May 20, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



763 



out, that pupils in a class are in a sort of 

 mental rap-port; they hear, see and know 

 continually what the others are doing, and 

 thus real class work is not a mere ease of 

 individuals working together and their 

 performance the summation of the work 

 of many individuals ; but there is a sort of 

 class spirit, so that in the. full sense of the 

 word one can speak of a group perform- 

 ance, which may be compared with an indi- 

 vidual performance. The pupils are mem- 

 bers of a community of workers. The 

 individual working by himself is a dif- 

 ferent person. Schmidt in his careful in- 

 vestigation testing school children in their 

 home work as compared with their school 

 work found that for most kinds of work 

 the product in the class-room was superior. 

 His results are to a considerable degree 

 evidence in corroboration of the results 

 found by Mayer. The child studying 

 school tasks at home is relatively isolated; 

 in the class he is one of a social group with 

 common aims. 



A noteworthy result of these investiga- 

 tions is the apparent immunity of chil- 

 dren to distraction from ordinary causes. 

 Schmidt found that the outside disturb- 

 ances — the noise from the street, from 

 adjoining rooms, and the like, had little 

 effect upon them. It was only interrup- 

 tions that distracted their attention, such 

 as conversation with others, that affected 

 the quality of their work. It appeared 

 even that a home task completed without 

 disturbance might be poorer than the cor- 

 responding class work, and that a home 

 task when the pupil was disturbed might 

 be better than the class work. And from 

 Mayer's study it appeared that the tend- 

 ency to distraction is diminished rather 

 than increased by class work. 



Meumann in tests of the memory of 

 pupils alone and when working together 

 found similar results. Disconnected words 



of two syllables were used, which were 

 written down, pronounced once to the 

 pupils and then written down immediately 

 by them from memory. It would naturally 

 be supposed that the children working in 

 the class-room, with all the inevitable noises 

 and disturbances, would not remember as 

 well as when tested alone. The result of 

 Meumann 's investigation, however, was 

 surprising. While in case of children 

 thirteen and fourteen years of age there 

 was no essential difference in memory for 

 the individual and the common test, the 

 difference was remarkably large in case of 

 the younger children, especially in case of 

 those eight and nine years of age. On an 

 average with the individual test the chil- 

 dren remembered considerably less than in 

 the class. The results were constant. Not 

 a child was found who remembered more 

 in the individual test than in the class test. 

 From this Meumann concludes that the 

 great number of disturbing influences to 

 which children are inevitably exposed in 

 the classroom— the noise of writing, whis- 

 pering, walking about, the occasional words 

 of the teacher, the sight of the movements 

 of the pupils, and the like, which one might 

 naturally suppose would make the results 

 inferior, have no special influence. 



Meumann asked a number of the pupils 

 in case of the individual tests whether they 

 would prefer to take such exercise in the 

 class or alone, whether they were disturbed 

 by the noise of the other pupils. To his 

 surprise 80 per cent, of the pupils gave the 

 decided answer that they would prefer to 

 do the work in the class. Some 15 per 

 cent, gave no definite answer. The others, 

 an extremely small minority, replied that 

 they were disturbed in the class-room ; and 

 in most cases these were sensitive, nervous 

 or weak children, although among them 

 were some individuals of decided talent. 

 Thus it appears that the presence of a 



