhaps give us a basis for 
 a clear understanding of the principles which seem to be in con-’ 
 trol. The importance of sequence is indicated by the number of 
 lines connecting the figures which stand for units or courses. 
 Three lines indicate that a sequential relation between courses 
 in the same general subject is imperative. A single line indicates 
 that it is desirable but not imperative. No line at all indicates 
 that a strict sequential relation is of small importance. 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 579 
 
 In science-type subjects, the nature of the learning is ordi- 
 narily in strict apperceptive sequence. The ideas derived from 
 learning how to manipulate the process in addition, for instance, 
 are essential to learning how to manipulate the process in multi- 
 plication. This is an illustration of unit sequence. Similarly, 
 one would scarcely attempt to teach a course in algebra prior to 
 a course in arithmetic. If we offer both general science and 
 physics or chemistry, neither of the latter would be placed be- 
 fore the first course named. If we offer both “The Survey of 
 Civilization” and “Modern History,” we should expect the pupil 
 to acquire the former of the two first. The unit sequence in 
 other courses of the science type is less imperative than it is in 
 
 THE PRACTICAL-ARTS SEQUENCE 
 
 
 
 FIG. 13 
 
 mathematics, but still there is, in the nature of things, some se- 
 quence which will make learning most economical. In both unit 
 sequence and course sequence, therefore, the pupil must follow 
 the line. Otherwise, orderly accumulation of ideas will be pre- 
 vented and mastery of later units will be rendered difficult if not 
 impossible. 
 
 In the practical-arts subjects, units are sometimes in neces: 
 sary sequence but ordinarily not. The same principle is in gen- 
 eral true of the practical-arts courses in household arts, and in 
 some cases there is no sequence at all. It is a matter of indiffer- 
 ence, for instance, whether cooking be taught first or sewing, at 
 least as far as apperceptive relations are concerned. 
 
 In the appreciation type, as exemplified by literature, there 
 is no necessary sequence whatsoever, except that general apper- 
 ceptive mass established in an abundance of free reading is of 
 
580 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 course essential to all courses. There may, of course, be advan- 
 tages in a sequential arrangement of courses, but there is no 
 such essential order as we find in the science type. General ex- 
 periential maturity may make it desirable to postpone the essay 
 until late in the pupil’s career, and we think there are distinct 
 educational rather than pedagogical advantages in introducing 
 the drama at an early stage; but there is nothing in the drama 
 which is prerequisite to the appreciation of the novel and noth- 
 ing in epic or lyric poetry which is indispensable to a proper 
 reading of the essay. On the other hand, there is nothing in the 
 nature of ability in the pupil which makes it desirable that he 
 
 THE APPRECIATION-TYPE SEQUENCE 
 
 General f é ; 
 
 FIG. 14 
 
 should hurry over the drama and skip the novel in order to un- 
 dertake the poetry courses. Whatever the course in the novel 
 may have to contribute, its values cannot be acquired otherwise 
 than by taking the course. It is, however, true that a given pupil 
 may well have obtained in cultural growth, at home or elsewhere, 
 the full equivalent of what the novel course or any other may 
 have to offer, and in that case he omits the course. | 
 When we turn to the language arts, quite a different situa- 
 tion arises. Here, ability becomes much more an important con- 
 sideration and sequence in adjustment within the course less im- 
 portant. In the diagram (Fig. 15), the line which intersects the 
 two horizontals represents the learning curve. Now learning 
 here consists in acquiring a special ability. It is true that at 
 some point the pupil attains the adaptation, that is, he has 
 learned to read or to write, but meantime he does not need to 
 pass through successive units of learning in detail as he must in 
 science-type learning. If we think of the crosses on the learning 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 581 
 
 curve in the diagram as standing for graded exercise material, it 
 is not essential that a given pupil shall cover all the bits of exer- 
 cise material in sequence. A rapid learner, in French for in- 
 stance, may proceed continuously up to position (1) and then 
 skip to position (2), as far as the exercise material is concerned, 
 continue in sequence of material available to position (3), and 
 then skip to position (4). Very soon thereafter he will reach the 
 adaptation and the objective of this particular course. Sections 
 may possibly be organized for practice and the acquisition of 
 skill beyond the adaptation. In that case, our bright pupil may 
 
 LANGUAGE-ARTS AND PURE- PRACTICE SUBTYPE A 
 
 is) <— The skills level 
 
 
 
 Adaptation level 
 
 (3) 
 
 No-learning level 
 Fic. 15 
 
 again skip to the exercise material represented by position (5). 
 The only control necessary is found in the single test: Can the 
 pupil manage the more difficult exercise material and learn from 
 it without setting up the language-arts inhibition? If he can do 
 so, then he demonstrates rapid learning capacity in this field 
 which appears as ability to learn at a steeper gradient. 
 
 The course sequence in language arts is quite different from 
 that in the types previously discussed. There is but one course 
 in a language-arts sequence—unless we introduce other courses 
 of the language-arts type specialized in their nature. Other 
 courses belonging to the same general subject field, foreign lan- 
 guage for instance, are necessarily either science type in their 
 nature—the grammar course; or appreciation type—the litera- 
 
582 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ture courses. The reading course is necessarily prerequisite to 
 either the grammar course or the literature courses, but the 
 grammar couse is not necessarily prerequisite to the literature 
 courses. 
 
 In pure-practice courses of the second subtype, spelling and 
 the number combinations particularly, we find still another prin- 
 ciple of sequence. In the diagram devoted to this type (Fig. 17), 
 the dots may be taken to represent either blocks of spellings, in- 
 
 Grammar 
 Science Type 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Language 
 Reading 
 
 
 
 Literature 
 Appreciation 
 Type 
 
 Fic. 16 
 
 dividual words, or individual number combinations. Two princi- 
 ples are to be noted: first, there is no sequential relation what- 
 ever—the table of 6’s is not an apperceptive prerequisite to the 
 table of 7’s; second, a pupil may reach adaptation level, that is, 
 acquire a definite spelling sense or automatic control of his com- 
 binations, without traversing as exercises in order all the items 
 involved or all the blocks of words in a spelling list. In this re- 
 spect, the principle at work is much like that which appears in 
 language arts. ; 
 
 It may be noted that there is never more than one course in 
 the subject field of which we are here speaking. If the subject 
 appears in different years, even in years as widely separated as 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 583 
 
 sixth grade and tenth, it is nevertheless the same course with the 
 same objective. 
 
 Fast and slow sections and skip sections —With the forego- 
 ing principles in mind, the rational theory of sectioning classes 
 becomes fairly evident. 
 
 In language arts or pure practice, where the assimilative 
 practice is not a process of building up a coherent system of 
 ideas but rather the attainment of special ability, adherence to 
 
 PURE-PRACTICE SUBTYPE B 
 
 Adaptation level 
 
 No-learning: level 
 FIG. 17 
 
 a sequential order of exercises is meaningless. Referring to the 
 language-arts diagram, we may conceive a section to be practic- 
 ing with the exercises at level (1), another at level (2), another 
 at level (3), and soon. The exercises for each are adapted to its 
 own level of acquired special ability. However, a pupil in section 
 1 is found to be a rapid learner and he is encouraged to meet 
 with both section 1 and section 2 for the time being. He soon 
 catches step with section 2 and not inconceivably finds his way 
 into section 3. The principle employed is what we refer to above 
 under the term “skip section.” In this type of teaching, there is 
 of course no occasion for fast and slow sections except that a re- 
 liable prognosis test of language-arts ability, if such can be 
 
584 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 found, will minimize frequent transfers of individual pupils. 
 Nevertheless, no such test should be allowed to preclude the 
 operation of the skip-section principle if under actual teaching 
 experience rapid learners are found (see also chap. xxv, p. 471). 
 On the other hand, with both fast and slow sections organized or 
 with the skip-section principle at work, or both, the slowest sec- 
 tion rapidly becomes automatically the problem-case section. 
 
 The objective in the appreciation type is sense of value. 
 There are no graded exercises for practice such as we find in the 
 language arts, and hence there is no room for the skip section. 
 There is no severely logical sequence of ideas, and hence there 
 are not the restrictions which apply to the science type. We find, 
 in general, two types of pupils: those who early catch a glimpse 
 of the values, and those who are slow and require a great deal of 
 teaching and guidance. It is obviously desirable to get these two 
 types into separate sections and, it may be, to set up one or more 
 intermediate sections. In a coherent and well-administered sys- 
 tem, the school should know enough of its pupils to make the 
 appropriate sections beforehand. It will be largely a matter of 
 experiential background and reading interest at the time the sec- 
 tioning is made. If a high school is receiving pupils from schools 
 which are not parts of the same administrative system, section- 
 ing cannot properly be done until the school has had some expe- 
 rience with the new pupils and has come to know something 
 about them. The course in general literature and the conference 
 groups are the appropriate places for such pupil observation and 
 study. 
 
 Sections once formed, however, should not be regarded as 
 permanent. Growth takes place, and’a pupil who is today very 
 slow in accepting values may, six months hence, exhibit a 
 marked awakening. Hence it should be always possible to re- 
 section individual pupils. 
 
 Again, as pupils become better py dad it sometimes happens 
 that an individual is released from a given course altogether or 
 else meets with the class only occasionally. In either case, he 
 
 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 585 
 
 is credited with the course. Such cases are prone to appear in 
 some communities which have some families in which the pupil 
 acquires in the home quite as much in the way of cultural values 
 as the school can give. 
 
 Finally, as we have seen, there is no imperative sequence 
 from course to course. A section may be scheduled for the novel 
 immediately after the course in general literature, if circum- 
 stances appear to make it desirable, covering the drama later. 
 
 In the science type, close adherence to unit and course se- 
 quence is ordinarily imperative. A pupil who exhibits rapid 
 learning tendencies cannot be moved forward on the skip-section 
 principle, but it sometimes happens that pre-testing a unit or 
 even a course discloses the fact that a given pupil has acquired 
 the essential learning product contemplated and can therefore 
 either be released and duly credited or in some cases moved for- 
 ward into more advanced sections. In the language arts, growing 
 ability is the center of consideration; in the science type, adjust- 
 ment. Mastery of the essential learning products must be as- 
 sured from step to step. 
 
 It is gravely doubtful that there is much real difference in 
 rate of learning in the science type, provided corrective teaching 
 is diligently followed up and remedial cases duly identified and 
 segregated. The bright and alert pupil tends to require more as- 
 similative material, and he tends to be more superficial as judged 
 by mastery standards. The statement just made should not be 
 taken as a declaration of unvarying principle, but the tendency 
 is evident enough to serve as a warning in administrative tech- 
 nique. The terms “fast” and “slow” sections as applied to the 
 science type are then singularly misleading in their connotation. 
 Certainly they have nothing in common with the same terms as 
 applied in language arts. If we use the terms “normal” and “‘ad- 
 vanced” sections, perhaps the meaning will be more exactly 
 expressed. Let us see. 
 
 Nothing is more deceptive than the performance of a clever 
 pupil in the science type, especially in mathematics. He “catches 
 
586 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the idea” readily on presentation, he works through assimilative 
 material rapidly and even responds well on the assimilative 
 tests; he has all the characteristics of a “rapid learner,” but he is 
 prone to fail later in functional situations. His very apparent 
 learning evaporates, simply because it was never mastered. On 
 the other hand, we sometimes meet a pupil whose whole be- 
 havior in the presence of a given unit is evidence of not only 
 mastery but of supplementary masteries. He almost invariably 
 shows evidence of intellectual interest. His written recitations 
 or unit reports are apt to be especially well handled. In such pu- 
 pils we have good evidence of adjustment as well as perform- 
 ance, despite the fact that they may sometimes appear slow to 
 the teacher who is devoted to performance standards and ad- 
 miration of cleverness. Sections in which such pupils are gath- 
 ered are truly homogeneous, while the mere rapid learner in this 
 type may be a veritable problem case if he is thoroughly under- 
 stood. 
 
 Expanded curriculum.—tThe ultimate utility of sectioning 
 for fast and slow learners or on some other basis than rapidity 
 of learning seems to be: first, that pupils can work together bet- 
 ter in sections composed of homogeneous abilities; and, second, 
 that the fast section will complete the school career in less than 
 the standard time allowance. The first objective is undoubtedly 
 sound; the second may or may not be. 
 
 In the language-arts and pure-practice types, we have to do 
 with subjects which contribute in the main the tools which give 
 access to the more fundamental adjustments of education. While 
 the objective is an adaptation in the individual in the form of a 
 special ability, no element of adjustment to environment is pres- 
 ent. Some of the language tools are essential to all forms of in- 
 tellectual adjustment, for example reading; others, while they 
 are not essential, are of great service, since they give access to 
 new fields of experiential material, for instance French or Ger- 
 man. Now in the acquisition of these accessory tools of educa- 
 
 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 587 
 
 tion, the more rapidly they can be acquired and the more of 
 them the pupil learns the better. 
 
 When we turn to the fundamental adjustments, however, 
 the principle of maturity enters, as we have seen in the last chap- 
 ter. The essence of administration then comes to be: first, to 
 see that intellectual maturity keeps pace with mental, physical, 
 and social maturity; and, second, to see that precocious intellec- 
 tual maturity does not throw the pupil into social situations, 
 lack of adjustment to which might prove distinctly harmful. To 
 the case of this latter type of pupil, the principle of the expanded 
 curriculum is especially applicable. 
 
 Voluntary project —One of the two directions in which this 
 principle can be advantageously applied is that of the Voluntary 
 project. In all courses, but particularly in those which belong to 
 the science type, the appreciation type and the practical-arts 
 type, suggestive lists of enterprises which are supplementary to 
 the units studied are kept posted. The pupil may select one or 
 more of these for his voluntary project or he may select another 
 not on the posted lists with the approval of the instructor. Such 
 projects are always in the nature of embryo research. They may 
 involve extensive reading and report, or the investigation of 
 some problem in the library or the laboratory. The pupil is ex- 
 pected to work faithfully on his project in his spare time at 
 school or at home but not to the detriment of his regular class 
 work. Some projects are completed as soon as the regular unit 
 being studied by the class is completed; others are continued for 
 several months or throughout the school year. Not infrequently 
 a piece of work will result at senior high school level which 
 would do credit to a college student. Several obvious advantages 
 are economically attained. 
 
 First, the pupil of somewhat precocious intellectual matur- 
 ity is profitably occupied while his social adjustments are being 
 normally made through contact with his contemporaries. 
 
 Second, the rapid learner in the long assimilation period of 
 the science type rounds out and expands his experience in the 
 
588 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 subject being studied while his slower classmates are approach- 
 ing full assimilation. Not infrequently we get in this way our 
 best evidence of adjustment. The need of sectioning is minim- 
 ized, and in the small secondary school this is a decided ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 Third, the teacher is thus enabled to identify, study, and 
 further the growth of genuine intellectual interest. 
 
 Fourth, the pupil who is genuinely talented, not merely 
 bright, is given valuable training and experience in self-depend- 
 ent study; he justifies his superiority, not by grades and indexes 
 of brightness, but by work and production. 
 
 Additional courses-—The genuinely rapid learner who is 
 still socially immature but has developed general intellectual in- 
 terest can often be encouraged to expand his curriculum by 
 electing additional courses. Additional courses in the languages 
 are especially desirable since every new language acquired 
 means an additional tool for use in accumulating educational ex- 
 perience. Additional courses in the subjects which contribute 
 the fundamental adjustments of course expand the pupil’s hori- 
 zon and, in pedagogical terms, the apperceptive mass which he 
 will bring to the acquisition of later adjustments. 
 
 College courses-—The high-school pupil who is intellectual- 
 ly prepared for college at an early age is apt to encounter a more 
 or less perilous experience if he passes on to college with stu- 
 dents who are several years his senior in chronological age and 
 social development. The work of the first two college years is 
 ordinarily of secondary type, a period in which most students in 
 the traditional four-year college which succeeds the four-year 
 high school are arriving at intellectual maturity or self-depend- 
 ence. Thrown into such a college life, the young boy is rather 
 likely to find himself in courses which he carries much more 
 readily than his mates, and in a social medium into which he is 
 far from having normally grown. The college makes certain as- 
 sumptions of social maturity; it takes for granted that students 
 have learned how to manage their own lives with some degree of 
 
 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 589 
 
 wisdom and self-restraint, and provides a minimum of ma- 
 chinery for individual supervision. The young student is there- 
 fore thrown on his own resources at a time when he has not 
 learned to take care of himself, and, on account of his intellec- 
 tual advancement, he is apt to have more idle moments than the 
 older students whom he meets in the classroom. 
 
 Now, while there are of course individual exceptions to the 
 rule, it still remains true that the important difference between 
 the students of the first two years of the four-year college and 
 those of the last two years is intellectual and not social. There 
 is apt to be a marked change in social and physical development 
 at about seventeen or eighteen years of age in the boy and some- 
 what earlier in the girl. Sexual maturity has become well estab- 
 lished; the severe storm and stress of adolescence is over. After 
 that period, development goes on more slowly, and it is of a dii- 
 ferent kind. There is much less social and physical difference 
 between the boy of eighteen and his older brother of twenty-one 
 or twenty-two than between the former and his younger brother 
 of fifteen or sixteen. In brief, the college age of eighteen is prob- 
 ably founded on something more basal than the mere circum- 
 stance that the traditional high school course is completed at 
 about that age in the average pupil. But, except for intellectual 
 attainments, eighteen is as much the senior college age as the 
 junior college age. If, then, the advanced pupil who is intellec- 
 tually ready for college at fifteen or sixteen continues in the local 
 high school with junior college courses until he has reached the 
 comparative stability of eighteen or thereabout, he may under- 
 take senior college or pre-professional work at the latter age 
 without serious danger to his social development and with a very 
 desirable saving of time. Those universities which are most alert 
 to institutional adaptation in effect recognize the principle in 
 their provision for advance credit. The local junior college 
 movement is an illustration of a tendency to adapt our whole in- 
 stitutional organization accordingly. 
 
590 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 CREDIT 
 
 The recording of credit for courses is in principle simply 
 making an entry on the books of attainment gained and verified. 
 If a student is found to be proficient in the content of a course 
 he should certainly be credited with the course even though he 
 never meets with the class. To do so is to record a pedagogical 
 fact. To compel the student to cover the course by meeting with 
 the class during the period assigned adds nothing to the fact, 
 and the credit thus attained becomes the record of a pedagogical 
 fiction. 
 
 We have discussed elsewhere at length the vicious fallacy of 
 evaluating education in terms of ground covered and time spent. 
 The point, of course, has specific application in administrative 
 technique. The practice of granting credit for time spent, with a 
 passing grade, puts the issue, perhaps insensibly, on a commer- 
 cial rather than on an educational basis. The pupil sees the mat- 
 ter as a contract in which there is labor performed on his part in 
 return for credits awarded on the part of the school. The whole 
 procedure is an untruth and the intellectual life of the student 
 tends to become an unreality. The latter perhaps never comes 
 to realize that his learning is an inward transformation which 
 bears only a chance relation to the courses he has pursued or the 
 time he has spent. He later speaks of his attainments in terms of 
 high-school or college credits and of the degrees he has attained. 
 The climax of such educational unreality is reached in the “pro- 
 motional credit” for teachers which is so often a feature of city- 
 school administration. An administrative technique which pro- 
 ceeds on such assumptions may doubtless be justified on factory 
 principles but certainly not on educational principles. 
 
 This commercialized-credit principle is particularly inap- 
 plicable to voluntary projects. Such enterprises must emphat- 
 ically be their own reward or else their value is wholly lost. One 
 of their critical values is the evidence they afford of genuine in- 
 tellectual interest. Such evidence is wholly destroyed as soon as 
 credit is awarded. A certain type of pupil who is easily capable 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 591 
 
 of useful voluntary project work cynically responds when urged 
 with the inquiry, “What do I get out of it?” He means, “What 
 credits can I thereby add to my accumulated educational sav- 
 ings?” When informed of the true principle, he is rather apt to 
 respond, ‘‘Not good enough.” Crass commercialism and, what is 
 worse, commercialism engendered and fostered by the school! 
 
 The recording of the pupil’s progress to the status of the 
 educated man or woman, as far as the administrative technique 
 of teaching is concerned, is then in gross a matter, first, of veri- 
 fying mastery of the true learning products contemplated by 
 each course covered; and, second, of noting credit for the sev- 
 eral courses taken in terms, not of time spent, but in terms of the 
 adjustments which such courses imply. 
 
 Education is, however, more than a matter of courses cov- 
 ered or credited, no matter how pedagogically veracious such 
 crediting may be. It implies not only adjustment to the world in 
 which the pupil finds himself but adaptability to the changing 
 world which he will have to encounter in his day. Much of such 
 adaptability is implicit in the adjustments which he has made, 
 and especially in the specialized methods of thinking which he 
 has acquired or should have acquired at senior high school and 
 junior college level. But that is not all; what the individual is 
 equipped to do is very different from what he will do. What he 
 will do is a matter of volition, and volition seems to grow in 
 terms of two superior adjustments to which we have often re- 
 ferred as interest and self-dependence. 
 
 Identifying and guiding interest.—In the conduct of the or- 
 dinary affairs of life a free man is accustomed to exert himself 
 in those directions in which he conceives effort to be worth while. 
 
 If his education has contributed an inclination to attack 
 problems by investigation of the premises and the drawing of 
 just conclusions, such will be the type of his ordinary procedure 
 in life, and the intellectual capital he has acquired in the form 
 of right adjustments will make his inclinations possible of frui- 
 
592 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tion. If he has acquired no such inclinations, his education will 
 differentiate him but little from the uneducated. 
 
 If his education has contributed an inclination to seek the 
 satisfaction which not only his intellectual background but per- 
 haps even more his appreciative background makes possible, 
 then he will employ his leisure time in that kind of recreation 
 and replenishment. 
 
 Such willingness is “interest,” in our use of that much- 
 abused pedagogical term. Interest within the school is mani- 
 fested in the inclination to pursue school enterprises for their 
 own sake beyond the requirements of the school or of any par- 
 ticular course. f 
 
 The development of right inclinations is evidently, then, a 
 critical factor in adaptability, and it is further a factor which is 
 rightly a product of education. By systematically and appro- 
 priately organizing the educative process with this superior ad- 
 justment in mind and by applying a systematic administrative 
 technique to identifying and guiding the development of interest, 
 we can bring about growth in the individual pupil in very 
 much the same fashion as that employed in developing any other 
 single adaptation. Three factors seem-to be critically important 
 —the subject material and the method of study and teaching, 
 the personal effectiveness of the teacher, and the appropriate 
 administrative technique. 
 
 Throughout our chapters on control and operative tech- 
 nique, we have elaborated the first of the three factors, and we 
 shall make no further comment at this point, other than to re- 
 mark that mastery is itself the starting-point of genuine interest. 
 The pupil is not likely to acquire an interest in matters upon 
 which he has nothing more than the vaguest of notions. 
 
 The second factor is of course one to which a volume might 
 well be devoted. Most people who are in possession of an edu- 
 cation and training adequate for the teacher’s office, who are 
 themselves interested both in their subject matter and in educa- 
 tion, and who are willing to exert themselves, can teach and in- 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 593 
 
 spire interest. An essential duty of the school administration, in 
 its supervisory function, is of course to see that such people are 
 provided and developed. 
 
 The primary concern of the third factor, “administrative 
 technique,” is noting and studying the evidences of interest. For 
 this purpose a regular personnel report from all teachers on 
 which, among other things, evidences of interest are recorded is 
 appropriate. 
 
 For this purpose, there is necessary, first, assurance on the 
 part of the administrative technician that the teachers them- 
 selves are perfectly clear as to the meaning of the term; second, 
 there is apt to be required a period of teacher-training in which 
 a sense of the weight and bearing of evidence is developed. It is 
 perhaps worth while to study here different types of personnel 
 reports in this connection. 
 
 
 
 1. Seems much interested in . Frequently asks questions which 
 are very much to the point. Takes an active part in discussion. 
 
 [Such a report is evidence that the pupil in question is inter- 
 ested but it is not evidence of interest. He is probably a rapid 
 learner, and very likely is such because the course appeals to him. 
 Interest is of the passive type, however, which is characteristic of 
 a childish stage in volitional development. | 
 
 2. Reads widely in , and frequently comes to me to talk about 
 books she has read. I have looked up her free-reading list and find 
 that she has read five rather substantial volumes in the last month 
 besides several minor but wholesome books, all of them closely re- 
 lated to the subject. 
 
 [This report is good evidence of interest because it testifies 
 concretely to genuine effort. It is what we expect to find normally 
 at fifth- or sixth-grade level or perhaps in the junior high school. 
 The child has not yet arrived at the stage at which she can plan 
 and carry out a systematic independent enterprise. | 
 
 3. Has done a great deal of reading which is on the whole of a sub- 
 stantial character. Every day or two asks if I am going to send 
 home a favorable comment. 
 
 [Evidence of a quid pro quo attitude but not of interest.] 
 
 
 
594 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 4. Selected as a voluntary project . He has planned his en- 
 terprise, devised working apparatus, and has worked hard at it all 
 winter after school. Has submitted a good written report. 
 
 [Perhaps the best evidence of interest and also of dawning 
 self-dependence. | 
 
 5. Has made polished translations of many passages from our course 
 in Cicero. Has undertaken no specific project and seems to do this 
 work for sheer love of the thing. 
 
 [ As good evidence of interest as the preceding but not as good 
 evidence of self-dependence. | 
 
 6. Wrote a very interesting account of his summer vacation. 
 
 | Evidence of interest in the vacation but not of interest in the 
 subject he is studying. | 
 
 
 
 As such evidence is noted by the teacher and recorded, the 
 latter has a basis, first, for keeping alive this interest and stimu- 
 lating the growth of other interests; and, second, for noting the 
 pupils in whose cases interest does not yet appear. The latter 
 have perhaps not yet ripened to the point at which it would nor- 
 mally appear, or it may very probably be that some of them re- 
 quire the kind of intimate personnel work which is calculated to 
 develop the spirit of hard work (see chaps. vii and ix). 
 
 As the reports come to the personnel office and are tabulated 
 by subjects, courses, and teachers, the office has a concrete basis 
 for directing teacher-training, for personnel work with children, 
 and for study of the placing of courses in the curriculum. The 
 office further gathers, as we shall presently see, evidence for the 
 final evaluation of the pupil’s education in one of its three cardi- 
 nal aspects. 
 
 In the end, the administrative officer has ground for decid- 
 ing whether or not the pupil has taken on the characteristics of 
 interest in his whole attitude toward life—whether or not he is 
 likely to exhibit in later years an inclination to use his educa- 
 tional capital. The decision upon this point must rest upon the 
 evidence of sustained and consistent interest. If we look back 
 through the personnel reports and find here and there a good 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 595 
 
 piece of evidence but no continuous and consistent story, we 
 cannot conclude that the pupil has taken on the characteristic 
 which we have in mind. If, on the other hand, we note in early 
 reports an occasional bit of evidence and as the story goes on 
 a steadily accumulating series, ending in a consistent record of 
 the attitude in some form in almost all the school work, then we 
 can conclude that the pupil has acquired the characteristic. 
 Again, however, we may note that the earlier bits of evidence 
 eventually run into a record of quite unusual special interest in 
 a particular line of study united with marked attainment and 
 special ability. In that case we probably have evidence of spe- 
 cial talent. 
 SELF-DEPENDENCE 
 
 Adaptability implies mastery of an adequate educational 
 capital; it implies inclination to use that capital; and it implies 
 the volitional maturity coupled with the right study capacity 
 which enables the student to find his problems and work at them 
 without, on the one hand, being compelled to do so by external 
 pressure or, on the other hand, having the teacher constantly at 
 his elbow. In other words, the pupil is educated when he can be 
 trusted to find his own way about the world, both as a matter of 
 conduct and as a matter of intelligence. 
 
 Training in self-dependence begins, of course, in the kinder- 
 garten and in the home. Indeed, we may say with considerable 
 assurance that the child’s normal growth is along the line of 
 self-dependence. Spoiling in the home or in the school is the 
 generation of a pathological condition by persons or agencies 
 external to the child himself. The constructive educative influ- 
 ence is largely negative, that is to say, preventing the teacher 
 and the parents from interfering with normal development. It is 
 not wholly negative, for the child will not mature volitionally 
 unless he is provided with the necessary medium in the form of 
 tasks. 
 
 The teacher interferes when she insists on answering ques- 
 tions which the child can answer for himself. The supervised- 
 
596 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 study periods, for instance, are occasions in which the teacher 
 must exercise the most extreme care not to give help when the 
 pupil can help himself. One of the chief occasions for the growth 
 of the supervised-study movement is found, historically, in the 
 fact that the home could not be trusted not to get the pupil’s les- 
 sons for him. Again, the school spoils the pupil hopelessly when 
 it establishes and tolerates a system which permits and encour- 
 ages him to develop the “get-by”’ attitude, or when it allows him 
 the luxury of cheap promotions. 
 
 Unhappily, however, the school is not in complete control of 
 this supreme element in the pupil’s growth. It can, however, 
 often do much to counteract the harmful influence of a negligent 
 and incompetent home. Youth is extremely plastic. We have 
 too many instances in which the pupil has been educated beyond 
 the home in other directions to justify a pessimistic attitude that 
 he cannot be so educated in this most important of all directions. 
 Systematic, exacting, intelligent work on the part of the school 
 is undoubtedly required; but the school can go farther than 
 mere efforts to stem the tide, for it can exert a powerful influence 
 upon the home itself. In the case of the depraved home, the 
 school can establish connections with child-saving agencies and 
 if necessary invoke the assistance of the law. The pity is that it 
 is seldom possible to apply the law to the depraved home of the 
 well-to-do in the same manner as to the slum home! In the case 
 of the home which is not depraved or hopelessly incompetent, it 
 is seldom impossible for the school to exert influence of one sort 
 or another in check of the spoiling process. 
 
 But self-dependence requires not merely normal volitional 
 maturity; it requires also mastery of the tools of learning and 
 mastery of ideational content as the pupil passes along in his 
 career, and it requires the mastery of methods of study. Step by 
 step, as these learnings are checked and verified, we can feel in- 
 creasing assurance that the pupil is growing toward the desired 
 goal. 
 
 As in the case of interest, administrative technique is con- 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 597 
 
 cerned with evidence of growth and such evidence is gathered in 
 the form of personnel reports. Here, as in the case of interest 
 reports, there must be definite assurance that the teacher under- 
 stands exactly what is meant by the term used and understands 
 the nature and weight of evidence. Evidence is found in careful 
 observation of the pupil’s behavior. 
 
 During the greater part of the later elementary period, and 
 perhaps well on into the junior high school, favorable personnel 
 reports will be prevailingly negative. That is to say, they will 
 exhibit little marked evidence of self-dependence but they will 
 not disclose continued dependence. On the other hand, the 
 teacher who is thoroughly competent and alert will be constantly 
 watchful for signs which indicate developing positive self-de- 
 pendence or the contrary. Typical reports which appear at this 
 time are the following: 
 
 1. Fifth year. Mary continues to require much help during the super- 
 vised study period. I have tried leaving her to her own resources, 
 but the result is that she does little or nothing. 
 
 [Evidence of marked retardation, probably requiring study of 
 the pupil, especially in her home surroundings, and vigorous spe- 
 cial treatment. | 
 
 2. Fourth year: Freda is growing in self-dependence. She has greatly 
 improved in punctuality. 
 
 [First part, mere unsupported opinion. Second part, no evi- 
 dence of self-dependence, but simply of desirable adjustment to 
 school routine and, if generalized, of a useful habit. | 
 
 3. Sixth year: Frederick has carried on a regular business of clearing 
 sidewalks in his city block all winter. It seems to have been his 
 own idea. In his school work, he learns well and with moderate 
 rapidity. He never asks for help except in places where some indi- 
 vidual teaching is really necessary. 
 
 [Good evidence of normal development which is beginning to 
 show characteristic positive signs. From about the age of ‘ten, 
 especially in families in which children are well brought up, these 
 positive signs begin to appear. | 
 
598 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 4. Fifth year: George has not required reteaching at a single step on 
 the last three units. 
 
 [Not evidence of self-dependence at all but simply of good 
 development in learning capacity and study habits. | 
 
 5. Ninth year: Sarah has worked through all units in cooking with- 
 out help from me, and I find that she has assumed responsibility 
 for the family breakfast. 
 
 [Excellent evidence of the same type as No. 3, but of more 
 mature development. | 
 
 6. Tenth year: In his “Community Civics” class James became in- 
 terested in the history of the churches in . So he took this 
 as a voluntary project. He has delved into the records of the local 
 churches and produced a really creditable report. 
 
 [Evidence of both interest and self-dependence and further 
 evidence of incipient creative capacity. The term “genius” should 
 probably not be used with quite the abandon which has become 
 fashionable in school circles, but behavior such as is here described 
 is at least as good evidence of the quality as a mere index of bright- 
 ness. | 
 
 7. Twelfth year: William and Frances have both been excused from 
 attendance at meetings of the class for the entire semester. They 
 have occasionally come to me for advice and they have reacted 
 successfully to all unit tests. 
 
 This is the final and probably conclusive evidence. 
 
 When pupils show a record of normal volitional development 
 throughout their school careers, marked by appropriate occa- 
 sional positive symptoms such as those which appear in Nos. 3 
 and 5, and supported by corresponding conduct records, we may 
 conclude with some confidence that they have reached volitional 
 maturity. When they exhibit evidences of the adjustments pro- 
 posed by the curriculum, we may properly infer that they have 
 attained their general education. Note, however, that behavior 
 such as that revealed in No. 6 is not a part of the evidence of 
 general education. It is rather evidence of special talent and as 
 such should mark the pupil as a fit subject of special concern and 
 wise guidance. 
 
 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 599 
 
 THE COURSE REPORT 
 
 During the progress of a given course, the teacher in charge 
 has his problem of teaching, and for the effective teacher the 
 problem is ever new. He studies the most effective means of pre- 
 senting his subject matter to the particular group now before 
 him. He locates his problem cases, in consultation with the per- 
 sonnel officer he segregates the remedials, he devises and applies 
 corrective treatment to the non-remedial. He devises the tests 
 best calculated to give him objective evidence of the learning sit- 
 uation. He guides study, teaches, and reteaches. In the end, the 
 course is completed and the record is made up. Now in a very 
 true sense the thesis of this volume centers on that course rec- 
 ord. Let us remind ourselves that such is traditionally a record 
 of the teacher’s judgment of relative average performance in 
 class of the several pupils without regard to pupil study and cor- 
 rective teaching. Attention is centered upon performance and 
 not upon adjustment. If attention is reversed, the record will 
 contain the following elements: 
 
 First, it will enumerate the pupils in whose cases the instruc- 
 tor honestly believes that he has evidence of mastery as dis- 
 closed by his test sheets. He will realize that later functional 
 tests as developed in the school experience may disclose that he 
 was mistaken in some cases. He will preserve a mind open to 
 such revelations and willing to reconsider his teaching in the 
 light thereof. 
 
 Second, the record will show the voluntary projects, by 
 whom undertaken and the value which the teacher attaches to 
 each as symptomatic of pupil development. 
 
 Third, the record will enumerate the pupils in whose cases 
 the learning or adjustment contemplated by the course is incom- 
 plete. These incompletes will probably be such, either because 
 of interruptions occasioned by absence or because they are still 
 corrective cases at the end of the course. The presumption is 
 that such pupils will complete the course, probably in a later 
 section, possibly at the hands of a private tutor approved by the 
 
600 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 principal. It is perhaps needless to point out that a grave im- 
 propriety is involved in the private tutoring of such pupils for 
 pay by the teacher who has conducted the course or by any per- 
 son designated by him. Designation of the private tutor by the 
 principal removes all color of impropriety. The principal may 
 solicit the teacher’s advice, but the teacher will not offer a rec- 
 ommendation. Further, the school has a right to require that it 
 shall designate the tutors of pupils for whose education it is in 
 general responsible. 
 
 Fourth, the record will enumerate the pupils who are prob- 
 lems at the end of the course, who have not attained the learning 
 products contemplated. The evidence will show whether such 
 pupils are to be rated as corrective or remedial. If the weight of 
 the evidence shows that a given pupil is still a corrective case, he 
 will be rated as “incomplete.” In such cases, the pupil will have 
 made consistent progress, but, owing to his handicaps, will not 
 have completed within the period for which the record is made. 
 The presumption is that the teacher has identified the pupil’s 
 learning difficulties and has concluded that they are in process of 
 correction. If, on the other hand, the teacher does not know 
 what the matter is, then the case is remedial. 
 
 It will be recalled that remedial cases may have been identi- 
 fied on positive grounds earlier in the course. For instance, a 
 non-learner may have been identified as lacking the primary 
 reading or number adaptations or as being so defective in gen- 
 eral apperceptive mass that his whole intellectual background 
 must be reconstructed. If, however, a problem-case pupil who 
 has been thought to be a corrective case comes through to the 
 end with no consistent and positive record of learning, he be- 
 comes automatically a registered remedial case. 
 
 It will be observed that we have no place in the course re- 
 port for failures. If the school conceives the office of teaching 
 to be summed up in assigning and hearing lessons and recording 
 grades, the term “failure” as applied to pupils is entirely com- 
 prehensible. If, on the other hand, the school conceives it to be 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 601 
 
 its task to guide the development of immature youth to the level 
 of educational maturity, it is as incongruous to apply the term to 
 a pupil who has not learned as it would be for the physician to 
 designate the patient who has passed out of life a failure, on the 
 ground that he did not get well. There is always a cause for non- 
 learning, despite the fact that not all causes are known and iden- 
 tifiable. Systematic teaching attempts to find the cause and 
 abolish it, or else to find on positive grounds that the cause is in 
 fact ineradicable. 
 PERSONNEL REPORT 
 
 Not only is the teacher in the conduct of a course concerned 
 with the pupils in whom he is endeavoring to develop the new 
 attitudes or abilities which the course implies, but the adminis- 
 tration through its personnel office is also concerned with a con- 
 tinuing census of the personnel problems of the school. It logic- 
 ally rests with the personnel officer to decide when a given pupil 
 becomes a remedial case in one or more particulars and to be 
 registered as such. There is thus required from the teacher: (1) 
 periodic personnel reports on different individuals, and (2) a 
 final personnel report at the end of the course. 
 
 The periodic report—once a week or for such other interval 
 as is found convenient—deals only with pupils who are exhibit- 
 ing markedly successful learning and with those who are defi- 
 nitely problem cases of one type or the other. It also records 
 data which are significant as evidence of developing right atti- 
 tude toward conduct or the opposite. On the whole, the best 
 form for periodic personnel reports is a blank card of convenient 
 size upon which the teacher records the evidence as he sees it. 
 If a printed form on which the teacher checks certain spaces is 
 used, the latter tends to adopt a mere clerical attitude. The look 
 of things is simply one more bureaucratic report. On the other 
 hand, the blank card tends to stimulate the teacher’s actual ob- 
 servation and study of pupils. When a printed form is rated, 
 that is the end of the matter. If, on the other hand, a blank card 
 
602 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 comes to the personnel office nearly in its virgin whiteness, or if 
 the record made thereon is without evidence, in either case there 
 is a basis for conference between the personnel office and the 
 teacher concerned and for a piece of constructive training of the 
 latter. The rated printed form facilitates business and gives the 
 appearance of administrative efficiency; but we never know what 
 it means in concrete terms. The blank card may indeed remain 
 all but blank when the printed form would be completely filled 
 out, but at least we have the evidence of the teacher’s vacant 
 mind and the basis for training. When the blank card contains 
 a clear and definite statement, we get a concrete picture of the 
 pupil. Naturally and properly, the card returns will yield almost 
 as many different types of content as there are pupils in the 
 class, and we cannot completely cover the ground with illustra- 
 tive instances. The following will, however, suggest types of 
 good and bad reports. 
 
 1. Does not seem to concentrate. 
 
 [A poor report. It records only an impression, vague at that, 
 and it proposes no definite treatment. | 
 
 2. Does not concentrate. See three application profiles attached. 
 Dawdling the chief difficulty. Have taken steps to develop better 
 habits. Some improvement. Will report later. 
 
 [Good in exactly the particulars wherein 1 is weak. We shall 
 naturally look for another report later and here it is. | 
 
 3. Previous reports noted dawdling. Have kept at the matter of cor- 
 rection. Practically normal. See attached profiles. Rate of learn- 
 ing greatly improved. 
 
 [We might have had 4 instead of 2.] 
 
 4. Does not concentrate. See application profiles attached. Is never- 
 theless one of the most rapid learners. Is getting into bad habits. 
 Recommend transfer to fast section. Or perhaps this: Have suc- 
 ceeded in getting him interested in voluntary project. 
 
 5. Is steadily dropping behind class. Works very slowly, but seems 
 conscientious. 
 
 [ Vague and meaningless. A better report would be 6. | 
 6. Is steadily dropping behind class. Works slowly but conscientious- 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 603 
 
 ly. Suspected reading difficulty. See approximate eye movements. 
 Apparently a decipherer. Recommend remedial work. Sensory or- 
 gans seem to be O.K. 
 
 7. Ais becoming a conduct problem. He neglects his work and is in- 
 clined to rowdyism in the corridors. Met him Saturday with a 
 group of hard-looking youngsters on Street. Admits that 
 he is out late nights and gets little sleep. Have seen the mother 
 who is greatly worried. Recommend action by the personnel office. 
 
 [Good. Concrete, definite evidence, intelligent recommenda- 
 tion. | 
 
 8. B has worked consistently on three good voluntary projects since 
 the beginning of the year. His regular work is done promptly and 
 well. Interest in successive projects has grown out of the preced- 
 ing. Has had little help from me and shows marked originality. 
 Completed reports are on file. Interest and self-dependence. 
 
 [Good because it is concrete and conclusions are backed by 
 evidence. | 
 
 
 
 The final personnel report should be the teacher’s judgment 
 of pupil personal progress or lack of progress during the contin- 
 uation of the course, in brief, a final characterization. The pe- 
 riodic report serves as a basis for immediate personnel work by 
 the teacher or the office; the final report is for the record and the 
 pupil’s case history. 
 
 MARKS AND GRADES 
 
 In chapters iii, iv, and v we considered at length the theory 
 of marks and grades awarded for the performance of school 
 tasks in their effect upon the pupil, upon his education, and as 
 valid means of appraising his progress. We found that the ordi- 
 nary scheme of grades ranging from symbols which express ex- 
 cellence down through superiority, mediocrity, and the like to 
 failure are prone to become stereotyped so that in the end, what- 
 ever may have been the original purpose, they become symbols 
 for performance of one sort or another and not symbols for learn- 
 ing or adjustment. Administrative technique comes to be founded 
 upon pure assumption that attainment is in proportion to per- 
 
604 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 formance, an assumption which is not, as we have seen, war- 
 ranted by critical analysis of the situation. In so far as any sys- 
 tem of grading is clearly recognized by all concerned as simply 
 a system of shorthand for recording the nature of the adjust- 
 ment attained or the pupil’s personal qualities, it is pedagogical- 
 ly valid, and it makes little fundamental difference what the 
 symbols are. Nevertheless, certain practices have an inevitable 
 effect upon teacher and pupils alike. Caught in the psychology 
 of the situation, both the awarder and the recipient of grades 
 are presently behaving in a manner which was not originally 
 contemplated. 
 
 The crudest form of stereotype thus generated, leading to 
 attitudes the most remote from reality, is found when percentile 
 grades are used. A percentile expression has real meaning only 
 when it is applied to actual quantity. 
 
 Thus, we speak truth when we say that a pupil has mastered 
 the correct spellings of 80 per cent of a given list of words. But 
 this is very different from saying that the pupil is 80 per cent a 
 good speller. To express a real meaning in the instance last 
 named, it would have to mean that he spells correctly on the 
 average 80 per cent of the words he uses, and that would be very 
 poor spelling indeed. Or it might mean that he spells correctly 
 80 per cent of the words which anybody could possibly spell, a 
 finding which is obviously beyond the teacher’s capacity to 
 make for it would imply a use vocabulary longer than any pupil 
 can have. The only tangible and concrete fact we can find is 
 that the pupil has learned to spell his use vocabulary. True, dif- 
 ferent pupils will be at different points on their way to such mas- 
 tery and, if it were worth while, we could compute by a count of 
 the average number of words misspelled per one hundred words 
 used in written papers. We should find that the result would 
 fluctuate within a few points of 100 per cent. A go per cent 
 speller on such a counting would be a long way from the 
 adaptation. 
 
 Similarly, we can say with entire truth that a given pupil 
 
 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 605 
 
 has mastered one-half, or 50 per cent, of the units in a course in 
 science and another 75 per cent, but this only means that one 
 has half completed the course and the other has three-quarters 
 completed. Neither grade has any pedagogical significance as 
 part of a record of quality of learning. 
 
 But this exact mathematical use of the percentile term is 
 not what the school has in mind. It rather uses percentile grades 
 to express symbolically the teacher’s judgment of the pupil’s 
 performance when 100 per cent is what the teacher understands 
 to be perfect performance. If all kept in mind the principle that 
 the grades thus used were mere symbols without any mathemat- 
 ical meaning, the practice would be acceptable rating of per- 
 formance. But the teacher does not keep the principle in mind. 
 He rather grades 70 per cent today and 80 per cent tomorrow 
 and expresses the average performance of the two days as 75 
 per cent. Seventy-five per cent expresses the average of two 
 judgments but it does not express even the teacher’s judgment 
 of the value of the total performance of the two days. Even so, 
 learning is confounded with lesson performance, and the whole 
 unreal situation leads to ridiculous consequences. If multiplica- 
 tion is the lesson today and the pupil scores 100 per cent, and 
 division is the lesson tomorrow and a score of 50 per cent is at- 
 tained, then 75 per cent is taken to express the learning of the 
 two days. Somehow perfect performance on multiplication av- 
 eraged with a very poor performance on division must have re- 
 sulted in poor but acceptable learning on both! In brief, use of 
 the percentile grading as a means of evaluating pupil progress 
 inevitably leads into a world of unreality, and no wonder the 
 schools are condemned for slipshod work! 
 
 The use of serial letters instead of percentile grades is open 
 to all the fundamental objections which apply to the latter. If 
 C represents mediocre performance, while B and A, D and E, 
 represent different levels above and below mediocrity, the fun- 
 damental fallacy of confounding learning with performance is 
 still present. More than that, since the teacher has to average, 
 
606 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 he translates literal symbols back into numerical symbols, per- 
 forms the necessary operation, and deludes himself into the no- 
 tion that the result expresses even his judgment of average per- 
 formance. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is perhaps necessary, and it is certainly con- 
 venient, to find some shorthand symbol which expresses the 
 progress of the pupil’s learning and reveals the major elements 
 in his total adjustment to date. Now, as long as any such sym- 
 bol is defined as standing for concrete evidence and the evidence 
 is present in the case history to back the symbol, we are on a 
 concrete footing. Our evidence may be poor and inferences may 
 be bad, but we have at least come out of the world of stereotypes 
 into the world of reality. We may even use serial letters which 
 have an alphabetical order, provided our E stands for unsolved 
 problem, our D for mastery, and our C, B, and A for sundry 
 qualities over and above mastery, each of them defined and each 
 supported by evidence. The use of serial letters will, however, 
 probably be a practical mistake for the mere serial order will 
 tend to generate the rank-in-class stereotype which very easily 
 degenerates into performance evaluation. In our laboratory 
 practice we have lately been using M, N, and R to stand for 
 “mastery,” ‘sustained interest,” and “self-dependence” respec- 
 tively. Thus MN signifies at once a pupil who reveals mastery 
 plus interest in the course he is pursuing, MNR stands for mas- 
 tery plus interest plus characteristic self-dependence. Other let- 
 ters would have done as well, and we might go farther and add 
 sundry designations to indicate various other acquired qualities. 
 For instance, we might add 1, 2, and 3 to stand for several lev- 
 els of skill in courses in which the skill element appears, or we 
 might add a performance test score for skill. For example, 
 MNRC”* in French I (see chap. xxv) would mean “Reading 
 adaptation, plus evidenced interest and self-dependence, plus 
 facility in reading as disclosed by a score of 80 on a given test.” 
 
 Such values as are recorded in the books should be entered 
 therein by the administrative office upon the evidence submitted 
 
CONTROL OF PUPIL PROGRESS 607 
 
 by the teacher. The teacher’s mind is thus wholly concentrated 
 upon the collection of evidence, and is divorced from the purely 
 subjective attitudes which are bound to arise whenever two per- 
 sonalities come into close relations. True, such attitudes are 
 prone to bias more or less the collecting of evidence itself, but, 
 in centering the teacher’s interest and attention upon the evi- 
 dence rather than upon the grade, we at least minimize rather 
 than exaggerate subjective influence. 
 
 Notice to the pupil and the home.—Nor should the mark of 
 which we are now speaking be kept prominent in the pupil’s 
 mind or in that of the parent. Working for this kind of a mark 
 is perhaps less pernicious than working for a performance grade, 
 but none the less, aiming at an abstraction of any sort diverts at- 
 tention and ambition away from the true learning product. The 
 objection is frequently urged that the pupil and his parent should 
 be kept informed of the former’s standing. Quite true; but let 
 the information be concrete and real and suggestive of right 
 action. Hence, instead of the periodic report card, a notice is 
 sent home as occasion requires describing in plain English the 
 pupil’s deficiencies or his excellencies and containing suggestions 
 as to the action which the home may well take. Thus, pupil and 
 parents alike are gradually educated into right and constructive 
 attitudes toward the school and the educative process. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 THE PROBLEM PUPIL—CASE WORK 
 
 E have already defined the problem pupil as one who 
 WY in fact does not respond normally to the ordinary 
 processes of classroom teaching or to the influence of 
 the school. We emphasize the fact rather than the appearance 
 or normal response. Children and young people are exceedingly 
 plastic, and they often exhibit very great capacity for adapting 
 themselves to what they know to be the expectations of the 
 teacher or parent. Hence, what may appear to be normal re- 
 sponse is often mere conformity. Diligent and consistent indi- 
 vidual study of all pupils is the only secure foundation for effec- 
 tive teaching. 
 
 Periodically the question is raised, “Why spend time and 
 energy on the inferior pupil to the neglect of young people of 
 parts, who are endowed by nature with the possibility of large 
 contributions to the well-being of society?” The query is plaus- 
 ible and appealing, but it begs several questions, and, in addi- 
 tion, it overlooks some extremely important issues. 
 
 In the first place, we do not know who are the inferior pupils, 
 apart from searching study of individual cases. The gross fact 
 that a pupil does not do well on routine school performance, un- 
 der teaching which may itself be inferior, is no valid evidence of 
 natural inferiority in the pupil. We can, to be sure, utilize tests 
 which will beforehand with considerable reliability pick out the 
 pupils who are not likely to do well on school performance, but 
 such test results do not explain the all-important issue why and 
 wherein the pupils thus identified are inferior. Conversely, su- 
 perior performance under school conditions, like those to which 
 we have just referred, is not in itself evidence of superiority. 
 
 In the second place, our knowledge of what constitutes in- 
 
 608 
 
 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 609 
 
 feriority is but meager. Mental subnormality we know, and, 
 while it is sometimes not easy in the case of an individual to de- 
 cide whether the pupil is normal or feeble-minded, we at least 
 know what we are talking about when we deal with the term 
 “feeble-mindedness.” The majority of our pupils who exhibit 
 inferiority in school performance are normal; their inferiority 
 remains to be defined. In many such cases, and perhaps even- 
 tually in all of them, we can succeed in putting the finger upon 
 the eradicable factor which is causing the inability. In brief, it 
 will not do to classify our failures as the identified subnormals 
 and “other inferior pupils.” Conversely, genuine superiority can 
 be understood only as a matter of a great variety of individual 
 traits or special talents, and these can be identified only through 
 critical examination in a school situation which is calculated to 
 give opportunity for such traits and talents to become manifest. 
 Mere brightness or mere rapid learning capacity in itself is no 
 evidence of essential superiority. The slow pupil who is pos- 
 sessed of vision, a discovered purpose in life, an absorbing inter- 
 est, a creative talent, has within himself elements of intrinsic 
 value which the bright pupil not so gifted has not. Much as in 
 the case of inferiority, the thoughtful teacher is interested in 
 pupil superiority only in so far as he can find out wherein super- 
 iority consists. 
 
 In the third place, it by no means follows from any facts 
 which have as yet been adduced in evidence that schools are to 
 any large degree devoting disproportionate time and energy to 
 assumed mediocrity and assumed inferiority. The facts are be- 
 ing collected, but meantime contemplate the average class pe- 
 riod, consider the opportunities accorded the obviously inter- 
 ested and responsive, in comparison with the time and attention 
 devoted to the slow and unresponsive, and then impartially an- 
 swer the question, ‘“What type of pupil gets the most attention?” 
 
 Whatever may be the difficulties in the way of teaching and 
 administering the problem pupil, the large fact remains that an 
 individual who remains unadjusted to the world in which he 
 
610 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 finds himself is not only a social burden, a tax upon the energies 
 of the adjusted and competent, but he is a hampering obstacle 
 to social progress itself. The dependent, delinquent, and defec- 
 tive classes are largely made up of unadjusted, maladjusted, and 
 perverted individuals. 
 
 Of these three categories of social pathology, other agencies 
 than the school have chiefly to do with the defectives. Neverthe- 
 less, the school cannot overlook them, first of all, because it is 
 in the school more than in any other modern institution that the 
 defectives can seasonably be located, studied, and put in the 
 way of such adjustment as their condition requires. Adjustment 
 may, of course, in the case of the definitely feeble-minded, con- 
 sist in commitment to some form of permanent custodial care. 
 
 Extensive study of the delinquent and pre-delinquent, if we 
 eliminate those who are actually cases of mental pathology, 
 leaves little room for doubt that most such enter upon the delin- 
 quent career as problem cases in the school or in the home. 
 Whether in the school or in the home, the school can be and 
 should be organized to identify such cases in their inception and 
 to deal with them in that systematic and positive manner which 
 we call “scientific.” Study of pedagogical cases especially makes 
 it very evident that many if not most pupils who are eventually 
 classed as conduct cases start the career of maladjustment as 
 learning cases. Conduct cases in the school are only too apt to 
 appear in society as delinquents. The apparently increasing 
 drag of the delinquent upon society, especially in the abnormal- 
 ly rapid development of modern society, is too obvious to require 
 comment. What boots it to identify the superior pupil and bend 
 our energies upon educating him, to the neglect of the problem 
 cases arising all about us, under the complacent belief that we 
 are “training a leader,” if, for every leader we so train, we train 
 two others to thwart him and a multitude so essentially unen- 
 lightened that he cannot lead them? Especially, if our “bright 
 pupil” is himself likely to turn out in the end a superdelinquent? 
 
 Again, the study of dependent case histories, apart from 
 
 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 611 
 
 mental pathology and apart from the pure hazard of life, leaves 
 little room for doubt that most of our dependency originates 
 in the problem cases of the school and the home. Sheer lack of 
 education, plain ignorance, accounts for much, perhaps most. 
 Shiftlessness and thriftlessness, which are only other terms for 
 volitional retardation, account for the remainder or most of it. 
 These in their turn originate in either positive spoiling or plain 
 neglect. The fatalistic verdict, “Does not concentrate,” is typ- 
 ical of the school’s fatuous neglect of problem cases. Of ‘what 
 service is it, either to society or to the individual, to focus our 
 energies upon the superior pupil if in so doing we neglect a 
 dozen, among whom will be recruited the helpless dependents 
 who will tax the energies of our youth of parts in his contribu- 
 tions to the numerous public and private charitable enterprises 
 which are maintained to provide a living for those who will not 
 or cannot support themselves? 
 
 Nor is the social well-being the only objective. The demo- 
 cratic Christian state is founded in large measure upon the rec- 
 ognition that the human individual has worth and rights in him- 
 self. We find this conception embodied in our own national 
 enunciation of political philosophy, in its declaration of the in- 
 alienable right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness. None of us comes into this world of his own free 
 will. Once here, we doubtless grow into a set of inescapable ob- 
 ligations which we owe to society, but it is none the less true that 
 society through its institutions owes to the individuals thereof 
 certain obligations. The two sets of obligations are inextricably 
 interwoven. During the period of immaturity the right of the 
 individual as against the right of society bulks large. The prob- 
 lem pupil did not create his own problem; it came to him in one 
 form or another. Hence, whatever may be the compulsion laid 
 upon the school by social need to give heed to the solution of its 
 pedagogical problems, the pupil has a right to the school’s ulti- 
 mate effort simply because he is a child and a pupil. 
 
612 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 THE CORRECTIVE CASE 
 
 We have elsewhere divided problem cases into two groups, 
 the “corrective” and the ‘“‘remedial.” The corrective case has 
 been defined to be one which is susceptible of treatment within 
 the pedagogical resources of the regular course in which the pu- 
 pil is enrolled. Probably most pupils, if studied closely enough, 
 are corrective cases to a greater or less extent. Corrective case 
 work is essentially the reteaching member of the mastery formu- 
 la. Supervised study in the science type is especially, in large 
 part, a period for pupil study, identification of the points at 
 which corrective teaching is required, and application of the ap- 
 propriate procedure. ; 
 
 The number of problem cases which later become remedial 
 and require systematic case work will depend very closely upon 
 the critical observation of pupils, and upon the ingenuity and 
 diligence which are throughout the school brought to bear upon 
 the prompt identification of corrective cases and upon their suc- 
 cessful adjustment. In all but a small minority of maladjust- 
 ments and outright school failures the mischief gets started in 
 minor but critical pieces of non-learning or perverse learning or 
 in the taking on of perverse attitudes toward learning of one sort 
 or another. All of the cases which have hitherto been cited in 
 illustration of points made in this volume are instances. Some- 
 times, as in the case cited later from Three Problem Children,’ 
 an uncorrected first-grade reading difficulty is allowed to drift 
 along in the unpardonable incompetency of passive acceptance 
 by the teacher and the school until the pupil is hopelessly out 
 of step and an initial learning difficulty has become a serious 
 personality disorder. In this case, society through one of its 
 fundamental institutions, the school, callously consigns the in- 
 dividual to a life of wretchedness, from which she is rescued 
 only by chance. If the pupil, instead of being a girl of the intro- 
 vert type, had been a vigorous extravert boy, society would have 
 
 * Narratives from the case records of a child-guidance clinic; Joint Commit- 
 tee on Methods of Preventing Delinquency (New York). 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 513 
 
 paid the penalty of the school’s incompetency in a youthful gun- 
 man or some other kind of criminal. In unpublished case his- 
 tories worked out by the author’s students, it is to be noted that 
 almost always a marked conduct case starts life as a minor cor- 
 rective learning case, usually in the first three or four years of 
 school life. There are no doubt myriad forms of corrective cases. 
 Learning which has gone awry will turn up in most unexpected 
 places. There are, however, certain directions in which it is 
 most likely to appear, and these it is perhaps well to note in 
 passing. 
 
 By far the most important of these are defects in the read- 
 ing adaptation. These have been noted so often in other connec- 
 tions that it is perhaps unnecessary to elaborate here. Suffice it 
 to point out that, since reading is our principal learning tool, 
 such defects become reflected in defective or difficult learning in 
 nearly every school subject. 
 
 Associated in our thinking with defects in the primary read- 
 ing adaptation are later defects in the requisite reading skills. 
 The pupil has not learned to read intensively and consequently 
 becomes superficial in all learning which requires close study of 
 the conditions of problems, or else he has not acquired normal 
 reading rate and as a consequence becomes an abnormally slow 
 learner. 
 
 Next in order of importance are defects in the primary num- 
 ber adaptations or in the arithmetical learning products of the 
 early secondary period. The pupil who has acquired no sense of 
 the reality of number but has learned merely to manipulate fig- 
 ures eventually turns up complacently with a perfectly absurd 
 problem result, in which he sees no incongruity, simply because 
 mathematics to him is merely a body of numerical stereotypes. 
 Again, in the early process work of arithmetic or algebra, pupils 
 will catch curiously perverted methods of work which lead for 
 the time to valid results. The teacher whose mind is occupied 
 wholly with pupil performance and who takes learning for 
 granted accepts the results and passes on. Meantime, the pupil 
 
614 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 becomes less and less able to think mathematically or to take on 
 normal learning in fields in which mathematics is an essential 
 method of thinking. 
 
 Associated with the common defects in reading and the ele- 
 mentary mathematical processes is another exceedingly common 
 handicap, namely, meager apperceptive mass. The pupil in the 
 later years of the elementary school begins to have difficulty in 
 assimilating new ideas simply because he has not enough intel- 
 lectual content to make the process possible. New ideas become 
 more and more absolute strangers to him. 
 
 Intimately connected with the common corrective defects in 
 learning are the study habits and learning attitudes. Two in- 
 stances in this classificatiori stand out in conspicuous promi- 
 nence: The first of these is sustained application to which we 
 have devoted the whole of chapter ix and which is not only fun- 
 damental to successful learning but is also of crucial importance 
 in volitional maturing. The second is the lesson-learning atti- 
 tude which has to be broken down absolutely if the pupil is ever 
 actually to learn (see chap. iv). 
 
 Now we repeat that the foregoing instances are only illus- 
 trations of types of necessary corrective work with incipient 
 problem cases and perhaps reminders of the chief fields which 
 need to be kept constantly in mind. It must be remembered that 
 the field of corrective work as a whole is so broad as to defy classi- 
 fication. Assurance of successful learning in the pupil depends 
 upon the ingenuity and diligence of the teacher in detecting cor- 
 rective needs and applying corrective teaching. All of this is 
 part of the ordinary routine of teaching; it is, in truth, teaching 
 itself, 
 
 Nevertheless, either because of neglect of corrective work 
 earlier in the school career, or because of bad method, or be- 
 cause of non-pedagogical defects in the learner, certain cases 
 are beyond corrective work in the classroom. These are the re- 
 medial cases. 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 615 
 
 THE REMEDIAL CASE 
 
 There should be a degree of formality connected with the 
 handling of remedial cases, first, because the teacher is humanly 
 prone to treat all obstinate corrective cases as remedial; and, 
 second, because successful remedial work requires prolonged in- 
 vestigation and treatment. Hence, a given case should be settled 
 upon as remedial only by the personnel officer after consultation 
 with the teacher or teachers concerned; it should be registered 
 as such in a book kept for the purpose; and it should be careful- 
 ly written up, from the survey of symptoms to follow up, and the 
 record preserved in its appropriate folder. A sample page of an 
 appropriate registration book is shown in Table XIX. 
 
 TABLE XIX 
 
 REGISTER OF REMEDIAL CASES 
 
 No. Pupil’s Name Date Birth BScile ey Classification Diagnosis 
 ne Peet Doe, John 3/10/23} 4/8/09 8 Learning | Experiential 
 Re et Roe, Richard | 3/10/23] 20/9/10 7 Conduct | Emotional 
 mets ey} Adams, Mary | 3/10/23] 15/7/o7| ‘11 Learning | Vision 
 vis ea Roe, Richard | 10/9/24] 20/9/10 8 Conduct | Emotional 
 Assigned to Date of Discharge Results Follow-Up Notation 
 Ae ata: Smith 1/2/24 Adjusted 6/6/24 | Confirmed 
 Goths 5. Thompson 15/6/24 Improved 10/9/24 | Relapsed 
 Cee Dr. Blank 4/12/23 Adjusted 1/6/24 | Confirmed 
 
 Ne Pe Thompson 18/6/25 Adjusted t/to/25 | Confirmed 
 
 
 
 The record on the register is made up as the case progresses. 
 At the time of identification and assignment, the pupil is given 
 a number, his name is entered with the date of registration, the 
 date of birth rather than age, years in school rather than grade, 
 classification as either learning problem or conduct problem, and 
 the name of the teacher or other person in charge of the re- 
 medial treatment. The other entries are made as data are as- 
 sembled and findings discovered. The diagnosis is entered in 
 terms of the classification of abilities found on page 556. This 
 
616 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 is sufficient for purposes of registration, but the diagnosis proper 
 is worked out in detail in the case history. The typical entries 
 shown are perhaps self-explanatory. 
 
 When a pupil has arrived at the point at which he is in real- 
 ity a remedial case, a very searching systematic investigation is 
 called for. Every precaution is taken to avoid guesswork. A 
 volume might well be written on the subject; we must be content 
 here with a bare outline. Thorough training for remedial case 
 work and treatment must lay under contribution the literature 
 touching the learning of children in school, and it also involves 
 excursions into the fields of medicine and psychiatry and psy- 
 chology. Happily, in most remedial cases the maladjustment is 
 at bottom very simple. Given reasonable pedagogical sense and 
 scholarship and familiarity with the technique of case work, suc- 
 cessful practice requires chiefly honest diligence and common 
 sense. In a minority of cases, the root of the trouble lies in the 
 fields of various specialists. The well-trained remedial case 
 worker needs to know enough about these several fields to be 
 intelligent as to their problems and procedure, but in no sense a 
 specialist. 
 
 CASE INVESTIGATION 
 
 The procedure described in the following pages is used in 
 case study. The investigator keeps in mind, throughout, the list 
 of abilities to which reference has already been made, namely, 
 psycho-physical, physical, experiential, emotional, volitional, 
 and mental, until he has worked out his diagnosis. There is 
 practical value in the order of consideration as given above. 
 
 The old-time schoolmaster was inclined to rate all his prob- 
 lems as volitional, and application of the birch was his compre- 
 hensive plan of treatment. His descendant is prone to rate all 
 problems as mental. Both are unacceptably crude diagnoses. 
 Most remedial cases of long standing have become a tangle of 
 primary and secondary and contributory causal factors, but a 
 case is rarely found in which the trouble did not originate in 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 617 
 
 some one cause or set of causes. It is in the highest degree im- 
 portant to good administrative technique to identify the origins, 
 both because intelligent remedial treatment in the case itself re- 
 quires such identification and, even more, because light is thus 
 secured which will enable the administrator to take steps calcu- 
 lated to minimize the recurrence of similar cases. 
 
 Such identification is a matter, not only of noting the more 
 or less obvious causative factors as they now appear, but also of 
 eliminating other possible but less obvious factors. Hence, our 
 first steps as a matter of routine are to make sure that there is 
 present no hampering condition in the psycho-physical organism 
 or in the general health of the pupil. It is worse than a waste of 
 time to work out various defects in the experiential background 
 and leave uncorrected an organic difficulty—defective vision for 
 instance—which was very likely the original causation, which 
 will in any case prove a hampering obstacle in the treatment and 
 a possible occasion of relapse after treatment. On the other 
 hand, emotional and volitional factors are on the whole more 
 likely to be the effect than the cause of experiential defects. Ac- 
 cordingly, the good investigator, as he works through a case, 
 does not allow interesting emotional or volitional symptoms to 
 take first place in his attention until he is satisfied that one of 
 these and not experience was first in the chain of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 Logically, mental condition should stand first, and the inves- 
 tigator should make sure that he is dealing with a normal and 
 sound mind before he raises other questions. Practically, there 
 is as yet no means of identifying mental defect with anything 
 like the positive assurance which examination of the sensory or- 
 gans and general health condition is capable of yielding. To be 
 sure, the evidence of definite feeble-mindedness, especially in 
 the earlier years of the secondary period, may be clear, and, in 
 that event, the diagnosis and plan for treatment are reached 
 very promptly. Mere border-line mentality or dulness, however, 
 would best be left until the evidence touching other factors is all 
 
618 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 in. The character of response to treatment itself is often the 
 only means of reaching a final conclusion on the question of men- 
 tal ability. The appropriate attitude of the case worker, as he 
 reaches diagnosis, may well be, ‘This looks like a case of inade- 
 quate mentality, but we shall get more light as the treatment 
 goes on.” 
 
 Priority of probable causation being then in mind, the inves- 
 tigator proceeds to work up the case history in the following 
 order keeping extended and careful notes from step to step: 
 
 I. Symptoms 
 
 The point of departure is a careful survey of the present 
 situation. Wherein is the pupil found to be a remedial case? 
 
 His chronological age and number of years in school are 
 noted. His backwardness in various school subjects is investi- 
 gated and accurately set down. The instances of misconduct 
 are ascertained and verified. The statements of various teach- 
 ers and other persons who have first-hand knowledge of the 
 case are sought and recorded. In brief, all possible information 
 touching present conditions is hunted down. Two major pre- 
 cautions are to be observed. 
 
 1. All statements whatsoever must be verified, either as first- 
 hand knowledge on the part of the witness or else followed 
 back to the point of corroboration. Too often the whole 
 foundation upon which a case has been growing to remedial 
 dimensions is found to be based upon little more than gos- 
 sip. This is of course especially true of conduct cases, and, 
 above all, of alleged sex perversions. 
 
 2. All statements should be rejected which enter into the his- 
 torical background or which are in the nature of opinions 
 touching matters of fact. 
 
 Teachers will sometimes become voluble about the past 
 history of the pupil. Their statements are often useful in later 
 connections, but to note them here is to confuse the record and 
 to prejudice later findings. Further, the events of the past are 
 to be evaluated as significant or immaterial and the former run 
 down and verified in the proper place and in the proper connec- 
 tions. 
 
If. 
 
 THE PROBLEM PUPIL 619 
 
 Similarly, such statements as “Is a poor reader,” “Does 
 not know his tables,” “Does not concentrate,” will be offered. 
 All such assertions are valueless because they are matters of 
 opinion concerning conditions which are matters of ascertain- 
 able fact. The investigator will perhaps note them as clues to 
 be followed up in the next step, but he will not record them as 
 symptoms. 
 
 When the story at this initial stage is felt to be all in, it is 
 written up and the meat of the matter is extracted in summary. 
 In the best administrative technique, the personnel officer will 
 probably have gathered at least the outlines of this part of the 
 case history before registering and assigning for remedial in- 
 vestigation and treatment. 
 
 Examination 
 The investigator now turns to the various tests and meas- 
 
 -urements which are capable of giving more precise information. 
 
 Every case must be treated in the light of its own requirements, 
 and the best technique, here as elsewhere, will depend upon the 
 ingenuity and scholarship and diligence of the case worker. 
 Certain fundamental routine tests may be enumerated: 
 A. Psycho-physical 
 
 1. Vision 
 
 2. Hearing 
 
 The routine medical inspection data will usually 
 clear up the issues on these fundamental sensory abili- 
 ties. The investigator should, however, keep an open 
 mind and be prepared to return to the question of vi- 
 sion especially, if the subsequent progress of investiga- 
 tion gives reason to suspect that there may be obscure 
 difficulties present. 
 
 3. Co-ordination (neuro-muscular) 
 
 There are no good co-ordination tests available for 
 the use of the pedagogical investigator. The issue can, 
 however, be canvassed by observing the pupil’s reac- 
 tions in physical education and in manual training and 
 especially in handwriting. The case worker should in- 
 
620 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 variably ascertain if there has been a history of forced 
 transfer from left-handedness to right-handedness. 
 
 . Speech 
 
 Look for evidence of stammering and unusual hesi- 
 tation and ascertain if there is a history of stammering. 
 Note, also, in this connection a possible history of forced 
 transfer of handedness. 
 
 B. Health 
 1. Height-weight ratio (see Baldwin-Wood tables) 
 2. Nutrition 
 
 The dietary should be canvassed for normal calory 
 and vitamine intake. The home-economics department 
 can often be drafted into this service. 
 
 en Leeth i 
 . General physical condition 
 
 Medical inspection data 
 
 If the investigator has still reason to doubt general 
 health condition, the parent should be persuaded to pro- 
 vide for a more thorough examination. 
 
 C. Educational 
 1. Reading 
 
 The investigation of reading ability goes to the root 
 of the matter more critically than any other part of the 
 examination, and happily we have reliable test material 
 available. In general, there are three fundamental issues 
 to be raised: 
 
 a) Can the pupil read at all? That is, does he react to 
 the meaning of the printed page? 
 
 Cases are occasionally found in which pupils 
 progress incredibly, in schools which are addicted to 
 the performance stereotype, with very slender read- 
 ing ability. A Burgess test is perhaps the readiest 
 means of detecting these people. A good substitute 
 and supplement is the following device: A series of 
 cards is typed containing simple test directions such 
 as “Go to the teacher’s desk and bring me the red 
 book.” Several of these cards in succession are 
 
b) 
 
 c) 
 
 THE PROBLEM PUPIL 621 
 
 handed to the pupil without comment and his reac- 
 tions are noted. 
 Has the pupil formed the primary adaptation? 
 
 A very considerable number of pupils find their 
 way into the high school and even into the college 
 without the reading adaptation. They can get the 
 meaning from the printed page but they do so labor- 
 iously by a process of deciphering. In effect, they 
 are usually slow students, and when they reach the 
 subjects which require assimilation by extensive 
 reading—all subjects in the science type except 
 mathematics and grammar—they become problem 
 cases. They cannot study effectively subjects which 
 require extensive reading because they cannot reflect 
 upon the meaning as they read. 
 
 The decipherer can usually be detected by di- 
 rect observation of the eye movements (see chap. 
 Xvi, Dh287)« 
 
 Rate of reading 
 
 The two primary issues in reading being cleared 
 up, it is altogether probable that most pupils read 
 at a rate which is a function of their basal rate of 
 reaction. If they read slowly, they do so because 
 they are mentally slow-moving people. There is 
 nothing to worry about in that case; other things be- 
 ing equal, a slow section is the treatment indicated. 
 Nevertheless, pupils are occasionally found who 
 read slowly through sheer indolence or defect in voli- 
 tional maturing. Training is required (see passage 
 from chap. xvi above noted). 
 
 If the pupil is found to be extremely defective 
 in reading ability, but still not a plain non-reader, 
 the problem is to find out why. There may be a va- 
 riety of reasons. Skilful probing of the case will 
 often disclose the difficulty. Children are prone to 
 take on all sorts of queer perversions in their learn- 
 
622 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 ing. The case worker will do well to have at hand 
 Gray’s Remedial Cases.” 
 
 In the case of reading, as in the cases of all 
 other examination results, the possibility of remote 
 and obscure causes at work must be kept in mind. It 
 is not to be expected that the regular case worker 
 will be qualified to look for such remoter causes any 
 more than he is qualified to ferret out obscure phys- 
 ical maladies, but he should be sufficiently familiar 
 with the progress of scientific work to know where to 
 send the pupil for special examination if need be. 
 
 2. Arithmetic and number 
 a) General survey 
 
 A test ofthe character of Woody-McCall Mixed 
 Fundamentals. If the survey of symptoms discloses 
 no special inabilities in subjects of the practical-arts 
 and physical-science types, normal response on this 
 general test is perhaps sufficient. On the other hand, 
 thorough case work leaves no stone unturned and, 
 especially if the pupil is poor in the subjects above 
 named, further probing may probably be necessary. 
 
 6) Primary number adaptations 
 
 Pupils are not infrequently encountered at ad- 
 vanced stages in their school careers who have not 
 made the primary adaptations. They may be able 
 to count sufficiently well to “make their grades” in 
 arithmetic but, when called upon to use arithmetical 
 processes in their study in the middle and later sec- 
 ondary period, no assimilation takes place. These are 
 the folk who are apt to present to the teacher an ab- 
 surd result, in physics let us say, wholly unconscious 
 of its absurdity. Simple diagnostic tests devised for 
 the purpose, out of current work, will usually serve 
 to disclose the situation. 
 
 c) Command of the primary number combinations and 
 tables 
 
 7W.S. Gray, Remedial Cases in Reading: Their Diagnosis and Treatment. 
 Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1922. 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 623 
 
 Effective study in subjects which employ arith- 
 metical processes requires automatic command in 
 this field. It is not enough that the pupil know his 
 tables and combinations; he must know them so 
 well that he can use them without focal conscious- 
 ness of the process of recall. 
 
 Flash-card testing with observation of the char- 
 acter of the responses will readily settle this issue. 
 
 d) Recognition of mathematical situations 
 
 A very common pupil difficulty found in mathe- 
 matics and in subjects which require the use of 
 mathematics in their assimilative material is illus- 
 trated by the absurd question, “Do you multiply or 
 divide?” Such pupils are normally the product of 
 arithmetical teaching which has failed to set up a 
 series of units in which recognition of the mathe- 
 matical situation is identified as an essential element 
 in the true learning product. Instead of consistently 
 working in the application of processes to concrete 
 problems, they have had much practice with proc- 
 esses, and the essential outcome in useful learning 
 has been left to chance. 
 
 In the process of canvassing the symptoms this 
 defect may appear. If not, one of the standard arith- 
 metical reasoning tests, with scutiny of test re- 
 sponses rather than merely noting the score, will 
 serve. Still further, typical problems may be set for 
 the purpose of discovering whether or not this par- 
 ticular defect is present. 
 
 3. The handwriting adaptation and handwriting rate 
 
 Slow learners are sometimes found in whose cases 
 the root of the difficulty appears to be the abnormally 
 slow rate at which they prepare written papers. The de- 
 fect may be due simply to abnormally slow handwriting 
 and in that event the case is corrective rather than reme- 
 dial. Or it may be due to the fact that the pupil has 
 never passed out of the drawing stage; he has simply 
 learned to draw rapidly. 
 
624 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 4. The primary composition adaptation 
 
 “Cannot write an acceptable paper.” A pupil who 
 exhibits the symptom thus noted is likely to experience 
 an abbreviated school career, both because written pa- 
 pers are necessarily required in various courses and be- 
 cause he lacks an essential study tool. The defect of 
 course may be simply a corrective problem in English 
 composition. It may, on the other hand, amount to lack 
 of the primary adaptation, that is, the pupil does not 
 sense that what he writes is intended to mean anything. 
 A certain problem pupil at an advanced secondary level 
 submitted papers which were a curious jumble of mean- 
 ingless paragraphs. In the middle of the paragraph 
 when the thought intended to be set forth had been bare- 
 ly and vaguely suggested, he would pass to a new para- 
 graph and a new line of thought. On being questioned 
 concerning the peculiarity, he replied, ‘““When I get 
 about so far, it seems to be about time to begin a new 
 paragraph.” He exhibited considerable interest when 
 the purpose of his writing was made clear to him. It 
 transpired that “compositions” were to him simply one 
 of the numerous inscrutable requirements which he had 
 to meet in order to remain in school. 
 
 . Apperceptive mass 
 
 As we have repeatedly urged in preceding chapters, 
 a rich ideational background is essential to learning, 
 especially in the science and appreciation types. We 
 have reference here, not to the specific background es- 
 sential to success in a given course, what we commonly 
 term “preparation,” but to the general experiential back- 
 ground. A great many baffling problem cases at perhaps 
 about fifth-grade level and beyond are without much 
 doubt mainly instances of intellectual starvation. The 
 pupil fails to assimilate new material because it is hope- 
 lessly strange to him. In plain English, he is too ignorant 
 to learn. 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 625 
 
 In investigating this aspect of the problem, one or 
 more of the vocabulary tests is serviceable. But the vo- 
 cabulary test is not sufficient. It should be furthered by 
 a prolonged interview with the pupil, in which the ex- 
 aminer seeks to learn the various subjects upon which 
 the pupil can talk and in which he exhibits interest. 
 Especially should the pupil be encouraged to talk about 
 what he has read. The character of the reading, if any 
 has been done, is likely to be illuminating, and we may 
 find that the pupil has actually never read anything at 
 all beyond the rather meager classroom requirements of 
 the school which he has been attending. 
 
 6. An essentially important part of process of pedagogical 
 
 training is the development of the capacity of sus- 
 tained application in study. Hence the examiner se- 
 cures a series of profiles which are typical of the pupil’s 
 capacity. 
 
 . Similarly, the lesson-learning attitude is investigated 
 
 (see chap. iv for procedure). 
 
 D. Mentality 
 1. A general intelligence test of the comprehensive lan- 
 
 2. 
 
 guage type 
 A non-language mental test 
 
 The metal age and I.Q. should be noted on both 
 types of test and compared, and the test results com- 
 pared with the general revelations of the examination 
 for apperceptive mass. A low I.Q. is of course presump- 
 tive evidence of low mentality or even defective mental- 
 ity, but the disclosures should be carefully weighed in 
 the light of other evidence collected in the examination, 
 and final decision withheld until after the school, family, 
 and social histories have been explored. If the social 
 history, for instance, shows that the pupil’s out-of- 
 school life exhibits usual capacity, the weight of evi- 
 dence from a low I.Q. is lessened. If, on the other hand, 
 the family history shows a neurotic or criminalistic rec- 
 ord among the ascendants and problem-case school his- 
 
626 
 
 III. 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tories among the siblings, we are inclined to attach 
 more importance to the low intelligence rating in our 
 problem. 
 The examination results being thus all in, they are digested 
 and their apparent net import is noted. 
 
 Health history 
 
 While the health history, as distinguished from the phys- 
 ical examination, commonly furnishes little direct enlighten- 
 ment to the pedagogical case worker, it sometimes gives the ob- 
 servant investigator his clue touching the matter of further 
 medical examination at the hands of a qualified practitioner. 
 It more often gives us important circumstantial evidence par- 
 ticularly on the following points. 
 
 A case of volitional retardation—spoiled child—frequently 
 goes back to a history of persistent bad health in the preschool 
 years. The mother in her concern for her child gets into the 
 habit of shielding him, not only from all which might contrib- 
 ute to his ill health, but from any sort of exposure to the nor- 
 mal rough contacts of childhood. The habit persists and even 
 at high school level the parental attitude has become a sort of 
 protective obsession. Now, the essence of case work is account- 
 ing for maladjustment. If our retarded child, as a matter of 
 fact, began to be spoiled, or is now being spoiled, in school, the 
 remedial procedure is quite different from that which is appro- 
 priate where the root of the matter is in the home. If the home 
 spoiling is a carry-over from a sickly babyhood, remedial pres- 
 sure upon the home is different from that which is appropriate 
 when the spoiling is traceable merely to neglect or parental self- 
 indulgence. 
 
 A case which seems to be experiential in type sometimes 
 goes back to a malady in early school years which kept the 
 child out of school for a more or less prolonged period, and 
 which perhaps handicapped him for some time after his return. 
 Now, it makes all the difference in the world whether we can 
 say, “This whole tangle of maladjustments originated in that 
 attack of measles in the fourth grade and its sequelae”; or 
 “The pupil was obliged to repeat IVA and VB and has not 
 
IV. 
 
 THE PROBLEM PUPIL 627 
 
 made a genuine mastery promotion since.” In the one instance, 
 we account for the origin of the difficulty; in the other, we are 
 likely to adopt the vague inference, “sluggish learning power.” 
 In spite of the fact that the pupil is perfectly well and phys- 
 ically vigorous today, his earlier health history gives us a 
 means of more adequately understanding him and the factors 
 which have been at work in his development. 
 
 School history 
 
 The value of the school history in tracing out the problem 
 case is too obvious to require comment, and the ramifications 
 which may be found are beyond enumeration. Adequate case 
 work will again depend more upon the ingenuity of the investi- 
 gator than upon any set body of prescriptions whatsoever. 
 Nevertheless, it is convenient to keep in mind the routine of 
 items which experience shows should always be checked up. 
 
 A. Promotions 
 Has the pupil’s progress through school been regular or 
 has he experienced retardation or acceleration at certain 
 points and to what extent? Either retardation or accelera- 
 tion may have an important bearing on the maladjustment. 
 
 B. Character of learning exhibited or, in common parlance, 
 “kind of work done” 
 
 C. Has he moved about from school to school and especially 
 from city to city or from country to city? 
 
 D. Quality of the schools attended and especially teaching 
 methods and administrative methods used. Inappropriate 
 method, especially in reading, and the passing grade in ad- 
 ministration often explain much 
 
 E. Relations with individual teachers. Many problem cases 
 start life in perverse emotional attitudes generated through 
 bygone and forgotten unwise management on the part of 
 some teacher. Quite as often, perhaps, maladjustment owes 
 its origin to the iniquitous ways of the classroom dema- 
 gogue 
 
 During the process of following back the school his- 
 tory, we do, in the majority of cases, identify the point at 
 
628 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 which the trouble began. We may still have to go far before 
 we can explain satisfactorily just why the difficulty origi- 
 nated when it did, but, knowing its beginnings, we at least 
 have our point of departure. 
 
 V. Family history and home conditions 
 
 Even more important than the school history in explaining 
 
 a problem pupil is the family history and the present conditions 
 in the home life. 
 
 A. Ancestry, parents, and siblings 
 
 The chief contribution to be made here is verification 
 of the mentality-test findings. If the examination dis- 
 closes a suspiciously low I.Q. on both language and non- 
 language tests, and we find a family history in either of the 
 parental lines, or near collaterals, in which appear ne’er-do- 
 wells, neurotics, criminalistic tendencies, prostitution, or 
 other manifestations of the kingdom of evils, especially if 
 we find one or more of the brothers and sisters who exhibit 
 traits akin to what we find in our problem case, we may not 
 be justified ourselves in a finding of true mental deficiency, 
 but shall certainly be unwarranted in closing the case with- 
 out reference to a competent specialist. 
 
 Conversely, if we find a notably normal family back- 
 ground, we gain confidence that our particular problem bas 
 its causation outside genetic influences. 
 
 . Economic status and history 
 
 The possible influence of inferior economic status upon 
 the child’s well-being, either through partial failure of the 
 elementary provisions of food, clothing, and shelter, or 
 through the generation of inhibiting emotional attitudes, is 
 manifest. Less obvious is the influence of the recent eco- 
 nomic history of the family. America is full of instances in 
 which less than a generation has sufficed to elevate families 
 from long habituation to the usages of the old-world peas- 
 antry to affluence. In possession of riches, they are guided 
 neither by the traditions of generations of wealth nor by 
 the sense of personal dignity which is apt to be the inherit- 
 ance of families long accustomed to American standards. 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 629 
 
 Such families frequently engender in their children per- 
 verse attitudes toward school which are apt to be most ob- 
 scure and difficult to reach. Typical of such is the occa- 
 sional disclosure, in problem cases late in the secondary 
 period, that the child has not only himself been bribed all 
 his school life but that he has systematically been taught 
 that his success at school depends upon his ability to bribe 
 his teachers in some fashion. 
 
 . Cultural resources of the home 
 
 Most remedial cases exhibit meager apperceptive mass. 
 The statement will stand for many pupils who do not be- 
 come problem cases, but the latter, either through native 
 curiosity, or fortunate circumstances, or sheer brightness 
 and determination, measurably repair the defect. The pupil 
 who comes from a cultivated home and an atmosphere of 
 books may still become a remedial case, and it is probably 
 seldom true that the child of the untutored traces his diffi- 
 culties solely to the lack of cultural resources at home. 
 Nevertheless, lack of books at home, lack of informative 
 conversation, lack of interest in learning and what learning 
 means, is always a serious handicap, and, other things be- 
 ing equal, may be the critical point in the treatment. In 
 cases which are before me as I write, more than one shows 
 that marked improvement took place as soon as the pupil 
 was induced to become interested in reading good books. 
 
 . Relations within the home 
 
 Entirely apart from sheer lack of control at home, 
 many problem cases at school originate in emotional atti- 
 tudes set up by various unfortunate relations between the 
 child and his parents, between him and one or more broth- 
 ers or sisters, between the parents themselves, between one 
 of the parents and some member of the household who is 
 not a member of the family. Such relationships are not eas- 
 ily discovered, but sooner or later the careful and patient 
 investigator gets a clue, follows it up, and uncovers the situ- 
 ation. The maladjustment thus found may turn out to be 
 the primary causation and in that case correction of the 
 
630 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 difficulty will rapidly clear up the whole case. It is more 
 likely to be secondary or contributory in its nature, and in 
 that case removal means earlier results from the remedial 
 treatment and, what is more important, permanent results. 
 
 . Attitude of parents toward society 
 
 The maladies of one generation constantly propagate 
 themselves into the next. School problems when followed 
 back into the home are sometimes found to consist in per- 
 verse emotional and volitional attitudes generated by the 
 discontent and rebellion of the parents. When a boy hears 
 little about the table at home but diatribes on the injustice 
 of the world and of the social order, it is not surprising if his 
 whole attitude toward the school is surly and lawless. As 
 far as the child’s own problem is concerned, it makes little 
 difference whether the parent is simply a grouchy ne’er-do- 
 well or an intelligent critic of maladies in the social order. 
 The child in either case may take on a perverse attitude 
 which seems to him normal and right. 
 
 . Adjustment of parents to American standards 
 
 A situation familiar to the case worker is that of the 
 child who represents the first generation on this soil. In 
 such families, the children frequently outstrip the parents 
 in adjustment to American conditions and of course such 
 adjustment is apt to be of an undesirable sort. The par- 
 ents, with the best will in the world, are unable to manage 
 and guide the children because they do not know how. 
 Needless to say, the statement is far from true of all immi- 
 grant families, and, even when it is true, many of the chil- 
 dren make normal adjustments and do not become prob- 
 lems either in school or out. 
 
 . Control 
 
 If there were only one type of parental slackness or 
 unfitness in the rearing of children, it would be sufficient to 
 note the item and pass on. Unhappily there are various 
 types of parental incompetency, and the appropriate correc- 
 tive measures vary from type to type. 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 631 
 
 1. The most difficult of all is, of course, the well-to-do fam- 
 ily which is entirely able to control its children but will 
 not. We must further distinguish here between the fam- 
 ily which systematically spoils one or more of its chil- 
 dren and that which simply renounces parental responsi- 
 bility—lets the children grow up as they will. 
 
 Spoiling often has its origin, not in parental self-in- 
 dulgence, but in a mistaken attitude in the parent—usu- 
 ally the mother. More often than not perhaps the atti- 
 tude, as we have seen, goes back to a sickly childhood 
 or to a much-desired and only child. The resolute, well- 
 informed, and tactful personnel worker can often dis- 
 charge such an attitude by making the parent conscious 
 of its origin and of the mischief it is causing. 
 
 Neglect and sheer parental self-indulgence, of 
 course, indirectly results in spoiling, but it achieves 
 much more beside. Perhaps the father is more often: 
 guilty here than the mother. In general, two methods of 
 approach are applicable. In most cases, determined and 
 vigorous and plain-spoken representations to the parent 
 do, as a matter of fact, achieve the purpose. Neverthe- 
 less, parental neglect is rather apt to be a matter of 
 neighborhood custom and public opinion. Accordingly, 
 the school achieves its purpose by creating a public opin- 
 ion favorable to strong home government. Nearly every 
 community has a number of agencies through which 
 such organization of public opinion can be achieved by 
 a strong and capable principal. 
 
 2. Next in order of difficulty, perhaps, is the vicious home 
 or that of sheer futile congenital incompetency. When 
 the facts have been competently gathered, court action 
 removing the child from the custody of the parents is 
 usually possible, especially if the school summons to its 
 aid one or more of the local social agencies which spe- 
 cialize in dealing with such cases. 
 
 3. Finally, the dependent or semidependent home, in which 
 children get beyond control, not by reason of parental 
 neglect or incompetency, but because the parent, usually 
 
632 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 the mother, must be the breadwinner as well as the 
 homemaker. In some of the more enlightened states, 
 mother’s aid acts furnish a means of relief. In any prop- 
 erly organized community, the personnel administration 
 of the school can focus the attention of the relief agen- 
 cies upon the case, and, what is perhaps more important, 
 furnish them with effective support, both in the way of 
 facts and influence. If the community is not properly 
 organized, it is the business of the principal as a good 
 citizen and a trained man to see that it gets organized. 
 
 VI. Social history and contacts 
 
 We have reference here to that part of the pupil’s back- 
 
 ground which is outside the school and the home. What con- 
 tacts has the pupil now and what has he had in the past? 
 
 A. 
 
 What has been his church and Sunday-school history? Is 
 the pupil a member or has he been a member of the Boy 
 Scouts or has she belonged to the Girl Scouts? With what 
 other similar agencies is he or has he been in contact? 
 This part of the record is valuable, not only for the sake of 
 inventorying the influences which have been at work, but 
 also as a list of the agencies which may be got to work upon 
 the pupil. | 
 
 . Does the pupil play normally with boys and girls of his 
 
 own age, and has he always done so? 
 
 . Has there been a summer-camp experience? If so, what was 
 
 its character? What was the record in camp? Why was the 
 child sent to summer camp? The answer to the last ques- 
 tion often throws important light on the home relations. 
 
 . What, if any, are his gang affiliations, wholesome or other- 
 
 wise? If he is now a member of a vicious gang or of one of 
 unwholesome tendencies, when did the relation have its be- 
 ginnings? Did the beginning of gang life synchronize with 
 any noteworthy episode in his school or family history? 
 
 . Is there an abnormal sex history? This question should be 
 
 approached with great deliberation, not because it is unim- 
 portant and not altogether because of the peculiar respect 
 
abe 
 
 THE PROBLEM PUPIL 633 
 
 due to so intimate an aspect of the pupil’s life, but rather as 
 a safeguard on the part of the investigator against credulity 
 and exaggerated concern. 
 
 F. Is there a court record, either actual or implied? 
 G. Has the pupil engaged in “bumming” expeditions and if so 
 what were the circumstances? 
 
 Diagnosis 
 
 As the case is worked out step by step, the investigator is 
 frequently sure that he has hit upon the explanation of the 
 whole difficulty. It may be so, but the thorough case worker 
 waits until the evidence is all in and he is ready to think out his 
 diagnosis in the light of the whole story. The practical differ- 
 ence between hasty inference and deliberate conclusion from 
 a well-worked history is apt to be the difference between tem- 
 porary adjustment and a permanent cure. Ideally, it is al- 
 ways desirable to write up the case, both for the sake of the rec- 
 ord itself as an addition to our stock of evidential material and 
 because ‘“‘writing maketh the exact man.” Step by step the 
 diagnosis is worked out from the facts found in the investiga- 
 tion and each step is fortified in summary by a reasoned anal- 
 ysis and marshaling of the facts. In general, it is convenient to 
 follow somewhat the outline which is exhibited below. 
 
 A. Classification 
 All cases are to be classified as either conduct or learn- 
 ing in terms of the “symptoms.” As the history develops we 
 may classify more exactly as: 
 
 1. Conduct when there is no learning difficulty. The pupil 
 does well in his school work, but his conduct is either 
 actually or incipiently vicious. We do not include in- 
 stances of mere mischievousness traceable to high spirits 
 and the like. A case is remedial on the conduct side 
 when the pupil’s behavior is such as to indicate the be- 
 ginnings of actual legal delinquency. The school has one 
 of its chief and fundamental opportunities here in nip- 
 ping in the bud cases which would otherwise sooner or 
 later become antisocial. 
 
634 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 2. Learning when there is inability on the learning side 
 without conduct implications. 
 
 3. Learning-conduct when the problem is found to have 
 originated in defective learning and has taken on con- 
 duct characteristics as a sequel. 
 
 4. Conduct-learning when the reverse is true. 
 
 B. Diagnostic summary 
 The diagnosis is summarized according as primary 
 causation is found to be in the field of one or the other of 
 the characteristic inabilities or inhibitions, namely, psycho- 
 physical, physical, experiential, emotional, volitional, men- 
 tal. 
 
 C. Causation 
 1. Primary 
 
 There is probably always some point at which any 
 given case began to go wrong from causes which carried 
 in their train the whole tangle of maladjustments which 
 are the pupil’s final heritage. We cannot always work 
 back to this primary causation, and it is sometimes ex- 
 tremely difficult to distinguish with confidence between 
 primary and contributory; but, in most cases, it is en- 
 tirely possible to do so. 
 
 2. Secondary, tertiary, etc. 
 
 Out of the primary causation grow others which in 
 their turn begin to operate as causes. For example, a 
 child in the seventh grade is found to be a remedial case 
 in which there are both conduct and learning elements. 
 The examination shows a variety of experiential inabili- 
 ties, including marked retardation in reading. The 
 school history shows no great difficulty until the fourth 
 grade. It shows further a bad method of teaching read- 
 ing, non-mastery promotions in I and II, and two non- 
 promotions in III and IV. Early in IV the pupil begins 
 to be classed as a bad boy, and he has a checkered ca- 
 reer from that point on, until in VII he is two years re- 
 tarded and is impatiently waiting to become sixteen 
 years of age. The primary causation is defective reading 
 
 > 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 635 
 
 ability. This, of course, results in study inability as soon 
 as he reaches the levels at which study becomes essen- 
 tial. Hence he fails to get necessary additions to his ap- 
 perceptive mass and study is further inhibited—second- 
 ary causation. He gets out of step with his class and out 
 of countenance with the school. He becomes a marked 
 conduct case—truancy, “bumming” expeditions, gang 
 life, and a near-court case. Of course, this all contrib- 
 utes further to his learning inabilities—tertiary causa- 
 tion. 
 
 Now we might have found poor vision in this case 
 and, following back the health history, have found rea- 
 son to believe that the pupil’s eyes had always been bad. 
 In that case, we conclude that he failed to learn to read 
 properly, not because of a bad method of teaching and 
 negligent follow-up, but because he could use his eyes 
 only with great difficulty. Thus the primary causation 
 became bad eyesight, leading in truth to a chain of other 
 causes, but still a marked handicap to all school work. 
 
 3. Contributory 
 
 It frequently happens that the health and family 
 histories particularly reveal features of the child life 
 which operate as handicaps rather than specific causes. 
 These we draw into the picture as contributory causa- 
 tion. In the case cited above, we might well have found 
 the chain of causation within the school much as de- 
 scribed and in addition have found a cheerless and nag- 
 ging and abusive home life. The contributory causation 
 is never enough to explain the case but it is often enough 
 to handicap successful treatment. 
 
 D. Typical diagnosis 
 The process of extracting valid diagnosis from a case 
 history may perhaps be clearer if we take a typical case and 
 follow it through. For this purpose we shall use the case of 
 Mildred found in Three Problem Children, before cited. 
 Now this case turns up in a clinic whose methods are 
 predominantly psychiatric. It might well have appeared as 
 
636 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 a remedial case in a public school. Supposing such to have 
 been true, what could the school’s personnel office have 
 made out of the history? 
 
 The primary causation here is practically complete in- 
 ability to read the printed page. The pupil has never actu- 
 ally passed beyond the first grade, although she belongs 
 normally in the sixth. As far as we can read the scanty 
 school history available, the original school practically 
 seems never to have taken the trouble to teach the child to 
 read, and other schools either could not or would not study 
 the case and apply remedial treatment. The psychological 
 examination shows undoubtedly normal mentality and the 
 physical examination shows normal physical development 
 and good health, save*for the maladies noted below. 
 
 Non-promotion resulting from the primary cause has 
 brought about a marked emotional disorder contributed to 
 by the home relations, particularly those subsisting be- 
 tween Mildred and her younger sister. She becomes sullen 
 and moody in the extreme, with occasional outbursts of 
 temper, and of course hostile to all the school means in her 
 life. Thus a secondary causation growing directly out of the 
 primary which operates to further complicate a disordered 
 personality, but which likewise, from the pedagogical point 
 of view, is enough to inhibit any chance possibility of the 
 child’s correcting of her own initiative the original difficulty. 
 
 Still a third link in the causal chain is the almost com- 
 plete failure to develop any normal ideational background 
 such as learning in the school requires. Even though she 
 might now learn to read, the whole educational content 
 proper to the elementary period must be built up. 
 
 Contributory 
 
 There are two and possibly three elements in the health 
 and family history which are contributory to the main lines 
 of causation. 
 
 1. Mildred has been afflicted with enuresis and, since she 
 has slept with the same younger sister who has ridiculed 
 her school failures and apparent stupidity, the shame 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 637 
 
 which she experiences clearly adds to the emotional dis- 
 order which is the outstanding symptom in the clinic. 
 
 2. She is further afflicted with congenital syphilis, and has 
 been undergoing painful treatment which she greatly 
 dreads and resents. The medical examination does not 
 reveal serious effects of the malady on her general health 
 as yet. 
 
 3. The home is in general squalid. The father is a drunken 
 loafer, a syphilitic himself and presumably responsible 
 for a similar condition in the mother and in this child. 
 Mildred is, however, fond of the father, and it is perhaps 
 doubtful that the generally unfavorable condition in the 
 home contributes much to the problem. 
 
 The contributory aspects of this case may or may 
 not be in themselves sufficient to have created a formid- 
 able problem, apart from the primary causation found 
 in the school and its sequelae. It is clear that they could 
 not have created this particular problem. It is plain, 
 however, that the contributory causation must if pos- 
 sible be removed in the treatment. 
 
 We can appropriately summarize the objectives of 
 the whole case investigation as follows: Just what is the 
 trouble? Where did the trouble originate? What made 
 the trouble in the beginning? 
 
 VIII. Treatment 
 A. Out of the diagnostic findings grows the definite, systematic 
 plan of treatment. In Mildred’s case treatment was planned 
 according to the following scheme: 
 
 1. The fundamental attack is made upon the primary 
 causation, that is, a tutor is employed to teach the child 
 to read. 
 
 2. The personality disorder and its implications in con- 
 duct are recognized by endeavoring to convince Mildred 
 that she has friends and by securing the cooperation of 
 teachers to that end. It is not expected that this element 
 in the case will wholly clear up until the primary causa- 
 tion is removed and the pupil has found her way into 
 something like her normal age-grade standing. 
 
638 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 3. Attempts are made to build up a working apperceptive 
 mass by: 
 a) Establishing relations with other girls of her age, 
 
 which has also important connections with 2. 
 
 6) Creating an interest in reading as soon as she has 
 progressed far enough to read at all. 
 
 4. The contributory causation is met in part at least by 
 
 ameliorating the conditions at home. 
 
 a) The sleeping arrangements are rearranged. Enuresis 
 subsequently ceased. 
 
 6b) The child is helped with her dispensary problem. 
 
 c) Attempts are made to improve the general home con- 
 ditions, but without conspicuous success. 
 
 In the end the pupil is so nearly adjusted that she is 
 able to lead a fairly normal and happy life. 
 
 Now, as we have seen, we are using this case as 
 illustrative of a rather extreme pedagogical remedial 
 case. There is little in such cases which will not yield to 
 strictly pedagogical treatment, with reasonable psy- 
 chiatric and medical advice and support. 
 
 After systematic remedial work in a school has be- 
 come well established, a representation of the agencies 
 commonly employed may look something like the chart 
 shown in Figure 18. The route of the typical remedial 
 case is something like the representation in Figure 19. 
 
 B. As the treatment proceeds, a complete record of treatment 
 
 is kept by the person assigned to general oversight of the 
 case. If the case is predominantly learning in character, the 
 remedial teacher will ordinarily keep the record, collecting 
 data from other members of the staff to whom are assigned 
 special phases. If the case is primarily conduct with out-of- 
 school connections, then the record will naturally be kept 
 by the visiting teacher. 
 
 A carefully prepared written record is desirable, first, 
 because such tends to become a valuable control encourag- 
 ing systematic work; and, second, because every case so 
 treated adds to the stock of knowledge applicable to the in- 
 
 5 
 —— ee. 
 
THE PROBLEM PUPIL 6309 
 
 terpretation and treatment of subsequent cases. The record 
 
 contains the following major elements: 
 
 1, What is done from day to day or from week to week, 
 method and procedure. In cases which are not assigned 
 to outside specialists, this will of course constitute the 
 largest part of the volume of the record. 
 
 2. Progress in clearing up contributory causation. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ficer 
 
 Personnel o 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Custodial care in special 
 ‘rooms or institutions for 
 mental defectives 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Remedial teacher for correc- 
 .tion of defective experiential 
 background with subassign- 
 ments to various members of. 
 the staff 
 
 
 
 
 Medical specialists for physical 
 and psycho-physical defects 
 
 
 
 
 Visiting 
 teacher 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 | Social-service agencics for 
 home reconstruction and 
 general out-of-school. core 
 rection 
 
 Specially adapted members of 
 the staff for emotional and. 
 volitional inabilities and, in 
 extreme cases, the clinic 
 
 
 
 
 
 Fic. 18 
 
 Rime alten eras 
 ‘Regular school activities Remedial assignments 
 
 3. Results of periodical significant tests, corresponding to 
 the examination. 
 
 4. The observed unsupervised behavior in so far as it con- 
 tributes evidential material touching the progress of re- 
 adjustment. 
 
 IX. Follow-up 
 
 After the case is believed on the evidence to have been re- 
 adjusted and has been restored to regular school standing, it is 
 reconsidered from time to time for the sake of noting whether 
 or not any of the old symptoms have returned. If the pupil re- 
 lapses, he is of course restored to remedial treatment. Other- 
 wise, after a reasonable test interval under norma! conditions, 
 a follow-up survey is made, included in the case history, and 
 the case is closed. 
 
 
 
 FIG. 19 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 
 
 reiterate the principle that the school exists for the 
 
 \ \ stimulation and guidance of the individual pupil into 
 
 a state of adjustment to the physical and social and 
 
 spiritual world in which he must live. We contrast with that con- 
 
 ception of the office of the school in this closing chapter, just as 
 
 we have in nearly every preceding chapter, concrete practices 
 
 founded upon the implied conception that the function of the 
 
 school consists in organizing courses, hearing lessons, and re- 
 
 cording pupil performance on the content thereof. The whole 
 
 notion of mastery teaching with its corrective and remedial work 
 
 ultimately requires a theory and practice of school organization 
 
 fundamentally unlike that appropriate to the school which is 
 committed to the lesson-learning teaching technique. 
 
 When we turn back in retrospect to the small village or 
 country school of other days, and to the small college, we find a 
 situation in which the schoolmaster could oversee the develop- 
 ment of all his pupils. The president of the small college fre- 
 quently felt called upon to exercise a pastoral function over the 
 students committed to his care. Schools were small and all the 
 members of the faculty or teaching staff could know all the stu- 
 dents or pupils. The curriculum was simple and extra-curricular 
 activities were not known under that name. These old school- 
 masters were obliged to depend upon common sense and their 
 humanitarian inclinations in the guidance of their pupils, for 
 they had not a tithe of the instrumentalities for the study of the 
 individual with which we are equipped today. As schools in- 
 creased in enrolment, organization became necessary and organ- 
 ization took the course which we have repeatedly noted and crit- 
 icized. System and not the pupil came to occupy the pedagogical 
 
 640 
 
ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 641 
 
 mind, and the small school tended to copy its larger contempo- 
 rary. Schools came to be judged by the system which they em- 
 ployed and not by their adaptation to the requirements of the 
 particular situations in which they were supposed to function. 
 Witness, for instance, the futility and incongruity of the eight- 
 grade system as applied to the one-room country school and the 
 strenuous efforts of rural boards of education to make over the 
 countryside in order to get a situation appropriate to eight 
 grades. 
 
 Now the modern school has to be organized so as to do sys- 
 tematically and on a large scale what could be done and often 
 was done by the old village schoolmaster who was pastorally 
 inclined. In the preceding chapters, we have sketched specific 
 administrative needs to meet specific situations. It remains to 
 bring these scattered sketches into a coherent composition. 
 
 I. Flexible arrangement of clearly defined courses 
 
 As we have seen, any course in the secondary period should 
 stand for a definite development in the pupil’s attitude toward 
 the world in which he lives or for a definite special ability or art 
 which he has set out to acquire. Such a course contrasts with one 
 which is primarily a body of knowledge which it is hoped may 
 have some use if the pupil shall come to possess it. Credit for 
 such a course is credit for a real piece of adjustment and not 
 credit for time spent. As we have further seen, such a conception 
 of the nature of courses at once parts company with the notion of 
 the academic year, of nine calendar months more or less, as the 
 base line for school organization. Flexible arrangement has the 
 following major implications: 
 
 1. A given course should be opened to sections which are ready 
 for it at such intervals as may be required but oftener than 
 once a year or once a semester. Such an arrangement is likely 
 to require a few spare rooms, but the larger the school, and 
 consequently the larger the number of sections, the less is the 
 likelihood of this handicap, if such it is. 
 
 2. Credit for a course not taken or taken only in part, when ade- 
 quate testing shows the pupil to have acquired the adapta- 
 
642 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 tions for which the course stands, rather than credit for an 
 amount of time spent equivalent to that ordinarily devoted 
 to the course. 
 
 . Use of the fast-and-slow section and of the skip-section prin- 
 
 ciples when pupils have shown under actual schoolroom con- 
 ditions that they are naturally rapid or naturally slow learn- 
 ers. 
 
 . Release of pupils and the expanded individual curriculum 
 
 As soon as the administrative psychology which is asso- 
 ciated with thinking in terms of ground-to-be-covered and 
 time-to-be-spent is broken down and there is substituted 
 thinking in terms of pupil development, it ceases to seem im- 
 portant that every pupil in school shall meet appointments 
 every day with the group with which he is in general asso- 
 ciated, or that he shall study only what the rest of his group 
 studies and then all together shall study something else. 
 Hence, the principles of pupil release and of the voluntary 
 project come to be of major administrative importance in 
 flexible course arrangements. In fact, the principle, if fully 
 understood and faithfully and intelligently applied, will “take 
 up the slack” in almost any school in the secondary period. 
 Rapid learners in spelling in the fourth grade, for instance, 
 are released for reading-room activities. Talented pupils in 
 science at senior high school level are released for voluntary 
 project work. 
 
 . Hard-and-loose sequence requirements 
 
 As we have seen, some courses in their nature are severe- 
 ly sequential in character, in some the sequential order is of 
 minor importance, and in others still the sequential order is 
 of no importance at all. It makes all the difference in the 
 world in the flexibility of course arrangements whether a 
 pupil who has completed a particular course is limited to a 
 single course in a given field as his next step or has a choice 
 between several courses. 
 
 . Continuous scheduling 
 
 It is probably true that the ee to a policy of hard-and- 
 fast semester or year courses is to be found in the exigencies 
 
ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 643 
 
 of making up the schedule of pupil class assignments. It is 
 administratively exceedingly convenient to make the sched- 
 ule for a year, with a few minor changes at the end of the first 
 semester, especially if all such staff work has to be done by 
 an overworked principal. Thus the whole educative process 
 in the school becomes adjusted to the Procrustean bed of 
 the schedule of courses. Rather should the large school be 
 equipped with a staff officer whose chief business it is to be in 
 charge of the schedule and to rearrange the same from time 
 to time, with minimum interruption of the routine of class 
 appointments and minimum loss of time to pupils who are 
 ready for new course assignments. The weekly personnel re- 
 ports from the several teachers should keep such an officer 
 well informed several weeks in advance of the probable time 
 at which new sections will be needed. Such continuous sched- 
 uling becomes more understandable and more feasible when 
 it is viewed in the light of 2, 3, 4, and 5 above. - 
 . The postponement of departmentalization 
 
 Throughout the period of general education, the teach- 
 er’s knowledge of the pupil is of primary importance, and his 
 knowledge of subject matter taught, not of minor but of sec- 
 ondary importance. The properly equipped, well-educated 
 teacher in the elementary school should have command of the 
 whole curriculum content sufficient for the needs of the chil- 
 dren who are met. As the pupils pass on into the high-school 
 region, their requirements become more exacting and aca- 
 demic specialization on the part of the teacher more neces- 
 sary. Nevertheless, it is well to bear in mind that, human na- 
 ture being what it is, the teacher’s academic specialization 
 tends to be at the expense of knowledge of the pupil and his 
 educational needs. Now in the direction of flexibility of 
 course arrangements and in the direction of breaking down 
 the graded-school stereotypes, there are great administrative 
 advantages in the non-departmentalized room. The teacher 
 can know her pupils much better at a time when pupil knowl- 
 edge is of maximum importance, the numerous correlations in 
 subject matter are more obvious and more easily managed, 
 
644 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 minimum time is lost by pupils in passing from room to room, 
 the check on mastery of the true learning products is more 
 likely to be complete, and the teacher is more inclined to spe- 
 cialize on pupils than on academic subject matter. 
 
 II. Accurate and significant pupil accounting 
 
 Recalling our fundamental conception of the school as an in- 
 stitution in which the development and adjustment of the pupil 
 through study in sundry courses and through other experience 
 takes place, we become much less concerned with a record which 
 shows the character of his performance than with one which re- 
 cords evidence of his development. True, the consistent story of 
 the character of his performance may tell us much of what sort 
 of a person he is, but that is another story. Whenever we have 
 occasion to know, the tray of weekly reports tells us in plain 
 English, and it tells us of the standard of performance which he 
 has attained rather than of his average performance. We shall 
 need the following records: 
 
 A. The educational register 
 1. Courses completed 
 
 We are not interested in recording incompletes and 
 failures. In fact, there are no failures; a pupil may ap- 
 pear as a chronic remedial case and ultimately be trans- 
 ferred to custodial care or discharged as an evident non- 
 learner or menace to the school. Such a record at least 
 purports to be an accurate description of an educational 
 situation. A record of “failure” is indeterminate and de- 
 void of educational meaning. A pupil once enrolled in a 
 given course is not finally reported until he has complet- 
 ed the course, albeit the record may show further that he 
 is for the time a registered remedial case. 
 
 In the same category with classroom courses are the 
 elements of attitude toward conduct. No entry at all 
 means retardation, that is, that the pupil has not taken on 
 the characteristics of normal conduct at his age. The 
 same symbol used for indicating the completion of a 
 course, if entered opposite an element of conduct develop- 
 
ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 645 
 
 ment, indicates normal development with respect to that 
 element. 
 2. Descriptive marks 
 
 The marks used to indicate sustained interest and 
 educational self-dependence are developmental indexes 
 and not estimates of performance. They are entered in 
 the appropriate space for the course to which reference is 
 made. For example: 
 
 | General Science | M | 
 
 means that the pupil is believed to have made the adapta- 
 tions corresponding to the course. 
 
 Biology | MN 
 
 means that the pupil has completed the course and has 
 exhibited evidence of sustained interest. 
 
 means that the pupil has completed the course, has ex- 
 hibited evidence of sustained interest and of tested voli- 
 tional and intellectual ability to study by himself. 
 
 The letters used, of course, have no particular sanc- 
 tity. Other symbols would do as well, save for the prin- 
 ciple that A, B, and C are likely to degenerate into per- 
 formance grades by sheer association. 
 
 3. Cross-references to the supplementary records, especially 
 to the remedial case register 
 
 . The remedial case register 
 Already described (see p. 615). 
 
 . The master-card 
 
 Since so much of constructive school administration and 
 of effective teaching depends upon information about the pu- 
 pil, it is necessary, for the purpose of saving time alone, to 
 
646 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 record as much of such information as is susceptible of sym- 
 bolic expression in a form which is easily accessible. For this 
 purpose the master-card is set up. 
 
 In appearance, the master-card employed in the labora- 
 
 tory schools is 11 by 1634 inches in dimensions and has entry 
 spaces for 425 items. This list is doubtless longer than is 
 needed for routine administration. A working card should, 
 however, have entry spaces for the following classes of fac- 
 tual material: 
 
 I. 
 
 The main facts of family background, including especial- 
 ly racial stock on both sides; occupation of both parents; 
 number of brothers and sisters living and dead; order of 
 birth among the children; parents living or dead; gross 
 marital relations, as divorced, separated, or normal; step- 
 father or stepmother; foster home. 
 
 . School history, including especially age and grade place- 
 
 ment on entering the present school and schools previous- 
 ly attended. The educational register, the case folder, 
 and the master-card itself of course exhibit school history 
 in the present school. 
 
 . Standardized test scores 
 
 Whenever a standardized test is given in the school, 
 it should be understood that the score will be transmitted 
 for entry on the master-card and the test papers included 
 in the case folder. 
 
 Health history 
 
 The common diseases of childhood and such other 
 
 portions of the health history as are likely to prove signifi- 
 
 cant. A list of important items is printed and arranged 
 for checkmarking. 
 
 . Physical-examination data 
 
 The important routine facts are: height, weight, and 
 height-weight index; vision and hearing; dental develop- 
 ment as normal, retarded, or precocious; condition of 
 teeth; sexual maturity (girls) ; pubescence, as pre-pubes- 
 cent, first, second, or third stage of pubescence. 
 
 — Leow. = ee ee ee ae 
 
ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 647 
 
 The master-card data should of course be checked 
 over annually for corrections and extensions. Some items 
 are in their nature such as need to be entered but once; 
 for instance, date of birth. Some may need correction or 
 extension; for instance, sundry items in the family his- 
 tory. Some must be entered anew once a year; for in- 
 stance, physical and educational data. 
 
 D. The case folder 
 The veritable mine of evidential material touching the 
 growth and development of the pupil is the folder in which is 
 deposited all significant material which is likely to be useful 
 in accurately appraising his educational progress. Its use is 
 limited chiefly by the space requirements, for it is apt to 
 prove bulky. Among the types of material which should be 
 found in the case folder are the following: 
 1. Test papers 
 2. Aseries of samples of English writing gathered periodical- 
 ly, at least once a year 
 3. Noteworthy productions, especially at senior high school 
 and junior college level, which are used as evidences of 
 approaching self-dependence 
 4. Records of significant behavior episodes contributed by 
 the teachers from time to time 
 §. Sustained application profiles 
 
 Parallel with the case folder and in reality constitut- 
 ing a part thereof is the personnel officer’s tray of teach- 
 er’s periodical report cards. 
 
 E. Classroom and departmental records and folders 
 There are included here such material as pupil-reading 
 records; papers submitted, from which the best sample final- 
 ly goes to the general case folder; series of sustained applica- 
 tion profiles; unit test papers and distributions. 
 
 III. Organization of the teaching staff for pupil study 
 There are two objectives in pupil study: (1) perfecting that 
 understanding of the pupil which is essential to teaching, and (2) 
 checking up the actual growth of pupils by noting their unsuper- 
 vised behavior. 
 
648 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 The first, of course, yields its chief results in the application 
 of corrective and remedial teaching, in planning the pupil’s pro- 
 gram, in opening up special opportunity for special talent. It is 
 the second with which we are chiefly concerned at this point. 
 
 No matter how acute and well calculated our testing, no 
 matter how faithful and diligent reteaching and follow-up may 
 be, we are often disappointed in the educational result. We have 
 repeatedly seen that the ultimate testing is in terms of the pupil’s 
 unsupervised behavior and in terms of such evidence as we 
 
 | Reading-confer- Remedial teacher 
 ence. teachers— or teachers | 
 
 staff conferences 
 
 
 
 
 
 pres 
 
 cd 
 
 od 
 S°o 
 3 Oo 
 mo | 
 nS 5 
 c ye 3 = e ° °¢ 
 a ui oO Personnel office—vice- Special examining 
 
 +) e e 
 S88 principal staff as needed 
 es 
 
 - Oo 
 qs 7 
 ey) 
 Seo . . Visiting teacher or 
 A Sd Pupil advisers—staff ries sid 
 S 3a conferences eacners—outside 
 Ons contacts 
 
 FIG. 20 
 
 may be able to collect touching his self-dependence, his inclina- 
 tion to do right because it is right and to utilize the products of 
 his education in the conduct of life and the pursuit of his satis- 
 factions. Such final and fundamental testing requires the organ- 
 ization of the teaching staff for pupil observation and study. 
 
 In the course of the chapters which have preceded, we have 
 noted all the elements of such organization each in its proper 
 place and attached to its own specific function. It is perhaps use- 
 ful to see the elements brought together, and Figure 20 will show 
 the organization schematically. 
 
 GRADUALLY OR AT ONCE? 
 
 As he has turned these pages, a persistent question has 
 doubtless presented itself to the experienced teacher and admin- 
 
 ———E————— 
 
ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 649 
 
 istrator: Can any school be thus made over in its whole theory 
 and practice of teaching at once or even in a brief period? The 
 wise answer is clearly, No. 
 
 Pedagogical history is full of the wreckage of method, in 
 itself sound and good, picked up and put into practice in an 
 apish sort of fashion by enthusiasts eager to be in pedagogical 
 style. The teaching body which is willing to undertake the task 
 of putting its theory and practice upon a basis of systematic pro- 
 cedure, checked up step by step by well-considered evidence of 
 pupil development, must expect to experience a relatively slow 
 process of personal readjustment. Insight comes slowly. I do 
 not say that the reader must forthwith proceed to apply for 
 leave of absence and resort to a school of education for further 
 training. That would doubtless help greatly but only in case the 
 student were willing to undergo the process of self-imposed re- 
 flection and severe intellectual discipline which would be re- 
 quired if he were to remain in residence in his own school and 
 work out the problem by himself. Furthermore, the student of 
 systematic method must expect that his task will never end. 
 Once given a method of pedagogical thinking, and that is all I 
 hope to have accomplished in this volume, the practicing teacher 
 will find that the more he learns about his art the more there is to 
 learn. There is nothing here which can be mastered once for all 
 and then put in practice forever afterward, with assurance of a 
 new and better kind of educational result. 
 
 No matter how clearly all seem to catch the essential mes- 
 sage of the book and no matter how promising the early results 
 may be, the school itself as a whole must grow into it little by lit- 
 tle. Some schools, like some pupils, will grow rapidly and others 
 slowly, but, slow or fast, growth must be the end in view and not 
 some wonderful transformation. There are some features of the 
 mastery procedure to which any school is readily adaptable, and 
 others that must wait until the school has grown up to them. I 
 think it may prove serviceable to my fellow-practitioners if I 
 suggest the order in which the different features can probably be 
 
650 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 best adopted. In so doing, I do not mean to imply that a fixed 
 
 order by years is essential, that the first of the list be adopted 
 
 the first year, the next the second, and so on seriation to the end. 
 
 It may be that several features will be in full working order by 
 
 the end of the first year and maybe not. 
 
 Several features can be applied to the ordinary lesson-learn- 
 ing technique: 
 
 1. Control technique in both aspects, and in all its implications, is ap- 
 plicable, serviceable, and essential in any form of teaching whatso- 
 ever 
 
 2. Development of reading-room 
 
 3. Organization of adviser and reading-conference groups 
 
 4. Study of the individual pupil either 
 a) By the method of simple intelligent observation and enlight- 
 
 ened common sense, or (later in experimental cases) 
 b) By the method of systematic case work 
 
 5. Remedial work in a few cases which have been studied for the pur- 
 pose. Of course, from time immemorial, devoted teachers have 
 done a great deal of this kind of work, guided only by their native 
 teaching spirit and ready human understanding. There have been 
 suggested in the preceding chapters in numerous instances where 
 to look for remedial cases, what the beginnings are likely to be, 
 wherein typical causations consist 
 
 When the school is ready to undertake mastery teaching 
 proper, progress from the fundamental and simple to the acces- 
 sory and difficult features will probably be found somewhat 
 after the following order: 
 
 6. Mastery as applied to the true learning products, in unit organ- 
 ization, type by type and department by department 
 
 7. Study at school in the place of home study, with the voluntary 
 project in its several types of usefulness and significance 
 
 8. Appraisal of progress by accounting for the learning products 
 rather than by performance grades. Note that performance 
 grades are as applicable to 6 and 7 as to the lesson-learning pro- 
 cedure. We have identified and exhibited their fallacy but their 
 fallacy is no greater under mastery teaching than elsewhere 
 
ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 651 
 
 9. Flexible arrangement of courses and final abandonment of pupil 
 administration by grade promotions and credits for time spent 
 10. Complete staff organization 
 
 CAN IT BE AFFORDED? 
 
 Throughout this volume, and especially while reading this 
 concluding chapter, the query has probably frequently been 
 raised, Is not this all impossibly expensive? To answer the ques- 
 tion, we must remind ourselves of the place of the school in the 
 economic cycle. The school can justify itself economically, no 
 matter what its cost in money, only in so far as it creates eco- 
 nomic values at least equivalent to those which it consumes. It 
 can create such values only in so far as it succeeds in actually 
 bringing its pupil body into adjustment with the world in which 
 the pupils must live as adults. In the long run every pupil must 
 pay the cost of educating another through excess of economic 
 values which he directly creates and which are attributable to 
 the education which he has received, or through the relative sav- 
 ings in the consumption of goods and services which he makes 
 possible, or through the intelligence which he contributes to so- 
 ciety in its utilization of the planet as the patrimony of mankind. 
 Such values can accrue only as the pupil masters the content of 
 his education in the form of the permanent attitudes and ac- 
 quired abilities to which we have so often referred. No matter 
 how excellent the curriculum, it remains a thing of paper until 
 the pupil has mastered the content thereof. No matter how won- 
 derful the building, it remains a mere meeting place until the pu- 
 pils who congregate therein emerge with an actual education and 
 not merely a collection of certificates of time spent in school. 
 Neither curriculum nor building nor equipment is the core of the 
 process of education, but rather effective teaching. Given the 
 latter in the form of patient, systematic molding of youthful de- 
 velopment which guarantees such development by the very na- 
 ture of the process which it administers, it makes little difference 
 
652 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 what schools cost in money for they will always then in their 
 product pay the bill and something over. 
 
 As far as classroom teaching is concerned, the teacher who 
 is qualified to teach at all is qualified to teach systematically 
 with due regard to the central issue of pupil study and pupil de- 
 velopment. Such qualifications imply adequate education, ade- 
 quate training, professional devotion and dependability, willing- 
 ness to work hard, and long hours. Such people can command 
 good incomes but perhaps no more than our best salary sched- 
 ules now imply. Any others are expensive at any price for the 
 reasons set forth in the preceding paragraph. 
 
 Systematic teaching implies an adequate staff of administra- 
 tive officers, some of them specialists. Much the same reasoning 
 applies here which applies to the qualifications of teachers. A 
 school which is inadequately staffed with a principal and some 
 associates whose duties are chiefly clerical and promotional in 
 type is apt to be a fatally expensive school because it leaves to 
 chance any genuine education of its pupils. For the most part, 
 the latter loiter more or less good-naturedly along a primrose 
 path, and their attainments in the end are the miserable cheat 
 of a mere smattering which is so common and so often deplored. 
 
 We can, however, approach the issue more nearly and speak 
 in terms of current cost. 
 
 One of the outstanding revelations in the literature of school 
 costs is the waste attributable to retardation. When pupils take 
 two or more years to learn what they should have learned in one 
 year, they accumulate in the schools and the enrolment becomes 
 expanded beyond what it otherwise would be. Such expansion 
 entails additional cost in teachers’ salaries, supplies, and main- 
 tenance of buildings, and it engenders excessive capital costs for 
 buildings and equipment. It is a fortunate school system in 
 which the excess cost traceable to this item does not exceed 10 
 per cent. Now, the tendency of the systematic teaching and ad- 
 ministrative technique which we have been studying is to reduce 
 retardation and increase acceleration—perhaps to make net re- 
 
 eS ere SS 
 
ORGANIZING THE SCHOOL 653 
 
 tardation a minus quantity. The elimination of net retardation 
 in most cities of ten thousand population and upward would 
 alone save enough in operating and capital costs to pay the cost 
 of adequate administrative staffs. 
 
 The same issue can be approached from another angle. The 
 traditional school career is fourteen years above the kinder- 
 garten and including the junior college. Nearly ail students of 
 the problem agree that this is probably two years too much. The 
 waste is commonly attributed, and rightly, to the inflexible char- 
 acter of our graded system. Experimentally, the period has been 
 reduced to thirteen years for all pupils who originate in the lab- 
 oratory schools and a further reduction of an additional year or 
 its equivalent has been attained for many pupils. If we can re- 
 duce the most expensive years of the program of general educa- 
 tion by two, or even one, the saving in actual current cost will go 
 far to offset the added costs attributable to a more efficient or- 
 ganization. 
 
 There is still a third issue in the problem of retardation, al- 
 though it is related rather to ultimate economic cost than to cur- 
 rent financial cost. Retardation means elimination, that is, the 
 pupil leaves school and gets more or less permanently out of ad- 
 justment to his world. The cost accrues in the form of some 
 dependency, a great deal of delinquency, and a general drag 
 upon social betterment. 
 
 We have undertaken in America such a program of univer- 
 sal education as the world never yet dreamed of. It would not be 
 difficult to show that great benefits have accrued, but educating 
 the masses and ameliorating the conditions under which they 
 live creates as many problems as it solves. There are not want- 
 ing manifold evidences that we have failed to realize the stu- 
 pendous power of the engine we have set in operation. We can- 
 not turn back; we must, for very existence’ sake, go forward. 
 But going forward means the substitution for the casual meth- 
 ods of the past of intensive, systematic procedures in the hands 
 of very highly trained workers, governed and led by still more 
 highly trained executives and boards of control. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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INDEX 
 
 Abilities: acquired, 27; term in ad- 
 ministrative vocabulary, 554; clas- 
 sification, 556; mental ability, 557; 
 special ability traits, 560; confused 
 with adjustment, 562 
 
 Absorption: type of attention, 
 goal, 135 
 
 Academy, 3 
 
 Adaptation: reading, 8; primary, 8-11; 
 handwriting, 10; social, 11; defined, 
 22; understandings, 25; appreciation, 
 26; abilities, 27; practice, 28; lan- 
 guage arts, 437, 470; pure practice, 
 505 
 
 Additional courses in administering 
 superior pupil, 588 
 
 Adjustment: education as adjustment, 
 212; basis for sectioning class, 564; 
 and maturity, 567; term in adminis- 
 trative vocabulary, 562 
 
 Administration: stereotypes, 4-6; part 
 of the teaching process, 544 
 
 Administrative technique, 543; ad- 
 ministrative scheme, 546; vocabulary, 
 552; interpretation of ‘‘course,” 575; 
 sequence of courses, 578; skip-sec- 
 tions, 581; expanded pupil program, 
 586; s upplementary project, 587; ad- 
 ditional courses, 588; credit, 590; 
 identifying and guiding interest, 591; 
 self-dependence, 595; course report, 
 599; personnel report, 601; marks and 
 grades, 603; home reports, 607 
 
 Algebra: typical unit organization in, 
 211; as study tool, 279 
 
 ayer in attitude toward conduct, 
 37 
 
 Apperceptive mass, 163; relation to 
 individual differences, 163; seg- 
 mented, 163; perverted, 164; guidance 
 and control, 165; in literature, 335 
 
 Application: effect in volitional devel- 
 opment, 104, 107; sustained applica- 
 tion, 107, 135; product gt training, 
 135; measuring, 135; ical un- 
 trained pupil, 135; oan influence 
 in some cases, 138, 142; training, 139; 
 relation to learning, 143; case exhibit, 
 
 103; 
 
 657 
 
 143; effect of training, 148; in diag- 
 nosis of problem case, 150; in super- 
 vised study, 285; in attitude toward 
 conduct, 387 
 
 Appreciation type: defined, 90; opera- 
 tive technique, 317, 326; nature of the 
 learning units, 316; mastery in, 321; 
 inhibition in, 322; place in education, 
 323; effort required, 331 
 
 Arithmetic: typical unit organization, 
 207; as study tool, 279 
 
 Assimilation: assimilative material, 25; 
 in learning cycle, 154; assimilative 
 material in science, 172; assimilative 
 material in history, 175; assimilative 
 material in mathematics, 203; as- 
 similative material in grammar, 207; 
 in science type, described, 227; in 
 science type, operative technique, 
 257; in science type, place in adapta- 
 tion, 257; in science type, relation to 
 study, 260; in science type, class- 
 room, 262; in science type, labora- 
 tory, 263: in science type, we lpaecin 
 264; in science type, testing, 292; in 
 practical arts, 429 
 
 Attention: in the learning situation, 
 103; group attention, 106; sustained, 
 107; Measuring group, I15; reliability 
 of measure, 122; training observers, 
 123; phase analysis, 124; use of group- 
 attention scores, 128, 130; spurious 
 attention, 129; securing good con- 
 trol, 130 
 
 Attitude: intelligence, 21; appreciation, 
 21; get-by, 44; lesson-learning, 64 
 
 Automobile, in practical arts, 421 
 
 Bailey, D. C., 198 
 
 Barnard, Arthur F., 191 
 
 Beauchamp, W. L., 87, 565 
 
 Behavior: term in administrative vo- 
 cabulary, 571; case folder, 572 
 
 Ben Blewett Junior High School, 141 
 
 Biography, in attitude toward conduct, 
 
 8 
 Biology, typical unit organization, 185 
 Blacksmithing, in practical arts, 423 
 
658 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 Brightness and dulness, 559; the bright 
 pupil must learn, 562 
 
 Bulletin board, in apperception mass, 
 168 
 
 Case folder, 647 
 
 Case work: procedure in, 608, 616; 
 corrective case, 612; remedial case, 
 615 
 
 Chemistry, typical unit organization, 
 184 
 
 Classes at work, in science type, 266 
 
 Classroom, as study-room, 262 
 
 College: integration with elementary 
 and high schools, 4-5; origin, 3; ad- 
 mission to, 67 
 
 Common school, 3 
 
 Composition: as study tool in science 
 type, 282, as study tool in literature, 
 364; adaptation, 437, 479; operative 
 technique, 478, 487; contrast with 
 performance skills, 479; interference 
 of maturing process, 481; relation to 
 organized intellectual control, 483, 
 478, 502; usage teaching, 483, 487; 
 evidence of, 484; administrative 
 technique, 501 
 
 Conduct: right attitude toward, 373; 
 operative technique, 389 
 
 Conference groups, in free reading, 346 
 
 Constructive activity, in apperceptive 
 mass, 169 
 
 Continuous scheduling, 642 
 
 Control technique, 103; effect of, 108; 
 use of, in supervision, 111, 128; 
 analysis, 112 
 
 Co-operation, in attitude toward con- 
 duct, 384 
 
 Corrective teaching: corrective cases, 
 85; in science type, 289; in attitude 
 toward conduct, 392 
 
 Credit: credit attitude, 69, 74; reflected 
 in student ethics, 70; administrative 
 technique, 590; for course not taken 
 or taken in part, 641 
 
 Criticism, right acceptance of, in at- 
 titude toward conduct, 383 
 
 Courses: administrative interpretation, 
 575; Sequence, 578; course report, 
 599; flexible arrangement, 641 
 
 Deferred satisfactions, in attitude to- 
 ward conduct, 377 
 
 Diagnosis, in remedial case work, 633 
 
 Dictionary, in usage teaching, 494 
 
 Direct teaching: contrast with lesson- 
 learning, 48; evidence for, 62; in 
 operative technique, 160 
 
 Drama, 355 
 
 Drawing: as study tool in sciences, 281; 
 in practical arts, 423 
 
 Duty, sense of, in attitude toward con- 
 duct, 387 
 
 agp typical unit organization, 
 
 I 
 
 Educational register, 644 
 
 Electrical appliances, in practical arts, 
 420 
 
 Elementary school: origins, 3; integra- 
 tion with high school and college, 4-5 
 
 Equipment, for study-room, 262 
 
 Ethics, in relation to conduct, 375 
 
 Examinations, in remedial case work, 
 619 
 
 Executive management, 545 
 
 Expanded pupil programs, 586, 642 
 
 Experiential deficiency, in problem case, 
 science type, 288 
 
 Exploration in science type: described, 
 225; purpose, 232; operative tech- 
 nique, 237 7 
 
 Fair play, sense of, in attitude toward 
 conduct, 380 
 
 Family history, in remedial case work, 
 628 
 
 Follow-up, in remedial case work, 639 
 
 Foreign language: operative technique 
 in, 453; testing, 458; pronunciation 
 and phonetics, 466; free reading, 468; 
 reading adaptation, 470; problem 
 cases, 471; administration of courses, 
 472; grammar in, 473 
 
 Gas engine, in practical arts, 421 
 
 Geometry, typical unit organization in 
 certain case, 214 
 
 German schools, 17 
 
 Gradually or at once, 648 
 
 Grammar: unit in, 199, 215; use in 
 education, 216, 445, 473; typical unit 
 organization, 218; legitimate place in 
 foreign language, 473 
 
 Guide sheets, in supervised study, 283 
 
 i ae 
 
INDEX 
 
 High school: origin, 3; integration with 
 elementary school and college, 4-5; 
 attempts to define, 67 
 
 Hill, Howard C., 191 
 
 History: Bidcdonal use of, 187; units 
 in, 189; typical unitary organizations, 
 196 
 
 Home and school: in book selections 
 349; in A psearenng arts projects, 413; 
 notice to home, 607; home condi- 
 tions, in case work, 628 
 
 House, as project in practical arts, 419 
 
 House-planning, typical unit organiza- 
 tion, 185 
 
 Inhibition: in appreciation, 
 language, 442 
 
 Initial diffuse movements, 157; viola- 
 tion of, 158; in practical arts, 424; 
 in language learning, 444 
 
 Integrity of the school, 543 
 
 Interest: in the learning situation, 103; 
 identifying and guiding, 591, teach- 
 ers’ reports, 593 
 
 Judd, Charles H., 509 
 
 322; in 
 
 Kindergarten, relation to normal ap- 
 perceptive mass, 165 
 
 Lange, Dena, 141 
 Language-arts type: defined, 92, 436; 
 objective in, 436; contrasted with 
 related learnings, 438, 445; successive 
 adaptations, 440, associated skills, 
 440; inhibition, 442; sometimes in- 
 volved in learning in other types, 446; 
 operative technique, 448 
 Latin: operative technique as typical of 
 language arts, 454; beginners on 
 seventeenth day, 457; writing (free) 
 done on twenty-fourth day, 463; 
 technique in literature, 475 
 Learning cycle, 154 
 Learning products: nature, 19, 22; per- 
 manency, 23; test of, 23, 29; types, 25; 
 identification of, 159 
 Learning situation, 103 
 Lesson-learning: defined, 37; not pro- 
 portional to learning, 41; illustrated, 
 42, 433 get-by attitude, 44; evidence 
 to product, 50053 three types 
 of learning found, 58 
 
 650 
 
 Literature: in appreciation type, 319; 
 operative technique, 335, 358; gen- 
 eral, 353; courses in, 353, 355; prob- 
 lem case in, 368; in foreign language, 
 379, 445, 475 
 
 Lyman and Hill, 353 
 
 McCoy, Martha Jane, 368 
 
 Machine, the, intelligent attitude to- 
 ward, 402 
 
 Machine tools, in practical arts, 422 
 
 Marks and grades: fallacies connected 
 
 with, 39, 603; accurate use, 606, 645 
 
 Mastery, defined, 35 
 
 Mastery formula, defined, 79 
 
 Mathematics: unit in, 199; use in gen- 
 eral education, 203; assimilative 
 material in, 203; unit organizations 
 in I and II, 213; as study tool, 279; 
 relation to other subjects, 280 
 
 Maturing process, 16; in composition, 
 481; and adjustment, 567 
 
 Mental ability, 557 
 
 Method, place of, in science type, 220 
 
 Moral behavior, in appreciation type, 
 320 
 
 Morale, in the school, 550 
 
 Morgan, Catherine, 143 
 
 Motivation: in the learning situation, 
 103; sustaining, 105; spurious, 105 
 
 Neuro-muscular adaptations, 505; op- 
 erative technique, 506 
 
 Non-teachable material, 96 
 
 Normality and subnormality, 558 
 
 Number concepts, 209, 532 
 
 Number facts, 532; relation to primary 
 concepts, 532; technique, 535; testing, 
 530, 538 
 
 Obedience, in right attitude toward con- 
 duct, 385 
 
 Operative technique, 153; defined, 153; 
 relation to control and administra- 
 tion, 153; fundamentals in, 154 
 
 Organization in science type: described, 
 220; operative technique, 302; rela- 
 tion to English composition, 305 
 
 Organizing the school, in administrative 
 technique, 640 
 
 Passing grade: fallacy of, 38; as objec- 
 tive, 40 
 
660 
 
 Performance: term in administrative 
 vocabulary, 568; distinct from adjust- 
 ment, 568 
 
 Personnel teacher, 548; report, 6o1 
 
 Perverse literature, influence of, 348 
 
 Perversions: get-by, 44; performance, 
 46; lesson-learning, 59; problem case 
 in science type, 289 
 
 Phase, in measuring group attention, 
 124 
 Phonetics, in language learning, 466 
 
 Physical science: unit in, 171; test of 
 unit, 182; unitary organization, 182; 
 typical organizations, 183 
 
 Physics: typical unit organization, 184 
 
 Plumbing and steam-fitting, in practical 
 arts, 420 
 
 Politics, typical unit organization, 186 
 
 Practical-arts type: defined, go; in gen- 
 eral education, 401; learning unit in, 
 404; contrast with science type, 407; 
 contrast with manual training, 408; 
 426; contrast with vocational courses, 
 409; operative technique, 424 
 
 Presentation in science type: described, 
 226; operative technique, 243; typical 
 presentations, 243, 245; no questions, 
 249; testing, 251; presentation test, 
 252; presentation use of, 254; re- 
 presentation, 254; in practical arts, 
 428; in spelling, 517 
 
 Pre-test: in mastery formula, 79; in 
 science type, 225; in literature, 354, 
 360; in practical arts, 427; in spelling, 
 RUT 
 
 Primary adaptations, 8-11; critical 
 importance in arithmetic, 209, 532 
 
 Primary school: limits, 7; kindergarten- 
 primary, 106 
 
 Problem case: defined, 85; remedial, 85; 
 corrective, 85, 612; in science type, 
 285; in literature, 368; in conduct, 
 395; in foreign language, 471; in 
 spelling, 530; systematic case work, 
 608; justification, 608 
 
 Problem-solving, 206 
 
 Profiling, in sustained application, 135 
 
 Project: in practical arts, 417; con- 
 trasted with exercise, 417; contrasted 
 with unit, 418; administration of, 434 
 
 Promises, fidelity to, in attitude toward 
 conduct, 384 
 
 Pronunciation, in language learning, 466 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING 
 
 sdd ae-awip'n, as a theory of education, 
 
 18; teaching by, 161 
 
 Pupil accounting, 644; educational 
 register, 644; descriptive marks, 645; 
 the master-card, 645; the case folder, 
 647; pupil study, 647 
 
 Pupil administration, 552 
 
 Pupil progress: appraisal of, 66-76; 
 performance appraisal, 68; by rank, 
 72; valid appraisal, 75; administrative 
 technique, 574 
 
 Pupil study, organization for, 648 
 
 Pure-practice type: defined, 93; sub- 
 types, 93, 504, 505; operative tech- 
 nique, 503, 506; application to prod- 
 ucts of other types, 504; adaptation, 
 505; inhibition, 509 
 
 Reading: in supervised study, 271; in- 
 tensive, 271; extensive, 274; relation 
 of, to study capacity, 277; in problem 
 cases, science type, 286; in literature 
 courses, 362; operative technique 
 typical of language arts, 451 
 
 Reading-room: in apperceptive guid- 
 ance, 166; in literature, 336; selection 
 of books, 339; conduct of, 340; sales- 
 manship, 340 
 
 Recitations in science type: described, 
 230; operative technique, 306 
 
 Religion: in relation to conduct, 375 
 
 Remedial case: defined, 85; register, 
 615; organization scheme for, 639 
 
 Reteaching, in mastery formula, 81 
 
 School history, in remedial case work, 
 627 
 
 Science, elementary, typical unit organi- 
 zation, 183, 184 
 
 Science type: defined, 89: size of class 
 IN, 313 
 
 Secondary school: limits, 5, 12, 15; 
 purposes, 14; definition, 5 final pro- 
 ducts, 33 
 
 Sectioning classes, based on adjustment, 
 565 
 
 Self-dependence: objective of secondary 
 education, 33; administrative tech- 
 nique, 595; teachers’ reports, 597 
 
 Sex, beauty in relationship, in attitude 
 toward conduct, 381 
 
 Skill, defined, 20 
 
 Skip-section, in administering language 
 courses, 581 
 
INDEX 
 
 Slow learner, identification, 87 
 
 Social history, in remedial case work, 
 632 
 
 Social science: unit in, 174; test of unit, 
 182; unitary organization, 182 
 
 Spelling, 510; relation to pupil’s dis- 
 course, 510, 512, 513; word lists, 511; 
 operative technique, 514; pre-test, 
 514; presentation, 517; testing, 520, 
 524; functional requirements, 524; 
 pupil study and corrective teaching, 
 524, 525, 529; problem-case remedial, 
 53° 
 
 Steam engine, in practical arts, 421 
 
 Study: ability to, 15; fundamental in 
 operative technique, 161 
 
 Student-adviser system, in attitude to- 
 ward conduct, 393 
 
 Superior student: 
 
 application of mas- 
 tery formula in 
 
 e case of, 86, 87; 
 supplementary project, 88, 5387; ad- 
 ministrative technique, 581, 587; ex- 
 panded program, 586; additional 
 courses, 588; college courses, 588 
 
 Supervised study: in science type, 270; 
 the study tools, in reading, 271, 277; 
 the study tools, in handwriting, 278; 
 the study tools, in math.-concepts, 
 279; the study tools, in drawing, 281; 
 guide sheets, 283; materials, 283; lab- 
 oratory exercises, 284; concentration, 
 285; problem case, 285; in practical 
 arts, 429 
 
 Supervision of teaching, 545 
 
 Supplementary project, use with su- 
 perior pupil, 88 
 Symptoms, in remedial case work, 618 
 
 Teachers, influence of, in attitude to- 
 ward conduct, 390 
 
 Teaching cycle in science type, 220, 223; 
 five steps described, 225 
 
 Teaching objectives: as adaptations, 
 22; identification of, 159 
 
 Testing: test of a real learning product, 
 29; in mastery formula, 738; presenta- 
 tion test in science type, 251; as- 
 
 661 
 
 similation test in science type, 292, 
 296, 297; performance testing in 
 science type, 294; in free reading, 338, 
 341, 343; reading cards as test mate- 
 rial, 344, 354, 362; in attitude toward 
 conduct, 398; in practical arts, 433; 
 in language arts, 458; in composition, 
 484; in usage, 497; in spelling, 520, 
 524; in number facts, 536, 538; in 
 remedial case work, 619 
 
 Textiles, typical unit organization, 185 
 
 Think, learning to, 31 
 
 Three Problem Children, cited, 612 
 
 Training of teachers, 547 
 
 Translation, defined, 438 
 
 Transverbalizing, described, 438 
 
 Treatment, in remedial case work, 637 
 
 Turbine, in practical arts, 421 
 
 Types of testing: why different types, 
 89; five types defined, 89; critical 
 Importance, 95 
 
 Unitary organization: in physical and 
 social science, 182; typical organiza- 
 tions, 183, 186, 207, 211, 213 
 
 Units: learning, 36; contrast with per- 
 formance, 37; place of, in systematic 
 
 g, 79; in physical and social 
 science, 171; test of, 182; in history, 
 189; in mathematics and grammar, 
 199; in practical arts, 416; unit organ- 
 ization in administrative technique, 
 574 
 
 University, beginning of, 7, 13 
 
 Usage teaching: content, 483; operative 
 technique, 487; testing, 497 
 
 Vocalization: in language-learning, 467; 
 in composition, 493 
 
 Volitional development: in sustained 
 application, 104; relation of, to 
 obedience, 114 
 
 Voluntary project: in science type, 296; 
 in literature, 366 
 
 Woodworking, in practical arts, 419 
 Word lists, selection of, in spelling, 511 
 
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Morrison D- Teaching 
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