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accomplishing.

as the

The teachers are beginning to assume, measure of the effectiveness of their work, the progress that each child makes, that is, how far he goes from where he is. The question is not so much as to where he is but as to how far he goes from there. We find that our assignments are constantly improving.

The biggest problem confronting us is that of preserving the value that comes from pupils working together. The fact that our pupils often work in small groups when they have a common interest in a particular part of an assignment, together with the carrying on of projects in the class conference periods, obviates any danger of their becoming too individual in their attitude. Such subjects as history and civics offer excellent opportunity for project work and we use them in that way more largely than a subject like algebra. How to let pupils have a part in initiating the purposes that form the basis of assignments or lead them to accept them as their own, is another difficult problem that we face before our assignments are as they should be.

Thus the problem that confronts us with the use of the individual method, not only in our high schools but in our elementary grades as well, is how to prevent the method making our work more formal. We hope to make some progress in adapting the subject matter to the child and in participation of the child in the choice of the material that enters into the assignment. It is surprising, however, to learn that there is an immense, untapped source of motivation in the acquiring of facts, knowledge and skills if the task is clearly, definitely and concisely set before the child in terms that he is able to understand and within the reaches of his ability to master. A great deal of our necessity for motivation of our school work has come about from the procedure by which we expected the child to learn. We have been doing too much for the child and not expecting enough of him. It is surprising how quickly he demonstrates that he is eager and willing to accept responsibility if he is asked to assume it. From the kindergarten through college boys and girls have been told instead of being allowed to do for themselves. the individual method contributes to the development of men and women that are able to "stand on their own feet," it will have done much in a democracy where every individual must think for himself.

If

DISCUSSION

OTIS W. CALDWELL, PRINCIPAL, LINCOLN SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY

It requires no proof to substantiate a real axiom. Pupils who have large gifts in capacity to learn rapidly can learn more rapidly than pupils who have small learning capacity. Just how much more rapidly gifted pupils may learn is being determined in several groups of pupils. Undoubtedly schools have lost to society some of its best brains by failure to keep rapid learners learning rapidly. A monorail car, a gyroscope or an airplane has stability as a working instrument only when it is in rather rapid motion. And modern educational technic is enabling us to determine whether we are trying to gain our educational speed striking monorail cars and airplanes or with prosaic but essential breaking plows and log wagons. I believe that few persons will argue against the proposition that we should differentiate rapid from slow pupils and keep them all properly occupied by gauging what they do to their capacity to do.

years

But the task is not so simple as that. To have a boy cover 3 of reading or arithmetic in 2 years may be of but small advantage and may involve disadvantages which nullify the gain in speed. As subjects of study are now organized, arithmetic for a twelve-year-old boy involves social, commercial and industrial situations 2 years older than those appropriate for an eight-year-old boy. We do not need twelve-year-old arithmetic for an accelerated eight-year-old boy. We need the intellectual exactions of twelve-year arithmetic in terms of the social, commercial and industrial situations which an eightyear-old boy can properly sense. The eight-year-old boy is usually biologically, physiologically and socially an eight-year-old. He may be classed with other gifted boys. This reclassification does not change their biological or social ages. To cause them to move more rapidly in subjects of study which are organized for pupils of older biological ages may gain intellectual occupation for a time at the expense of social growth and adjustment. We need but cite the terrible social misfits and individual tragedies of gifted people who moved rapidly in mere intellectual acquirements, but who then passed out of their proper biological and social groups without really passing into other such groups. Their gifts were the occasion of their becoming social failures. The really big problem to be attacked by those who would segregate gifted pupils is to reorganize subjects of study so that more intellectual exactions in both quantity and quality may be made by use of material and situations which are commensurate with the pupils' biological and social ages. Very little has

been done on this task, and until it is done, too much or too highly refined segregation seems quite questionable.

A good many years ago in the San Francisco Normal School, Frederick Burk developed his scheme for casting subject matter into small allotments, so organized and so assigned that each pupil might be constantly engaged upon clean-cut tasks. Mr Burk had the subjects of study so organized that the teacher could readily assign tasks or lesson units to each pupil. Each pupil might arrange his own assignment. Also, the teacher might readily and easily check on the pupil's accomplishment. He might determine both whether the pupil had completed the task and whether the pupil might himself determine whether he had completed the task. By this plan, carried painstakingly into arithmetic, spelling, penmanship, geography, history etc., the pupils in this San Francisco school were able to work individually and to progress in attainment of subject matter, each according to his own rate.

The persons chiefly responsible for the development of the Winnetka Plan and the Dalton Plan were students in the San Francisco Normal School, and based their own later-developed plans upon the work of the San Francisco institution. The outstanding common. element is these two plans seems to consist of their efforts to discontinue the class recitation as that is usually understood. The Dalton Plan focuses attention upon the development and use of appropriate units of work, and upon the technic of handling them by individual pupil responsibility. The Dalton Plan accepts subject matter essentially as presented in the best textbooks. The Winnetka Plan adopts the scheme of separately assigned units with individual responsibility for learning them, but focuses its attention equally upon discovery and organization of more stimulating and more useful types of subject content. Each plan has many ingenious and effective devices for securing an improved speed and possibly improved accuracy in attainment. In the hands of teachers who have had superior training, with clean-cut individual assignments, well-supervised study, and with constant effort to place responsibility upon each pupil, these plans both seem to produce commendable results as far as these results are as yet available for study. It must be said that from the point of view of established records both plans are yet in the experimental stage.

Questions which will continue to arise until answered more convincingly than has yet been done are:

Is there not a danger that this plan for fragmenting and ticketing subject matter in small individual units will lead us to formal and

finished notions of thought units, thus producing new types of rigidity more binding than those from which we would free the pupils?

Must

Is subject matter for current social effective living capable of being set in lessons or units which can be adequately sensed without the constant suggestive thought and group experience of others of the pupils' own age and stage of life? Can the pupil be adequately educated by himself, his assignments and his skilful teacher? he not have his classmates' discussions so that he may really sense the meaning of what he learns? Do not cooperative class discussions with their unsolved queries give a more true appreciation of the progressive nature of truth? Should not pupils gain the often disquieting knowledge that many very important considerations are still on insecure foundations, and that such topics can not be presented as satisfying and finished tasks? Do the plans, therefore, provide enough group work to insure not only the needed social setting but needed intellectual cooperation?

How shall we meet the fact that many teachers find recitation teaching easy as compared with individual teaching? That their day is long and size of classes such that they can not possibly apply an individual method to all? Forty-five to fifty pupils and sometimes more, in periods of 30 to 45 minutes, and sometimes shorter, and five to six such classes a day, presents a situation which almost or quite sterilizes any scheme for improved individual education. It is certainly harder to teach by an individual method, or to teach new types of subject matter than to do conventional things in conventional ways; but it is immensely more worth while for all concerned.

Other queries arise regarding statements made in one of the papers, statements which may be misleading when separated from full contextual setting. For example, "the students pass from one laboratory (classroom) to another at will"; "a student may work all day in one subject if so inclined"; "in no case is a student told absolutely what he must do unless he has gone far astray in his planning." We must ask about the loss of time and opportunity through a possible excessive freedom of guidance and decision by persons too young and too inexperienced to carry so large a responsibility.

Much has been said during the past 15 years concerning those experiments designed to produce a kind of introductory high school science course which shall be worth while for those young Americans so many of whom now take a more or less successful try at the first high school year. It would hardly be possible to find in educational literature a more pleasing statement of the philosophy of this course

than that presented by Doctor Slosson. It will help teachers of all subjects if they will read Doctor Slosson's paper.

This philosophic paper did not, and was not expected or desired to undertake to tell teachers what to teach and how to teach it, in order that this true philosophy of science might thus become more commonly the possession of those who study general science.

Classroom teachers reasonably well trained in science have for more than 15 years been patiently endeavoring to develop types of organization and teaching practices from which may come such an insight into natural phenomena. It is man's efforts to understand and control Nature which has led to his appreciation and knowledge of Nature's principles.

It must be said that what Doctor Slosson advocates, as far as high schools are concerned, has been in operation in very many American high schools for a decade or more. That part of his discussion which pertains to college synthetic courses in science is in operation in a few colleges, but gives promise of rapid growth. Indeed, much of Doctor Slosson's paper seems appropriate for the college situation rather than the high school since in most part the country high schools are already doing things for which he pleads.

No high school subject other than introductory science has had experimentation directed to it during the past 15 years. In an age when scientific results and methods of thinking are constantly talked about, it became clear that young people were not receiving the kind of science education which gave them full possession of these results and ways of thinking. The difficulty could not be in lack of worth while materials for the course, for all people each day have their lives conditioned by modern science. The difficulty could not be in lack of pupil interest, for experience constantly showed that young people possess great curiosity and incisive inquiry regarding natural phenomena. The difficulty could not be in lack of apparatus for teaching science, for it had been found that pupils learn science most engagingly when using the common materials of home, community and industry.

It

A new alignment of science topics was therefore organized with each separate science contributing as it could to a young pupil's appreciation, understanding and social use of the topic in hand. is not possible nor desirable in this connection to outline the content of these courses. It may be judged by whether it has been found to work. The following summaries of specific studies are significant.

In fifty private high schools in Massachusetts in 1924, as studied by Pauline Watkins of Cambridge, it was found that of the fifty