44 



fended on the grounds that large classes make it necessary. How 

 would lecturing to a class of five students be defended? Discussion 

 was discouraged by the instructor's asking the pupils not to interrupt him. 

 It was not an inspiring recitation. The instructor was very serious 

 both in manner and appearance. The class was interested especially 

 during the review at the beginning of the period. 



Practices to be Discouraged 



Book open before instructor and referring to it for questions and 

 answers 



Lack of discipline 



Calling on pupil before asking question 



Preventing discussion on part of pupils by dragging them back to 

 the text or answering questions which other pupils could an- 

 swer 



Discouraging questioning on the part of pupils 



Instructors doing most of the work 



Lack of explanation by instructor of work he is doing 



Lack of correlation between laboratory and class work, and be- 

 tween different classes 



Not telling pupils what they are doing and why 



Not permitting students to go through whole process from begin- 

 ning to end 



Distracting attention of pupils by interruptions 



Lack of respect for teacher on part of pupils 



Cheating by pupils 



Indistinct speech on part of teacher and pupils 



Overmuch memory work and insufficient reasoning work by pupils 



Lecturing to small classes 



Each of these defects is illustrated in the reports on observations. 

 In nearly every case there were redeeming features. 



The illustrations show that much careful supervision is needed. The 

 pupils are of an age which demands good teaching. Interesting sub- 

 ject matter will cause the pupil to derive some value from even the 

 poorest teaching, but pupils between the ages of 1 3 and 20 are not of 

 the maturity which will give them the ability to learn more than a 

 smattering of any subject without expert assistance on the part of the 

 instructor. While the base used is not large enough to say that the 

 teaching of any one instructor is either good or bad as a whole, it is 

 possible to say that in certain of the classes visited the benefit to the pu- 

 pil was very small. The lacks shown were apparently not due to de- 

 ficient knowledge by the teacher of the subject matter to be taught, but 



