8o4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pupils and to sliow their skill in questioning. A good many so- 

 called experts consider the ability of the teacher to question logic- 

 ally as the measure of his value. This is a very superficial view 

 of the matter. It has resulted in positive injury to many teach- 

 ers, and greater injury to more pupils. 



Some teachers confess that they are disinclined to allow their 

 pupils to question as a practice, since the questions may be point- 

 less, illogical, and inadequate. That is precisely the kind of work 

 which the school should undertake to remedy. The pupil's ques- 

 tions reveal the condition of his mind quite as much as his an- 

 swers to the teacher's questions. His anxiety to avoid errors 

 moves him to say what he thinks the teacher desires. When he 

 questions he is thrown off his guard, and his misconceptions, and 

 feebleness or acuteness of mind are revealed inadvertently and 

 the teacher can help just when and where help is needed without 

 undue interference, which is so common in school. 



Moreover, these teachers claim that such freedom as this work 

 necessitates might lead to disorder, or what passes for disorder in 

 the opinion of those who judge the order by the degree of still- 

 ness and lack of movement prevailing. So they keep the reins 

 taut in their own hands and set up a despotism of varying degrees 

 of severity. 



Many an inexperienced teacher, who has learned this method 

 at some training school for teachers, may charge her failure in 

 maintaining order to her persistence in trying to hold a large 

 class of pupils to her questions. Her logical plans and orderly 

 questions are commonly inelastic, unsuitable, monotonous, and 

 sometimes irritating. She bends the wills of her pupils to her 

 own ; but there is too much elasticity in their mental habitudes 

 to endure the strain long. In a few days the monotony of a 

 single voice, hardly still during the day, and the vain attempt to 

 " follow my leader " in her set and searching questions result in 

 restlessness, inattention, and disorder. Her pupils can not readily 

 get used to the one-sided game. 



The aims which the average teacher finds the most difficult in 

 reaching are, to secure attention, arouse interest, induce sponta- 

 neity, elicit independent thought, give enjoyment, and prevent 

 ordinary school work from becoming or appearing a task. This 

 difficulty also may very largely be charged to the traditional 

 mode of questioning. There is seldom any enjoyment in it. 

 Herbert Spencer says : " Experience is daily showing with greater 

 clearness that there is always a method to be found productive of 

 interest — even of delight ; and it ever turns out that this is the 

 m.ethod proved by all other tests to be the right one." 



All teachers unite in extolling spontaneity in the abstract, but 

 almost universally ignore it in their teaching by reason of alleged 



