1 095
Chancellor -
Southern Branch
of the
University of California
Los Angeles
Form L I
1025
036
CLASS TEACHING
AND
MANAGEMENT
BY
WILLIAM ESTABROOK (
::hancellor
AUTHOR OF
"our schools: theik administration and supervision"
/SS4'0
ILLUSTRATED
// ^1
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
M C MX
YOUR EYES
Your eyes are worth more to you than
any book.
Your safety and your success in life depend
on your eyes; therefore take care of them.
Always hold your head up when you read.
Hold your book fourteen inches from your
face.
Be sure that the light is clear and good.
Never read in a bad light.
Never read with the sun shining directly
on the book.
Never face the light in reading.
Let the light come from behind or over
your left shoulder.
Avoid books or papers printed indistinctly
or in small type.
Rest your eyes by looking away from the
book every few moments.
Cleanse your eyes night and morning with
pure water.
These are the recommendations of the Committee on
Children's M' elf are Association of Women Principals,
Mew York, and the Advisory Board of Oculists.
Copyright, 1910, by
WiLLLAM ESTABKOOK ChANCBLLOK
Published October, 1910.
Prinltd in the United States o/ America
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TO MY FRIEND
JOHN HOWARD DICKASON
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WOOSTER
EDUCATOR
" Come ye after me, and I will make you to become
fishers of men." ā Jesi;s, Gospel of Mark, i, 17.
" In all things lives and reigns an eternal law. Education
consists in leading man, as he grows into self-consciousness,
to the free representation of the inner law of the unity of
God, man, and Nature. The representation of the in-
finite in the finite, of the eternal in the temporal, of unity
in diversity confronts us as the one aim of education.
School means the thoughtful communication of knowledge,
for definite purposes and in definite inner connection. It
is the destiny of man to become, through instruction and
training, a conscious, reasonable, self-active, and free being
in whom necessity calls forth freedom, law, self-deter-
mination, external compulsion, inner free-will, and exter-
nal hate, inner love." ā Froebel, The Education of Man.
(Abridged.) 1825.
PREFACE
THE purpose of this book is to present the principles
of class teaching in respect both to instruction and
to discipline. This treatment of the theory and prac-
tice of class instruction is intended for use in teachers'
reading circles and as a text-book in professional schools
of education. It is a development of systematic courses
of lectures summer and winter in the Universities of
Chicago and of Wooster, and in George Washington
University, and of occasional lectures at various other
universities, at several normal schools, and at many
teachers' institutes.
In an experience as superintendent of schools in four
different cities ā Bloomfield and Paterson, New Jersey;
the District of Columbia, both white and colored schools ;
and Norwalk, Connecticut, and as a visitor in fifteen
hundred schools in more than half the States of the
Union ā I have learned that while systems of organiza-
tion and of administration are many and various, pre-
senting opposite extremes and apparently every form
of compromise, the business of the class teacher is
standardized in but three forms whether for East,
West, North or South.
This book is an exposition of these standard forms
of class teaching.
W. E. C.
Town of Norwalk, Conn.
CONTENTS
AND SYLLABUS OF CHAPTERS
CHAPTER I
The Learning Processes from the Point op View op Teaching
Relations of learner and teacher. ā Studies and exercises. ā Progress
of different kinds of pupils in different kinds of subjects. ā Idea,
function, habit, character. ā Motivation, attention, interest, asso-
ciation, judgment, reasoning Page 3
CHAPTER II
The Teaching Processes prom the Point of View of Learning
Helping the learner and transmitting knowledge. ā Limitations con-
stitute the nature of art. ā The general teaching process. ā Special
teaching processes; inductive recitations; deductive lessons;
question-and-answer re\'iews; study-lessons; drills; laboratory
experiments; lectures; seminars; library - work ; translation;
tests and examinations Page 25
CHAPTER III
Department Teaching ā Grade Teaching ā District School
Teaching
Reasons for the several kinds and grades of schools. ā The lower
limits of department teaching and the upper limits of grade teach-
ing. ā The several principles of department teaching. ā The prin-
ciples of grade teaching. ā The causes of the rural school consoli-
dation movement. ā Grading the district school that has but one
teacher. ā Advantages of such a school. ā In all kinds of schools,
written work, reviews, examinations. ā Change and progress.
Page 67
CONTENTS AND SYLLABUS OF CHAPTERS
CHAPTER IV
The Teacher as Interpreter of the Course op Study
The child's world. ā Qualities requisite in the teacher. ā A philoso-
phy of life. ā Prevalence of one temperament among teachers. ā
The dominant importance of ideas. ā A philosophy of knowledge.
ā The problem of the adjustment of foreigners to Americanism. ā
The unity of mind. ā Scholarship and conduct. ā Ethical versus
materialistic \'iews and principles Page 93
CHAPTER V
The Day's Work ā Its Plan and Record
The variety of duties. ā Frictions. ā Daily preparation. ā Daily pro-
grams in a graded elementary school. ā High school programs. ā
Advance plans versus records of accomplishment. ā A new class.
Page 119
CHAPTER VI
Control of the Class and of the Individual
Re^^ew of terms used in education. ā The force-theory. ā The skill-
theory. ā School-and-home theory. ā Pupil self-government theory.
ā Manual work in relation to discipline. ā Virtue is at the point of
strain. ā Moral aims in education. ā Means to attain them. ā When
is corporal punishment necessary ? ā Seating a class so as to avoid
unnecessary conditions leading to disorder. ā Directing the move-
ments of the class. ā Fire-drills. ā The mechanics of class control.
ā Learning each pupil. ā Physical defects. ā Schools and classes
for the incorrigible, for the defective, for the laggard, for the
blind, for the deaf, for the crippled. ā Tests of feeble-mindedness.
ā The reasonable standards of conduct in children and youth. ā
The school \irtues Page 145
CHAPTER VII
Classifying, Marking, Grading and Promoting Pupils
\Vhat numbers properly constitute classes in the various schools
and grades? ā The count-system in marking. ā Four factors in
grading, ā age, home opportunities, native powers, actual attain-
ments. ā Conspectus of elementary course of study. ā Frequency
CONTENTS AND SYLLABUS OF CHAPTERS
of grading. ā Retardation. ā Machinery versus personality. ā The
"trick" of relative standards versus the justice of absolute stand-
ards so far as these are humanly possil)le. ā Why the class teachers
generally should decide promotions, ā and when they should not
do so. ā The precocious, the normal, the altricious. ā Psychical ages
versus physical. ā The locus of a study. ā Overcrowded curricu-
lums. ā Study-periods at school Page 199
CHAPTER VIII
How TO Make a Good School and a Good Class
The school as seen by a visitor. ā Active attention, absorbed atten-
tion, deliberative attention. ā Order and decorum of the pupils. ā
The use of the English language. ā Voice. ā Condition of the room
itself. ā School equipment. ā Qualifications as seen by systematic
observers. ā Aims of the good class teacher. ā The school spirit.
ā Interest of each pupil in his own welfare: self - activity. ā
The school neighborhood. ā The financial authorities. ā Public
opinion Page 235
CHAPTER IX
The Class Teacher and the Industrial Arts
The investment of one's own life. ā The extension of education. ā
Its expansion. ā Teachers of the familiar subjects. ā Preparation
for the new subjects. ā Agriculture. ā The mechanic arts. ā The
business arts. ā Domestic science. ā Domestic arts. ā Principles
controlling social action in reference to educational progress. ā
The universal school and expressive activities . . Page 259
CHAPTER X
The Teacher's Own Life in an Age of Educational Expansion
Relations with superior officers. ā Questions usually asked of can-
didates for positions. ā Progress in scholarship. ā One's library. ā
Health. ā Recreation. ā Vacations. ā Public, private, endowed, and
ecclesiastical school positions. ā Elementary, secondary, and higher
positions. ā Learning some of tlie lessons of life . . Page 285
xi
CONTENTS AND SYLLABUS OF CHAPTERS
APPENDIX
PACK
I. An Open Letter to One Who Is Just Beginning
TO Teach 299
II. An Open Letter to the Experienced Class Teacher 301
III. The Choice of Text-Books 303
IV. Outline of a Standard Minimum Course of Study
Based upon the Course in the Schools of Cin-
cinnati, Ohio 305
V. Illustrative Lesson Plans and Examination . .312
VI. Illustrative Teachers' Examinations 322
VII. Rules and Regulations for a District School . . 329
VIII. Suggested English Exercises in Correlation with
Other Subjects for Both Urban and Rural
Schools 331
Index 333
ILLUSTRATIONS
A COOKING CLASS. WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL,
NEW YORK CITY Fmuiis/.itce
AN OUT-OF-DOOR KINDERGARTEN. STATE NORMAL
SCHOOL, SAN JOS^, CALIFORNIA Fannj ,k 18
NATURE-STUDY APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC " 108
VACANT-LOT GARDENING BY PUPILS OF THE CLEVELAND
SCHOOLS " 268
"According to my experience, success in education de-
pends upon whether what is taught to children commends
itself to them as true, through being closely connected with
their own personal observation and consideration. With-
out this foundation, truth must seem to them little better
than a plaything or perhaps a burden. Man is impelled by
the nature of the powers that he possesses to use and to
train them, and thereby to develop and improve them."
ā Pestalozzi, On his Work at Stanz. 1799.
CLASS TEACHING AND
MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER I
THE LEARNING PROCESSES
FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF TEACHING
Relations of learner and teacher. ā Studies and exercises. ā Progress
of different kinds of pupils in different kinds of subjects. ā Idea, func-
tion, habit, character. ā Motivation, attention, interest, association,
judgment, reasoning.
THE child goes to school to learn. Curiosity impels
him. Or the child is sent to school to learn. His
parents or relatives or officers of the law compel him to
go. Teaching the child who goes to school of his own
desire is not the same thing as teaching one who must
be sent. Nor does the child who goes voluntarily, even
eagerly, learn at school in the same fashion as does the
child who goes unwillingly.
The purpose of the school-going of the child is to
learn knowledge and habits. What and how much he
learns depend upon many things, ā his own curiosity and
docility, his health and strength, his mental powers;
the scholarship, the industry, the skill and the char-
CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
acter of his teacher; the opportunities of the school,
its building, equipment, apparatus; the subjects taught;
the books and supphes used; his comrades.
In its simple and original sense, to "learn" means to
"go over," to "travel again." In its simple and original
sense, to "teach" is to "show" or to "tell." The teacher
shows the learner what to go over and how to go over,
while the learner, hearing what the teacher tells or see-
ing what the teacher shows, travels again the road by
which the teacher has come to knowledge.
Learning from a teacher is a wonderful economy, for
it saves learning by experiment with its constant errors
and many failures and with its few successes. Teaching
those who do not yet know has been an essential part
of the transmission of the arts of life from those who
know to the ignorant, in every period of culture and
civilization. School-teaching is but one phase of the
whole matter, though in the modern age it has come to
transcend all other phases in the general interest of
men. And schooling, which is the preparation of child-
hood and of youth in economic leisure for activities and
enterprises of life that are not open to the unschooled,
is now part of our common democratic faith and
practice.
Learning, then, is going over, ā once, twice, perhaps
many times, till one knows, and often many, many
times after one knows. Going over again and again tiU
one knows is one kind of learning; going thereafter is
another kind of learning, so different that we no longer
use this term. The first kind of learning has several
stages in it, ā seeing or hearing, understanding, remem-
bering, trying, succeeding, doing, repeating, drilling.
Suddenly, there comes the consciousness that one really
THE LEARNING PROCESSES
has learned and now knows. With this discovery, the
first kind of learning ends ā unless or until one forgets.
Seldom, however, does one really forget what one really
has learned. This "forgetting," as it is called, is getting
something else in the way, as in the confusion due to
excitement; or it is faihng to get anything at all, as in
the empty-minded weakness of fatigue or ill-health.
The only forgetting that is serious is due either to long
lapse of years or to great changes either in the cell-
structure or relations of the brain, as in childhood or
severe illness or in the associations of one's life, as re-
moval to distant scenes. Even so, often one remem-
bers, years and years later or thousands of miles away,
things that one supposes forgotten absolutely.
The forgetting of the child, when asked regarding
something that he learned or knew a few minutes or a
few days before, is due usually to his inability to sum-
mon remembrance at will because he is full of sensations
and motivations and is not yet in control of himself.
Unless due to this condition of his mental hfe because
he is a child, his forgetting is probably competent evi-
dence that in fact he had not learned and did not pre-
viously know what he professed to know, or was supposed
to know, before.
The other and higher kind of learning, the going over
of what one really does know, is using it, or functioning
in respect to its subject matter. The first kind leaves
one in a state of proficiency or skill; the second kind
leads into science or into art or into philosophy.
Learning at school has the various stages of seeing
or otherwise observing by the senses, perceiving or
understanding, remembering, trying to do, succeeding
therein, doing and repeating, and last drilling until one
5
CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
knows or has learned. It is a process through which
one can never carry another. The teacher may show;
the pupil must perform.
1/ Here, between the teacher and the learner, arises a
I relation of importance. The greater the skill of the
teacher, the larger is the number of those whom he or
she can develop by teaching, ā that is, helping to learn.
A teacher of genuine skill can develop the mediocre, even
the dull; a teacher of but little proficiency scarcely
educates the average pupils; a teacher of no qualifica-
tions actually discourages even the pupils of talent.
Good teaching, therefore, means the success of a rela-
tively large portion of the learners in a class. And good
(or true) teaching is primarily nothing else than in-
sight into these learning processes and industry in follow-
ing the suggestions of insight, for the benefit of the
learners.
When it is said that "the good teacher is born," what
is meant is that he (or she) has native insight into and
sympathy with the mental process of learning and a
desire lo help the learner forward. Whether a good
teacher can be made out of a person without such in-
sight, sympathy and desire is simply a question whether
the person can be so educated as to develop this power
of insight and these qualities of sympathy and desire.
Work at school is commonly classified into studies
and exercises. Not to try to draw distinctions too finely
here, one may say that studies are concerned with facts
and principles: they are concerned with what is often
called "knowledge." Exercises are concerned with ac-
tivities, crafts, arts. The difference may be illustrated
by citing history as a study and drawing as an exercise.
The distinction is not to be pushed too far. To write a
6
THE LEARNING PROCESSES
composition on some historical topic is to use history as
an exercise: to learn the theory of perspective in draw-
ing is to pursue drawing as a study.
In actual class-room practice, the learning process as
it is guided by the teacher in respect to a study differs
considerably from the learning process involved in an
exercise. To learn a history lesson, one reads the pas-
sage or listens to a recital of the facts ; then one thinks
about the facts, severally and collectively, trying to
understand or interpret them in the light of facts and
truths already known; next one recalls in due order
the facts of the passage : then follows an oral or written
recitation upon the topic ; and this recitation is repeated
and reviewed in analysis and in association over and
over in drill until the topic is learned. To accomplish
this process, one needs to read or to hear accurately;
eye or ear must be keen and true. The next stage in
the process is that of summoning enough knowledge to
enable one to understand the words heard or read.
We cannot teach history at all to small children be-
cause they do not yet know enough social and his-
torical facts to understand any historical topic. We
say that they do not yet know the meaning of words:
what we mean is that they have as yet no content of
knowledge for the words to designate. The other
stages of the process, ā recalling, trying to use, suc-
ceeding, doing and drilling, ā are without the technical
difficulties of this second stage of apperception or
understanding; but they are quite as necessary for
the completion of a real act of learning. When we
have only the power to remember a thing and cannot
use it, we do not yet know the thing.
This getting of our knowledge beyond the stage of
7
CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
mere i-ecall, to the point where it helps us understand
new facts and can perform, as it were, the mental di-
gestive function is a mysterious enough matter. Per-
haps it can be best understood by an illustration. Ever
since humanity began upon the earth, it has been
entirely obvious that all men are alike creatures of
one universal Nature (" children of one common Father,"
to put this truth in religious phrase); but men were
long centuries in discovering that there is a resultant
truth, ā that all are equal (that is, "brothers," in the
religious term). At last, however, this idea or fact be-
came a truth that went to work in the minds of men
and began to overthrow govermnents of privilege and
to establish democracy. It overthrew serfdom in Russia
and slavery in America. Wliere this idea will end in
its business of chgesting the old social institutions, of
course, we cannot foresee.
Perhaps another illustration will serve better. Often,
a child knows verbatim every multiplication table; and
yet cannot multiply either correctly or quickly. Often,
he knows the rules of all the arithmetical operations in-
volved in a problem; but cannot perform them properly.
In these instances, the idea, though remembered, is
still in a compartment of the mind, as it were; but it has
no power to walk up and down the hall and stairways,
opening doors and shutting them, and really to live.
The business of the teacher is to help the pupil learn
so well that he has many important "live ideas."
Ideas should not be merely "committed to memory,"
ā stored like merchandise in boxes. They should not
be like articles of furniture, however handsome and
useful in the house, ā movable at the will of the house-
keeper. But they should be like trees in the orchard,
THE LEARNING PROCESSES
fruit-bearing; like flowers in the garden, seed-scatter-
ing; like animals and birds and fishes, moving and
alive.
In respect to an exercise, the learning process em-
phasizes such different stages as to seem quite different
from what it is in the case of a study. The first stage
^consists in seeing what is done: or when this is not
possible, in proceeding step by step according to the
directions of one who has seen the thing done. In the
normal instance, however, the learner first observes
what one who knows how to do the exercise actually
does. The learner may need to watch the thing as it
is being done several, even many times, in order to
acquire a reasonably complete knowledge of what in
fact the exercise is.
The next stage is understanding what the exer-
cise is.
As in the case of a study, when the pupil, though
closely observing the exercise, does not understand it, ā
that is, knows too little to interpret or comprehend it, ā
then the subject is beyond him. This, then, is the
stage for rejection of the exercise, just as it would be
in the case of a topic in a study. Something else that
is easier should be taught instead; usually, it should
be chosen as adapted for teacliing in preparation for the
exercise or study that has proven on trial too hard.^
One may understand an exercise without being able
to explain it in words. One usually does understand
an exercise when one feels ready or at least willing to
undertake it. Occasionally, a pupil of undue motor-
activity is, therefore, unduly confident and undertakes
what he cannot perform.
. * See pages 224-228, on the locus of a study or of a topic.
CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
The third stage in learning an exercise is remember-
ing in proper order the steps involved in its process
and how to take these steps, which is part of under-
standing it.
The fourth stage is trying to do it. Then one keeps
on trying again and again until one succeeds. Actually
to succeed is the fifth stage.
In the case of an exercise, the steps in these two
stages are often many. An exercise is likely to involve
visible, or at least demonstrable, physical activity. To
illustrate: ā The learner is trying to learn how to paint a
sunset landscape in water-color. He sees his teacher
make such a picture, ā sees the water, the colors, the
brush, the paper, the moving hand, the beginning of the
picture, its development stroke by stroke; at last, the
sunset is there before Mm. He thinks this all out and
comes to understand what was done and how it was
done. The teacher has paused and stopped. He re-
members what she has done. He wishes to try to do
it himself. This is the imitation phase of the process
of learning. We can and should imitate in respect to
learning and exercise; but we cannot imitate in respect
to study.
We may appear to study, though not studying; but
we cannot appear to exercise without exercising.
This is one of several good reasons for putting many
exercises in our school-courses. They defeat every
attempt at deceit and prevent the development of in
sincerity and hypocrisy. A boy may claim to know
either a history lesson or an arithmetic rule, without
being able to put it into words. His teacher cannot
well prove that he does not know the history topic
,at least in the sense of understanding it; but by giving
10
THE LEARNING PROCESSES
to him a problem that involves the arithmetic rule,
the teacher can easily show even to the pupil himself
whether or not he understands it.
This may be made plainer by illustration from such
a manual art as carpentry. A pupil may profess to
know how to make a true joint: he may even be able
to tell how to make one. But until he has made one,
proof of his knowledge is wanting. To make a true
joint, ā as for a picture frame, ā involves knowing tools
and their uses, wood and its use, and the principles of
lines and angles; and it also involves the power to
direct and to control the bones and muscles of the
body, to make arm and hand execute the designs of
the mind. The directing and controlling of the body
is a dual process in which both mind and body act, ā
the mind acting in unknown ways through the nerves
causes movements in the muscles that control sinew,
tendon, bone, and joint. Technically, the dual process
is styled " psychophysical " or " physiopsychical." When