TEE LABORATORY METHOD 245 



have a larger change than occurred between any two elementary grades. 

 Pupils in a given subject go to the special room of the teacher for their 

 recitations, recite and receive their assignment and then go to another 

 class room for another subject, or return to their assembly room or to 

 their homes with their assigned work for the next clay. The teacher in 

 the elementary school ordinarily meets the pupils of a given grade for 

 most or all of their work, and knows them as they appear in all their 

 work. In high school each teacher is especially interested in one or a 

 few subjects and this one or few are the only ones in which the teacher 

 knows his pupils. In the elementary schools the teacher usually stands 

 as representative of one grade of pupils. In the high school the teacher 

 usually stands as representative of a subject. 



Not only does the first-year high school student encounter a new 

 content of subject matter, but usually a new kind of school day. Many 

 high schools begin work at 8 :30 or 9 :00 o'clock and close at 1 :00 or 

 1 :30 or 2 :00 o'clock. In many high schools all of the hours in school 

 are occupied in recitation or laboratory work, all individual study or 

 assignments being done away from school. 



The conditions for home study present all the possible variations, 

 but most home study must be done under discursive influences — a little 

 study, a little conversation about irrelevant matter, an intermittent 

 discontinuance for small household duties, a prolonged intermission for 

 recreation, with the half-consciousness of wrong-doing because of un- 

 finished and overhanging lessons, even interrupted sleep because of a 

 number of unfinished tasks, a final effort to secure categorically such 

 facts regarding the assignment as are essential to enable the pupil to 

 meet the teacher, a consciousness of incompleteness of preparation and 

 a hope that, if called upon at all, the call may come for the facts that 

 are in the pupil's meager store. Often the pupil's own initiative to 

 home study must be supplemented by commands or entreaties from 

 parents, and sometimes parents must do pupil's work for them, under 

 penalty of family chagrin due to impending failure of the child. In 

 most cases poor habits of study and an essentially immoral attitude 

 toward study result from purported home study, though some pupils of 

 good ability and strong individuality may do quite effective or superior 

 work through home study. The habit of dawdling, waste of time in 

 getting to work, wondering whether the work really must be done, 

 whether a lexicon, cyclopedia, or parental answer to questions may not 

 be found, leaves an entirely improper attitude toward real study. 

 Sham work, at first as a makeshift, later becomes the only kind of 

 which some individuals are capable. 



Some important experiments have been made to determine the rela- 

 tive value of directed and individual class-room study. 



It has seemed to several teachers to be worth while to see if more 



