Class teaching and management

Front matter

CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT I

I

WILLIAM ESTAB ROOK CHANCELLOR iiiii i iiiiiii i i n ii ii iiii i i i ii iiili i iiiiiiiiiiii I.

Preface

THE purpose of this book is to present the principles of class teaching in respect both to instruction and to discipline. This treatment of the theory and practice of class instruction is intended for use in teachers' reading circles and as a text-book in professional schools of education. It is a development of systematic courses of lectures summer and winter in the Universities of Chicago and of Wooster, and in George Washington University, and of occasional lectures at various other universities, at several normal schools, and at many teachers' institutes.

In an experience as superintendent of schools in four different cities — Bloomfield and Paterson, New Jersey; the District of Columbia, both white and colored schools; and Norwalk, Connecticut, and as a visitor in fifteen hundred schools in more than half the States of the Union — I have learned that while systems of organization and of administration are many and various, presenting opposite extremes and apparently every form of compromise, the business of the class teacher is standardized in but three forms whether for East, West, North or South.

This book is an exposition of these standard forms of class teaching.

W. E. C.

Town of Norwalk, Conn.

CONTENTS AND SYLLABUS OF CHAPTERS

CHAPTER I The Learning Processes from the Point of View of Teaching

Relations of learner and teacher:— Studies and exercises. — Progress of different kinds of pupils in different kinds of subjects. — Idea, function, habit, character. — Motivation, attention, interest, association, judgment, reasoning Page 3

CHAPTER II The Teaching Processes from the Point of View of Learning

Helping the learner and transmitting knowledge. — Limitations constitute the nature of art. — The general teaching process. — Special teaching processes; inductive recitations; deductive lessons; question-and-answer reviews; study-lessons; drills; laboratory experiments; lectures; seminars; library -work; translationstests and examinations Page 25

CHAPTER III Department Teaching — Grade Teaching — District School Teaching

Reasons for the several kinds and grades of schools. — -The lower limits of department teaching and the upper limits of grade teaching. — The several principles of department teaching. — The principles of grade teaching. — 'The causes of the rural school consolidation movement. — Grading the district school that has but one teacher. — Advantages of such a school. — In all kinds of schools, written work, reviews, examinations. — Change and progress.

Page 67 ix

CONTENTS AND SYLLABUS OF CHAPTERS

CHAPTER IV The Teacher as Interpreter op the Course op Study

The child's world. — Qualities requisite in the teacher. — A philosophy of life. — Prevalence of one temperament among teachers. — The dominant importance of ideas. — A philosophy of knowledge. — The problem of the adjustment of foreigners to Americanism. — The unity of mind. — Scholarship and conduct. — Ethical versus materialistic views and principles Page 93

Chapter V

The variety of duties. — Frictions. — Daily preparation. — Daily programs in a graded elementary school. — High school programs. — Advance plans versus records of accomplishment. — A new class.

CHAPTER VI Control op the Class and of the Individual

Review of terms used in education. — The force-theory. — The skill-theory. — School-and-home theory. — Pupil self-government theory. — Manual work in relation to discipline. — Virtue is at the point of strain. — Moral aims in education. — Means to attain them. — When is corporal punishment necessary ? — Seating a class so as to avoid unnecessary conditions leading to disorder. — Directing the movements of the class. — Fire-drills. — The mechanics of class control. — Learning each pupil.— Physical defects. — Schools and classes for the incorrigible, for the defective, for the laggard, for the blind, for the deaf, for the crippled. — Tests of feeble-mindedness. — The reasonable standards of conduct in children and youth. — The school virtues Page 145

CHAPTER VII Classifying, Marking, Grading and Promoting Pupils

What numbers properly constitute classes in the various schools and grades? — The count-system in marking. — Four factors in grading, — age, home opportunities, native powers, actual attainments. — Conspectus of elementary course of study. — Frequency

CONTENTS AND SYLLABUS OF CHAPTERS

of grading. — Retardation. — Machinery versus personality. — The "trick" of relative standards versus the justice of absolute standards so far as these are humanly possible. — Why the class teachers generally should decide promotions, — and when they should not do so. — The precocious, the normal, the altricious. — Psychical ages versus physical. — The locus of a study. — Overcrowded curriculums. — Study-periods at school Page 199

CHAPTER VIII How to Make a Good School and a Good Class

The school as seen by a visitor.— Active attention, absorbed attention, deliberative attention. — [Order and decorum of the pupils. — The use of the English language. — Voice. — Condition of the room itself. — School equipment. — Qualifications as seen by systematic observers. — Aims of the good class teacher. — The school spirit. — Interest of each pupil in his own welfare: self - activity. — The school neighborhood. — The financial authorities. — Public opinion Page 235

CHAPTER IX The Class Teacher and the Industrial Arts

The investment of one's own life. — The extension of education. — Its expansion. — Teachers of the familiar subjects. — Preparation for the new subjects. — Agriculture. — The mechanic arts. — The business arts. — Domestic science. — Domestic arts. — Principles controlling social action in reference to educational progress. — The universal school and expressive activities . . Page 259

CHAPTER X The Teacher's Own Life in an Age of Educational Expansion

Relations with superior officers. — Questions usually asked of candidates for positions. — Progress in scholarship. — One's library. — Health. — Recreation. — Vacations. — Public, private, endowed, and ecclesiastical school positions. — Elementary, secondary, and higher positions. — Learning some of the lessons of life . . Page 285

xi

CONTENTS AND SYLLABUS OF CHAPTERS

PAGE

I. An Open Letter to One Who Is Just Beginning

to Teach 299

II. An Open Letter to the Experienced Class Teacher 301

III. The Choice of Text-Books 303

IV. Outline op a Standard Minimum Course of Study

Based upon the Course in the Schools of Cincinnati, Ohio 305

V. Illustrative Lesson Plans and Examination . .312

VI. Illustrative Teachers' Examinations 322

VII. Rules and Regulations for a District School . . 329

VIII. Suggested English Exercises in Correlation with

Other Subjects for Both Urban and Rural

Schools 331

Index 333

ILLUSTRATIONS

A COOKING CLASS. WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL,

NEW YORK CITY Frontispiece

AN OUT-OF-DOOR KINDERGARTEN. STATE NORMAL

SCHOOL, SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA Facing p. 18

NATURE-STUDY APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC " 10S

VACANT-LOT GARDENING BY PUPILS OF THE CLEVELAND

SCHOOLS " 268

"According to my experience, success in education depends upon whether what is taught to children commends itself to them as true, through being closely connected with their own personal observation and consideration. Without this foundation, truth must seem to them little better than a plaything or perhaps a burden. Man is impelled by the nature of the powers that he possesses to use and to train them, and thereby to develop and improve them." — Pestalozzi, On his Work at Stanz. 1799.

CLASS TEACHING AND

MANAGEMENT

Chapter I The Learning Processes From The Point Of View Of Teaching

Relations of learner and teacher. — Studies and exercises. — Progress of different kinds of pupils in different kinds of subjects. — Idea, function, habit, character. — Motivation, attention, interest, association, judgment, reasoning.

THE child goes to school to learn. Curiosity impels him. Or the child is sent to school to learn. His parents or relatives or officers of the law compel him to go. Teaching the child who goes to school of his own desire is not the same thing as teaching one who must be sent. Nor does the child who goes voluntarily, even eagerly, learn at school in the same fashion as does the child who goes unwillingly.

The purpose of the school-going of the child is to learn knowledge and habits. What and how much he learns depend upon many things, — his own curiosity and docility, his health and strength, his mental powers; the scholarship, the industry, the skill and the char- 2 3 acter of his teacher; the opportunities of the school, its building, equipment, apparatus; the subjects taught; the books and supplies used; his comrades.

In its simple and original sense, to "learn" means to "go over," to "travel again." In its simple and original sense, to "teach" is to "show" or to "tell." The teacher shows the learner what to go over and how to go over, while the learner, hearing what the teacher tells or seeing what the teacher shows, travels again the road by which the teacher has come to knowledge.

Learning from a teacher is a wonderful economy, for it saves learning by experiment with its constant errors and many failures and with its few successes. Teaching those who do not yet know has been an essential part of the transmission of the arts of life from those who know to the ignorant, in every period of culture and civilization. School-teaching is but one phase of the whole matter, though in the modern age it has come to transcend all other phases in the general interest of men. And schooling, which is the preparation of childhood and of youth in economic leisure for activities and enterprises of life that are not open to the unschooled, is now part of our common democratic faith and practice.

Learning, then, is going over, — once, twice, perhaps many times, till one knows, and often many, many times after one knows. Going over again and again till one knows is one kind of learning; going thereafter is another kind of learning, so different that we no longer use this term. The first kind of learning has several stages in it, — Seeing or hearing, understanding, remembering, trying, succeeding, doing, repeating, drilling. Suddenly, there comes the consciousness that one really has learned and now knows. With this discovery, the first kind of learning ends — unless or until one forgets. Seldom, however, does one really forget what one really has learned. This " forgetting," as it is called, is getting something else in the way, as in the confusion due to excitement; or it is failing to get anything at all, as in the empty-minded weakness of fatigue or ill-health. The only forgetting that is serious is due either to long lapse of years or to great changes either in the cellstructure or relations of the brain, as in childhood or severe illness or in the associations of one's life, as removal to distant scenes. Even so, often one remembers, years and years later or thousands of miles away, things that one supposes forgotten absolutely.

The forgetting of the child, when asked regarding something that he learned or knew a few minutes or a few days before, is due usually to his inability to summon remembrance at will because he is full of sensations and motivations and is not yet in control of himself. Unless due to this condition of his mental life because he is a child, his forgetting is probably competent evidence that in fact he had not learned and did not previously know what he professed to know, or was supposed to know, before.

The other and higher kind of learning, the going over of what one really does know, is using it, or functioning in respect to its subject matter. The first kind leaves one in a state of proficiency or skill; the second kind leads into science or into art or into philosophy.

Learning at school has the various stages of seeing or otherwise observing by the senses, perceiving or understanding, remembering, trying to do, succeeding therein, doing and repeating, and last drilling until one knows or has learned. It is a process through which one can never carry another. The teacher may show; the pupil must perform.

Here, between the teacher and the learner, arises a relation of importance. The greater the skill of the teacher, the larger is the number of those whom he or she can develop by teaching, — that is, helping to learn. A teacher of genuine skill can develop the mediocre, even the dull; a teacher of but little proficiency scarcely educates the average pupils; a teacher of no qualifications actually discourages even the pupils of talent. Good teaching, therefore, means the success of a relatively large portion of the learners in a class. And good (or true) teaching is primarily nothing else than insight into these learning processes and industry in following the suggestions of insight, for the benefit of the learners.

When it is said that "the good teacher is born," what is meant is that he (or she) has native insight into and sympathy with the mental process of learning and a desire to help the learner forward. Whether a good teacher can be made out of a person without such insight, sympathy and desire is simply a question whether the person can be so educated as to develop this power of insight and these qualities of sympathy and desire.

Work at school is commonly classified into studies and exercises. Not to try to draw distinctions too finely here, one may say that studies are concerned with facts and principles: they are concerned with what is often called " knowledge." Exercises are concerned with activities, crafts, arts. The difference may be illustrated by citing history as a study and drawing as an exercise.

The distinction is not to be pushed too far. To write a composition on some historical topic is to use history as an exercise: to learn the theory of perspective in drawing is to pursue drawing as a study.

In actual class-room practice, the learning process as it is guided by the teacher in respect to a study differs considerably from the learning process involved in an exercise. To learn a history lesson, one reads the passage or listens to a recital of the facts; then one thinks about the facts, severally and collectively, trying to understand or interpret them in the light of facts and truths already known; next one recalls in due order the facts of the passage : then follows an oral or written recitation upon the topic; and this recitation is repeated and reviewed in analysis and in association over and over in drill until the topic is learned. To accomplish this process, one needs to read or to hear accurately; eye or ear must be keen and true. The next stage in the process is that of summoning enough knowledge to enable one to understand the words heard or read. We cannot teach history at all to small children because they do not yet know enough social and historical facts to understand any historical topic. We say that they do not yet know the meaning of words: what we mean is that they have as yet no content of knowledge for the words to designate. The other stages of the process, — recalling, trying to use, succeeding, doing and drilling, — are without the technical difficulties of this second stage of apperception or understanding; but they are quite as necessary for the completion of a real act of learning. When we have only the power to remember a thing and cannot use it, we do not yet know the thing.

This getting of our knowledge beyond the stage of mere recall, to the point where it helps us understand new facts and can perform, as it were, the mental digestive function is a mysterious enough matter. Perhaps it can be best understood by an illustration. Ever since humanity began upon the earth, it has been entirely obvious that all men are alike creatures of one universal Nature (" children of one common Father," to put this truth in religious phrase); but men were long centuries in discovering that there is a resultant truth, — that all are equal (that is, "brothers/' in the religious term). At last, however, this idea or fact became a truth that went to work in the minds of men and began to overthrow governments of privilege and to establish democracy. It overthrew serfdom in Russia and slavery in America. Where this idea will end in its business of digesting the old social institutions, of course, we cannot foresee.

Perhaps another illustration will serve better. Often, a child knows verbatim every multiplication table; and yet cannot multiply either correctly or quickly. Often, he knows the rules of all the arithmetical operations involved in a problem; but cannot perform them properly.

In these instances, the idea, though remembered, is still in a compartment of the mind, as it were; but it has no power to walk up and down the hall and stairways, opening doors and shutting them, and really to live. The business of the teacher is to help the pupil learn so well that he has many important "live ideas."

Ideas should not be merely "committed to memory," — stored like merchandise in boxes. They should not be like articles of furniture, however handsome and useful in the house, — movable at the will of the housekeeper. But they should be like trees in the orchard, fruit-bearing; like flowers in the garden, seed-scattering; like animals and birds and fishes, moving and alive.

In respect to an exercise, the learning process emphasizes such different stages as to seem quite different from what it is in the case of a study. The first stage consists in seeing what is done: or when this is not possible, in proceeding step by step according to the directions of one who has seen the thing done. In the normal instance, however, the learner first observes what one who knows how to do the exercise actually does. The learner may need to watch the thing as it is being done several, even many times, in order to acquire a reasonably complete knowledge of what in fact the exercise is.

The next stage is understanding what the exercise is.

As in the case of a study, when the pupil, though closely observing the exercise, does not understand it, — that is, knows too little to interpret or comprehend it, — then the subject is beyond him. This, then, is the stage for rejection of the exercise, just as it would be in the case of a topic in a study. Something else that is easier should be taught instead; usually, it should be chosen as adapted for teaching in preparation for the exercise or study that has proven on trial too hard. 1

One may understand an exercise without being able to explain it in words. One usually does understand an exercise when one feels ready or at least willing to undertake it. Occasionally, a pupil of undue motoractivity is, therefore, unduly confident and undertakes what he cannot perform.

1 See pages 224-228, on the locus of a study or of a topic.

The third stage in learning an exercise is remembering in proper order the steps involved in its process and how to take these steps, which is part of understanding it.

The fourth stage is trying to do it. Then one keeps on trying again and again until one succeeds. Actually to succeed is the fifth stage.

In the case of an exercise, the steps in these two stages are often many. An exercise is likely to involve visible, or at least demonstrable, physical activity. To illustrate: — The learner is trying to learn how to paint a sunset landscape in water-color. He sees his teacher make such a picture, — sees the water, the colors, the brush, the paper, the moving hand, the beginning of the picture, its development stroke by stroke; at last, the sunset is there before him. He thinks this all out and comes to understand what was done and how it was done. The teacher has paused and stopped. He remembers what she has done. He wishes to try to do it himself. This is the imitation phase of the process of learning. We can and should imitate in respect to learning and exercise; but we cannot imitate in respect to study.

We may appear to study, though not studying; but we cannot appear to exercise without exercising.

This is one of several good reasons for putting many exercises in our school-courses. They defeat every attempt at deceit and prevent the development of insincerity and hypocrisy. A boy may claim to know either a history lesson or an arithmetic rule, without being able to put it into words. His teacher cannot well prove that he does not know the history topic

at least in the sense of understanding it; but by giving to him a problem that involves the arithmetic rule, the teacher can easily show even to the pupil himself whether or not he understands it.

This may be made plainer by illustration from such a manual art as carpentry. A pupil may profess to know how to make a true joint: he may even be able to tell how to make one. But until he has made one, proof of his knowledge is wanting. To make a true joint, — as for a picture frame, — involves knowing tools and their uses, wood and its use, and the principles of lines and angles; and it also involves the power to direct and to control the bones and muscles of the body, to make arm and hand execute the designs of the mind. The directing and controlling of the body is a dual process in which both mind and body act, — the mind acting in unknown ways through the nerves causes movements in the muscles that control sinew, tendon, bone, and joint. Technically, the dual process is styled " psychophysical" or " physiopsychical." When the act is conceived as initiated by the mind and proceeding into the body, the term " psychophysical" — mind-to-body — is appropriate. When the act is conceived as due to bodily impulses arousing the mind, the term " physiopsy ducal" — body-to-mind — is appropriate. The subject in its farther development, however, belongs rather in the field of psychology than in the present field of instruction and management.

When the pupil has passed the stage of successful coordination of mind and body so that he can perform the exercise, before he knows it in the full sense of knowing, he must repeat it again and again until performance becomes facile, steady, reliable, and at last

apparently unconscious or automatic. The body now

n functions in respect to the idea of the exercise. In learning an exercise, drill is yet more important than in the case of learning a topic in a study. When drill has accomplished its perfect work so that the pupil always does the exercise well, he has reached the stage of genuine skill; and the goal has been attained. In this stage, the exercise is a habit, by which the person is controlled.

Whether the matter in hand be a topic in a study or an exercise in a craft or art, the stages are these— viz., observing, perceiving, understanding, remembering, trying to do, succeeding, doing again, repeating, and drill. To travel this road under competent direction is to learn at school: to travel it without competent direction is to learn-by-oneself, which is usually too difficult to permit one to succeed.

But in travelling this road, — that is, in learning, — not all persons encounter the same difficulties in themselves. On the contrary, each person has his own characteristic difficulties in learning. In principle, the learning process is always the same; but in the concrete instances of the individuals who learn, the process takes on individual phases.

It requires but ordinary observation of men and women, of boys and girls, to see that some persons learn certain kinds of things easily while others learn them with difficulty. It requires but a little keener and closer observation to discover that, in many instances, those who learn some things easily can scarcely learn other things at all. Shrewd general students of human nature refuse to allow their fellows to be classified as "dull," "average," "bright"; or as "slow,"

"average," " quick"; or as "strong," "average,"

"weak"; or as "clever," "average," "stupid." They know that "dullness" in one line is not incompatible with "brightness" in another: that the man who is stupid in respect to books is often clever with tools. Those with scientific minds see that there are certain differences of the types of temperament that affect vitally the efficiency of individuals, their morals, their intelligence, their powers to learn various things.

There are indeed two distinct kinds of humanity, — the motor or active and the sedentary or sessile. Each of these two kinds has subdivisions. We have the muscular motor and the nervous motor; and we have the corpulent sedentary and the reflective or speculative sedentary. We find these types represented in their purity in some individuals and in various combinations in other individuals. We may easily push our distinctions to the point of uselessness; even to that of absurdity. But for the practical purposes of education, we know that the learning process of a bright, active, nervous boy does not manifest itself in him in the same way when he is learning a geography or a Latin lesson as it does when he is learning to draw on paper the perspective of a box or to make the box out of wood. We know also the learning process of a slow, indolent, calm boy manifests itself both in study and in exercise differently from the learning process of the other kind of boy. We know that in the school period prior to fifteen or sixteen years of age these differences of temperament make greater differences for the teacher than any differences of sex, or of race, or of language, or of religion among the pupils. Later, the social environment and sex and race-heredity increase in relative importance; but no other difference ever transcends in importance the congenital difference in temperament.

The matter can be clearly seen in the examination of the whole educational process of which the learning process is but a part, though an essential part ; because serving as its means. The stages of the educational process are four — viz.:

Motivation, intelligence, efficiency, morality.

Obviously, for the boy who is born with physical strength and energy, it is comparatively easy to acquire a proper development of motivation and of efficiency. Similarly, for the boy who is born with a reflective sedentary temperament, it is comparatively easy to acquire a proper development of intelligence. Also, for the boy born with an easy, joyous, comfortable, complacent temperament, morality (which is largely sympathy) is not hard to learn. The nervous or ideo-motor boy, who naturally jumps to do things, has already come a considerable way up the educational road, or rather he can travel it quickly to the point of efficiency. But in each instance, the converse is also true. The boy with the motor temperament, whether muscular or nervous, finds that complete and continued inhibition hard in which are developed the power and the disposition to consider a matter through to its limits. He would rather act than think. This same boy who, once having learned the habit of thinking, has then proceeded rapidly through the efficiency stage comes to trouble again in the field of morality, for he is too aggressive to concede freely the rights of others. The complacent, corpulent, cheerful boy is weak in motivation and must be stimulated right through the educational period beyond the stage of efficiency; yet when efficient, he needs but little training in morals, for he is apt to have much consideration for others. The reflective sedentary boy is weak in physical motivation, readily becomes intelligent through information, seldom has been brought to real efficiency, and is not likely to care enough for others and for human society as a whole ever to be wholly and broadly moral.

These observations acquire patent acceptability when we consider that, of the muscular motor, we make executives, warriors, farmers, mechanics, rulers, and all kinds of men of achievement. Of the nervous motor, we make teachers, artists, clerks, tradesmen, secretaries, editors, lawyers, preachers, doctors. Of the corpulent vital type, we make hotel-keepers, politicians, judges, cooks, and all the range of the friends of men. And of the speculative thoughtful persons, we make poets, philosophers, authors, statesmen, inventors, social reformers, impatient with things as they are. Or to put the truth exactly, the square-headed and square-faced men with the thick, muscular bodies naturally become generals, rulers, mechanics, farmers and all other kinds of hard physical workers. The steam locomotive engineer is always of this type. The long-headed, rectangular-faced men naturally become masters of the professions, active tradesmen, artists. The popular orator in the legislature is usually of this type. The round-headed, round-bodied, round-faced man who is disposed to sit and think and likewise to feel for himself and his fellows becomes, perforce of his constitution, the judge of affairs, the provider of good things to eat, the "boss" of his ward or town or State. The large - headed, triangular - faced, smallbodied man dreams of some kind of empire — of the reason perhaps, but sometimes of the world of realities.

In the light of these facts of the fundamental constitutions of men, it is plain that they must differ greatly from one another when they set out of themselves, or are set by others, to learning one thing and another in school or in the rest of the world of life. One rushes eagerly into the task to be learned, but soon wearies, while another begins sluggishly and develops strength and speed as he goes forward. Such are their birth fates.

Other considerations besides these attend the inquiry into the nature of the learning processes. The name of a study conveys but little information as to the mode to be followed in learning it. History taught by one method and by one set of devices is one thing, while history covering the same facts but taught by another method with another set of devices is almost an entirely different thing. In each case, the pupil who successfully learns his lessons learns history, but in many aspects his learning process varies as the method varies. In truth, he must go through the same stages whatever be the method, but the delays at the stages vary the character of the learning. One who should go from Boston to Los Angeles pausing one day in New York, two days in Chicago, three days in Kansas City, four days in Denver and five days in San Francisco would have a very different report to make from that of another who should pause a week at New York, a day at Chicago, another week at Kansas City, not at all at Denver and a day only at San Francisco. Yet each would arrive at Los Angeles with some knowledge of the route. In the same way, learning verbatim a good account of the battle of Gettysburg is quite a different thing from learning it dramatically in a lesson in which Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge are represented by rows of furniture and the charge of Pickett's men acted out by the learners themselves. In the first case, one learns the story and how to tell it in words. In the second instance, he feels the emotions of that great event. The difference is that between literary accomplishment and dramatic or practical efficiency. It is narrative, even picturing, in words over against realization.