Haggerty: Studies in Arithmetic 



87 



A second question, and a very important one is, who were 

 benefited by the drill? Was everyone? Courtis tells us that 

 ''Under existing methods of uniform training for all members of 

 a class, the children whose natural aptitudes are in accord with 

 the particular form of practice used, profit quickly and largely 

 by the practice. Appropriate tests show that the number of such 

 children does not exceed one-third of the membership of the 

 average class and is usually much less. All the other children, 

 however, either fail to profit by the practice or are positively 

 injured by it. 



And again, ''Recent studies yield some idea of the degree of 

 success possible under average classroom conditions. One-third 

 of children will respond readily to any systematic training: a 

 second third may be easily reached by the teacher able to diagnose 

 individual needs and ingenious enough to adjust the work accord- 

 ingly. The remaining third represent those heavily handicapped 

 by nature. "2 



Let us see how far our results bear out the conclusions of Mr. 

 Courtis (Table VII). If one-third of the pupils will respond readily 

 to any systematic training, and a second third may be reached 

 by the expert teacher, then we should have effected a desirable 

 change in somewhat less than two-thirds of our pupils. Altho 

 no one of the arithmetic teachers claimed to be an expert, two 

 of them did try to discover causes of individual failures in their 

 classes and to suggest to pupils devices for improvement. Always, 

 the teacher's effort was to convince a pupil that he could remedy 

 his own defects if he really wished to do so. Table VII shows that 

 66 per cent of the 423 gained in dependability with an average 

 gain of 27 per cent. Thirty per cent lost in dependability with 

 an average loss of 19 per cent, and 4 per cent made no change. 

 Of the 15 pupils who made up this 4 per cent, 5 pupils had 100 

 per cent on both tests. Three were 80 per cent or above, 1 was 



0 per cent, 1 was 14 per cent, 1 was 33 per cent, 2 were 50 per cent, 



1 was 67 per cent, and 1 was 70 per cent. In number of examples 

 right 70 per cent made a gain with an average of 3.6 examples, 

 22J per cent lost with an average loss of 2 examples, and 7J per 

 cent made no change. 



Are the results from such a drill as this a fair means of judg- 

 ing teachers? The conditions of the drill were uniform in all 

 grades and with all the teachers. Teacher A had 132 pupils in 



2S. A. Courtis. — Teachers' Manual for Standard Practice Tests, p. 4. 



