more than the pupils. Thus the little "philosophers" will seek the source of Truth. Dr. Hervey gives these Tests of Effective Teaching: “Is it objective? (Appeal to sense.) Does it lead to 'putting yourself in his place'? (Appeal to imagination.) Does it exercise the power to select essentials, call things by their right names? (Appeal to thought.) Does it broaden and deepen interest? Does it lead to clear and true conception of what to do, and quicken the impulse and the will to do it? Does it arouse ideals and social emotion?" In Testing the Results of Teaching, Professor Thorndike remarks that: "No matter how carefully one tries to follow the right principles of teaching, no matter how ingeniously one selects and adroitly one arranges stimuli, it is advisable to test the result of one's efforts to make sure that the knowledge or power or tendency expected has really been acquired. Just as the scientist, though he has made his facts as accurate and his argument as logical as he can, still remains unsatisfied until he verifies his conclusion by testing it with new facts, so the teacher, after planning and executing a piece of work as well as he can, must 'verify' his teaching by direct tests of its results and must consider uncertain any result that he cannot thus verify. The principle of effective teaching is indeed easy, but its successful, concrete application requires both a high degree of capacity for insight into the facts of child-life and thorough training. The principle is simply: To know whether anyone has a given mental state, see if he can use it; to know whether anyone will make a given response to a certain situation, put him in the situation arranged so that that response and that response alone will produce a certain result, and see if that result is produced. The test for both mental states and mental connections is appropriate action." Dr. Dewey says in his SCHOOL AND SOCIETY: "I should like at this point to refer to the recitation. We all know what it has been a place where the child shows off to the teacher and the other children the amount of information he has succeeded in assimilating from the text-book. From this other standpoint, the recitation becomes pre-eminently a social meeting place; it is to the school what the spontaneous conversation is at home, excepting that it is more organized, following definite lines. The recitation becomes the social clearing-house, where experience and ideas are exchanged and subjected to criticism, where misconceptions are corrected, and new lines of thought and inquiry are set up." QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 1. What is meant by "balancing Recitation and Instruction"? Wherein do they differ? 2. What has been the general method in Sunday School Teaching? Which part has prevailed in the past? Which one predominates in your School now? Is there an "equipoise"? 3. What changes would you see possible in your own present methods? Why? 4. What particularly good points do you note in Christ's Method? (Study Gospels.) 5. What "Educational Laws" did He make use of? 6. What several Methods of Instruction are in vogue, and to what Type of Pupil and what Age is each adapted? |