THE LABORATORY METHOD 251 



room study. The ordinary assignment of home work and class-room 

 recitation method tends to reduce all the class to a base level. Class- 

 room study enables the teacher better to teach both weak and strong 

 pupil, to his highest efficiency. The ordinary class recitation method 

 — a sort of vermiform appendix on our educational system — often con- 

 sists either in allowing the best students to do the work or in having 

 them sit idly by, developing habits of low tension while the teacher 

 attempts to pull up the weaker ones to a fair understanding of the 

 point at hand. It requires a higher order of ability to teach genius 

 than mediocrity, and our present class-room methods often ignore 

 genius, through an illy balanced sense of duty to the mediocre, or may 

 neglect the majority in the interests of the few brighter pupils. Well- 

 balanced study should enable the teacher to stimulate all to a high 

 degree of effort. 



Class-room study means a longer school day and more teaching 

 force or longer hours for the present teaching force. The school day 

 should be longer. Germany has approximately thirty school hours per 

 week to our approximate twenty hours per week in secondary schools. 



Almost all high-school work should be done at school in school hours 

 under guidance of teachers. Less assigned home work will mean less 

 carrying of responsibility for school duties during the hours at home 

 when often such responsibilities can not be met and under conditions 

 which often foster ineffective habits of study. There will always re- 

 main plenty of good home work; good reading, some assignment, upon 

 work in line with school work; but our pupils should no more carry 

 home with them the larger burden of their school work than a good 

 business man should take home with him his major business duties. 



The longer school day is not to be feared, but welcomed, if by means 

 of it adequate time for proper study is secured. We have cheapened 

 our schools by shortening them. Even longer hours for teachers, the 

 time being given to more prolonged and more effective teaching in a 

 reduced number of classes, is not undesirable, if by means of these 

 longer hours more effective teaching and less wreckage through failure 

 in high school may be secured. 



