x To the Teacher 



to the individual system where each child does his own 

 work at his natural rate of progress. The children can 

 carry on the work with almost no assistance from the 

 teacher, if provision is made for their doing the experi- 

 ments themselves and for their writing the answers to 

 the inference exercises. When the individual system is 

 used, the children may write the inference exercises, or 

 they may use them as a basis for study and recite only a 

 few to the teacher by way of test. In the elementary 

 department of the San Francisco State Normal School, 

 where the individual system is used, the latter method 

 is in operation. The teacher has a card for each pupil, 

 each card containing a mimeographed list of the prin- 

 ciples, with a blank after each. Whenever a pupil cor- 

 rectly explains an example, a figure i is placed in the 

 blank following that principle; when he misapplies a 

 principle, or fails to apply it, an x is placed after it. 

 When there are four successive i 's after any principle, the 

 teacher no longer includes that principle in testing that 

 child. In this way the number of inference exercises on 

 which she hears any one individual recite is greatly re- 

 duced. This plan would probably have to be altered 

 in order to adapt it to particular conditions. 



The Socratic method can be employed to great advan- 

 tage in handling difficult inferences. The children dis- 

 cuss in class the principle under which an inference comes, 

 and the teacher guides the discussion, when necessary, 

 by skillfully placed questions designed to bring the essen- 

 tial problems into relief. 1 



1 At the California State Normal School in San l-'rancisro, this course 

 in general science is usually preceded by one in "introductory science." 



