well-equipped school, with high-salaried, experienced teachers. Even with such favorable conditions, the children did not learn to cipher or write with sufficient skill to meet the standard requirements of daily life as determined by precise investigations.

Deterioration in handwriting without drill illustrated by an example. The amount of deterioration in a formal skill, such as handwriting, which may result when no specific drill is given in it, especially when it is much used, is illustrated by the following example.

My ten-year-old son attends The University of Chicago Elementary School mentioned above, which still retains the rich course of study in history, geography, nature study, literature, etc. which it formerly maintained, plus specific drill in the formal subjects. By the end of the third grade he wrote a fair, legible hand. He was then out of school for three winter months while we were in Florida. We taught him at home, but neglected his handwriting. After he reëntered school in the spring, the handwriting drills, for a certain reason, were omitted. Then followed the long summer vacation, during which he did much fluent writing; for example, pretending he was writing a book, he copied all of the marginal headings in Marshall's "History of France." In the fall, upon returning to school, his handwriting was so poor that when asked to read one of his compositions to the class, he could not read his own writing. It took several months of short drills in school, supplemented by practice at home, to get his handwriting back to fairly satisfactory form.

Specific drill especially needed with rich, enticing course of study. While a single example, like the above, does not prove our point, it illustrates perhaps more vividly than do the scientific measurements by Stone and Freeman the necessity of careful attention to specific drills in fundamental formal processes. This is especially true in a school that has

a rich course of study in the content subjects, a course so rich and enticing that the formal processes may suffer serious neglect and the pupils be seriously handicapped through inability to use the formal tools of arithmetic and handwriting. This neglect results from the teacher's becoming absorbed in large interesting projects with the pupils, so interesting to her that she does not care to devote her time to organizing routine drills. The teacher's lack of interest in this part of her work should not confuse us in thinking of the pupils' interest. The interest of the pupils, as we have repeatedly stated, may be just as keen in well-organized specific drills as in the richest, meaningful content work, on the one hand, or in the meaningless playing with jacks, jumping a rope, singing "Ring-around-a-Rosy," wrestling and playing Black Tom or baseball, on the other hand. Naturally, the adult teacher may not care to organize drills any more than she cares for these childish games, but she should not let her lack of interest in these matters blind her to the needs and interests of the children.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

The references with an asterisk are recommended to beginners. Easy practical chapters. * 1. BAGLEY, W. C. The Educative Process. (The Macmillan Company, 1905.) Pp. 328–331.

* 2. EARHART, LIDA B. Types of Teaching. (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915.) Chap. xii, pp. 150–176.

*3. STRAYER, G. D. The Teaching Process. (The Macmillan Company, 1911.) Pp. 41-50.

Drill in arithmetic. * 4. KLAPPER, P. The Teaching of Arithmetic. (D. Appleton and Company, 1916.) Many excellent practical pages listed under "drill" in the index.

Ready-made drill systems.-Several of the textbook publishers issue ready-made drill systems in arithmetic and other subjects. Teachers should write for information concerning these. Address Ginn and Company concerning the Thompson Minimum Essentials; Scott, Foresman, and Company, Chicago and New York, concerning the Studebaker perforated arithmetic cards; and World Book Company, Yonkers-on-the-Hudson,

New York, concerning the Courtis Practice Materials in Arithmetic. See also the following arithmetics for examples of well-organized drill materials incorporated in the textbook: CHADSEY-SMITH. Efficiency Arithmetics. (Atkinson, Mentzer, and Company, 1917.) WENTWORTHSMITH. Essentials of Arithmetic. (Ginn and Company, 1915.) Most of the systems of teaching primary reading provide ready-made drill materials.

Scientific construction of ready-made drill systems. 5. COURTIS, S. A. The extensive work of Courtis in scientifically devising and revising drill systems presents one of the most instructive introductions to the study of modern drill methods. The progress of his work may be traced by reading the following publications:

a. Elementary School Teacher, 1910-1912. Vol. XI, pp. 171, 360, 528, and Vol. XII, p. 127. Early articles on arithmetic tests.

b. Standard Rates of Reading. Fourteenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I. (School and Home Publishing Company, 1915.) Pp. 44–58.

c. Tests in Arithmetic. Fifteenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I. (School and Home Publishing Company, 1916.) Pp. 91–106.

d. Teacher's Manual for Courtis Standard Practice Exercises. (World Book Company, Yonkers-on-the-Hudson, New York, 1916.)

Transfer of skill from abstract drills to concrete practice. 6. TIDYMAN, W. F., and BROWN, HELEN A. The Extent and Meaning of the Loss in "Transfer in Spelling. Elementary School Journal, November, 1917, Vol. XVIII, pp. 210-214. Described above, p. 263. Tests of efficiency of drill. -7. FREEMAN, F. N. The Handwriting Movement. Supplementary Educational Monographs. (The University of Chicago, 1918.) Pp. 126–158. Describes the results of eight months of carefully organized drill in handwriting.

8. STONE, C. W. Arithmetical Abilities and Some Factors Determining Them. (Columbia University, 1908.) Described on page 265. 9. WALLIN, J. E. W. Spelling Efficiency. (Warwick & York.) Pp. 17-25, 41, 8o. See these pages for rapid study. Scientific evaluation of this material requires very careful study of it.

Summaries of experimental psychological studies of practice. 10. FREEMAN, F. N. How Children Learn. (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917.) Pp. 185-211. Easy reading for beginners.

II. THORNDIKE, E. L. Educational Psychology, Briefer Course. (Teachers College, 1914.) Pp. 186-282. Technical account for trained readers.

CHAPTER XI

ADAPTING CLASS INSTRUCTION TO DIFFERENCES IN CAPACITY

Main points of the chapter. 1. Monotones and sweet singers in the same family illustrate differences in the ease or difficulty Iwith which different children learn.

2. Drill exercises in arithmetic which permit each pupil to advance at his own rate illustrate adapting class teaching to the needs and capacities of different children.

3. Carefully organized supplementary assignments for bright pupils enable them to utilize their spare time profitably.

4. Individual promotions of pupils who have failed, but who can progress with individual teaching through the grades, illustrate administrative provisions for individual attention.

5. Statistical studies show that without differentiated teaching the brightest pupils may have half their time to spare while the slowest are dragged along so fast that they cannot learn.

6. Such studies show also that there are only a few such bright and slow pupils in an ordinary class.

7. Precise objective studies of the mentally deficient, of geniuses, and of twins show that inborn equipment is a very large factor in determining an individual's rate of learning.

8. There is such a variety of human talents, however, varying from the manual skill of the artisan to the scientific reasoning of a Newton or the statesmanship of a Lincoln, that practically every pupil has some talent that is worth developing to a high degree.

9. Certain capacities, such as arithmetical computation, should be developed in all pupils to a certain minimum skill desirable for social usefulness.

IO. In all cases the inborn character of varied talents calls for the most sympathetic, reasonable, differentiated treatment of pupils by the teacher.

The last of chapters on general aspects of learning. This will be our last chapter on the general aspects of learning processes. If we go back to the first of these chapters, we shall find that it emphasized the fact that a pupil learns through his own responses; hence the response that a pupil makes in any process of learning becomes the central factor for the teacher to consider. In the other chapters on learning we noted how these responses were influenced by the pupil's past experience and present frame, including, in the latter, attitudes of attention and interest. Finally, we described how certain responses in the formal subjects are made automatic through correct, interesting practice. In this connection we noted that certain standard scores in arithmetic, handwriting, etc. had been established and that pupils vary in the ease with which they reach and maintain these scores. Some children reach and maintain them with little practice, and in a well-organized drill scheme are then excused from further practice. Other children, however, have great difficulty in reaching the standard scores; they need much more individual assistance from the teacher and many more periods of practice. Such facts concerning the individual differences in the ease with which pupils learn will furnish the material for discussion in this chapter.

Example of individual differences. Great differences in capacity for learning to sing. One of the simplest examples of variations in the ease with which children learn is found in learning to sing. Some children learn to sing correctly with practically no instruction, merely through imitation, while others, even with the regular school instruction in singing, remain monotones or near-monotones. Very often when these differences in the capacity to learn to sing are mentioned to singing teachers, however, they tend to belittle the differences by affirming that "even the monotones can be taught to sing if given sufficient individual teaching." They will cite examples of certain extreme monotones who