20+7 205 Number of lessons. 207 23+6 daily daily daily daily daily daily daily daily exercises. exercises. exercises. exercises. exercises. exercises. exercises. exercises. 2445 2744-5 27+5 2346 Length of recitations. 15 min. 15 min. 15 min. 20 min. 20 min. 25 min. 30 min. 30 min. a Begins in second half year. In the fifth and sixth years the number of recitations increases to 27 per week, owing to the addition of formal grammar, and the total number of hours required for all is sixteen and one-fourth per week, or an average of three and one-fourth per day. In the seventh and eighth years the number of lessons decreases to 23, history being added, penmanship and special lessons in spelling discontinued, the time devoted to geography reduced to 3 lessons a week. But the recitation is increased to thirty minutes in length. Manual training occupies a half day, or two and one-half hours, each week. The total is nineteen hours per week, or three and threequarters per day. The foregoing tabular exhibit shows all of these particulars. IV. METHODS AND ORGANIZATION. Your committee is agreed that the time devoted to the elementary school work should not be reduced from eight years, but they have recommended, as hereinbefore stated, that in the seventh and eighth years a modified form of algebra be introduced in place of advanced arithmetic, and that in the eighth year English grammar yield place to Latin. This makes, in their opinion, à proper transition to the studies of the secondary school and is calculated to assist the pupil materially in his preparation for that work. Hitherto the change from the work of the elementary school has been too abrupt, the pupil beginning three formal studies at once, namely, algebra, physical geography, and Latin. Your committee has found it necessary to discuss the question of methods of teaching in numerous instances while considering the ques tion of educational values and programmes, because the value and time of beginning of the several branches depend so largely on the method of teaching. The following recommendations, however, remain for this part of their report: They would recommend that the specialization of teachers' work should not be attempted before the seventh or eighth year of the elementary school, and in not more than one or two studies then. In the secondary school it is expected that a teacher will teach one, or at most two, branches. In the elementary school, for at least six years, it is better, on the whole, to have each teacher instruct his pupils in all the branches that they study, for the reason that only in this way can he hold an even pressure on the requirements of work, correlating it in such a manner that no one study absorbs undue attention. In this way the pupils prepare all their lessons under the direct supervision of the same teacher, and by their recitations show what defects of methods of study there have been in the preparation. The ethical training is much more successful under this plan, because the personal influence of a teacher is much greater when he or she knows minutely the entire scope of the school work. In the case of the special teacher the responsibility is divided and the opportunities of special acquaintance with character and habits diminished. With one teacher, who supervises the study and hears all the recitations, there is a much better opportunity to cultivate the two kinds of attention. The teacher divides his pupils into two classes and hears one recite while the other class prepares for the next lesson. The pupils reciting are required to pay strict attention to the one of their number who is explaining the point assigned him by the teacher; they are to ED 94- -34 be on the alert to notice any mistakes of statement or omissions of important data; they are at the same time to pay close attention to the remarks of the teacher. This is one kind of attention which may be called associated critical attention. The pupils engaged in the preparation of the next lesson are busy, each one by himself, studying the book and mastering its facts and ideas, and comparing them one with another, and making the effort to become oblivious of their fellowpupils, the recitation going on, and the teacher. This is another kind of attention, which is not associated, but an individual effort to master for one's self without aid a prescribed task and to resist all distracting influences. These two disciplines in attention are the best formal training that the school affords. Your committee has already mentioned a species of faulty correlation wherein the attempt is made to study all branches in each, misapplying Jacotot's maxim, "All is in all" (tout est dans tout). A frequent error of this kind is the practice of making every recitation a language lesson, and interrupting the arithmetic, geography, history, literature, or whatever it may be, by calling the pupil's atten tion abruptly to something in his forms of expression, his pronunciation, or to some faulty use of English; thus turning the entire system of school work into a series of grammar exercises and weakening the power of continuous thought on the objective contents of the several branches by creating a pernicious habit of self-consciousness in the matter of verbal expression. While your committee would not venture to say that there should not be some degree of attention to the verbal expression in all lessons, it is of the opinion that it should be limited to criticism of the recitation for its want of technical accuracy. The technical words in each branch should be discussed until the pupil is familiar with their full force. The faulty English should be criticised as showing confusion of thought or memory, and should be corrected in this sense. But solecisms of speech should be silently noted by the teacher for discussion in the regular language lesson. The question of promotion of pupils has occupied from time to time very much attention. Your committee believes that in many systems of elementary schools there is injury done by too much formality in ascertaining whether the pupils of a given class have completed the work up to a given arbitrarily fixed point, and are ready to take up the next apportionment of the work. In the early days of city school systems, when the office of superintendent was first created, it was thought necessary to divide up the graded course of study into years of work, and to hold stated annual examinations to ascertain how many pupils could be promoted to the next grade or year's work. All that failed at this examination were set back at the beginning of the year's work to spend another year in reviewing it. This was to meet the convenience of the superintendent, who, it was said, could not hold exam. inations to suit the wants of individuals or particular classes. From this arrangement there naturally resulted a great deal of what is called "marking time." Pupils who had nearly completed the work of the year were placed with pupils who had been till now a year's interval below them. Discouragement and demoralization at the thought of taking up again a course of lessons learned once before caused many pupils to leave school permanently. This evil has been remedied in nearly one-half of the cities by promoting pupils whenever they have completed the work of a grade. The constant tendency of classification to become imperfect by reason of the difference in rates of advancement of the several pupils, owing to disparity in ages, degree of maturity, temperament, and health, makes frequent reclassification necessary. This is easily accomplished by promoting the few pupils who distance the majority of their classmates into the next class above, separated as it is, or ought to be, by an interval of less than half a year. The bright pupils thus promoted have to struggle to make up the ground covered in the interval between the two classes, but they are nearly always able to accomplish this, and generally will in two years' time need another promotion from class to class. The procrustean character of the old city systems has been removed by this device. There remain for mention some other evils besides bad systems of promotion due to defects of organization. The school buildings are often with superstitious care kept apart exclusively for particular grades of pupils. The central building erected for high school purposes, though only half filled, is not made to relieve the neighboring grammar school, crowded to such a degree that it can not receive the classes which ought to be promoted from the primary schools. It has happened in such cases that this superstition prevailed so far that the pupils in the primary school building were kept at work on studies already finished because they could not be transferred to the grammar school. In all good school systems the pupils take up new work when they have completed the old, and the bright pupils are transferred to higher classes when they have so far distanced their fellows that the amount of work fixed for the average ability of the class does not give them enough to do. In conclusion, your committee would state, by way of explanation, that it has been led into many digressions in illustrating the details of its recommendations in this report through its desire to make clear the grounds on which it has based its conclusions, and through the hope that such details will call out a still more thoroughgoing discussion of the educational values of branches proposed for elementary schools, and of the methods by which those branches may be successfully taught. With a view to increase the interest in this subject your committee recommends the publication of selected passages from the papers sent in by invited auxiliary committees and by volunteers, many of these containing valuable suggestions not mentioned in this report. WILLIAM T. HARRIS, Chairman, United States Commissioner of Education, Washington, District of Columbia. I dissent from the majority report of the committee in regard to the following points: ARITHMETIC. (1) As to fractions.—In teaching arithmetic there does not exist any greater difliculty in getting small children to grasp the nature of the fraction as such than in getting them to grasp the idea of the simpler whole numbers. It is true that the fractions 1, 1, 1, etc., as symbols, are a little more complex than are the single digits; but as to the real meaning, when once the fractional idea has been properly developed by the teacher and the significance of the idea apprehended by the pupil, it is as easily understood as any other simple truth. Children get the idea of half, third, or quarter of many things long before they enter school, and they will as readily learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions as they will whole numbers. In using fractions they will draw diagrams and pictures representing the processes of work as quickly and easily as they illustrate similar work with integers. It is of course assumed that the teacher knows how to teach arithmetic to children, or, rather, how to teach the children how to teach themselves. There is really no valid argument why children in the second, third, and fourth years in school should not master the fundamental operations in fractions. Not only this, they will put the more common fractions into the technique of percentage, and do this as well in the second and third grades as at any other time in their future progress. There is only one new idea involved in this operation, and that consists in giving an additional term-per cent-to the fractional symbol. When one number is a part of another it may be regarded as a fractional part, or as such a per cent of it. A great deal of percentage is thus learned by the pupils early in the course. Children are not hurt by learning. Standing still and lost motion kill. Every recitation should reach the full swing of the learner's mind, including all his acquisitions on any given topic. But if the teaching of fractions be deferred, as it usually is in most schools, the time may be materially shortened by teaching addition and subtraction of fractions together. This is simple enough if different fractions having common denominators are used at first, such as += ?, and -=? Then the next step, after sufficient drill on this case, is to take two fractions (simple) of different units of value, as += ?, and -=? Multiplication and division may be treated similarly. In decimals the pupil is really confronted by a simpler form, of fractions than the varied forms of common fractions. |