EDUCATION Should Unsheathe and Sharpen THOUGHT EDUCATION Should be as broad as man. Whatever elements are in him that should foster and demonstrate. If he be dexterous, his tuition should make it appear; if he be capable of dividing men by the trenchant sword of his thought, education should unsheathe and sharpen it; if he is one to cement society by his all-reconciling affinities, oh! hasten their action! If he is jovial, if he is mercurial, if he is great-hearted, a cunning artificer, a strong commander, a potent ally, ingenious, useful, elegant, witty, prophet, diviner-society has need of all these. RALPH WALDO EMERSON Education Should be Effectively Open to Everybody ON THE readjustment of social opportunity to the new claims of knowledge, business, and aspiration, our chief purpose should be to make a good education effectively open to everybody and that, therefore, we should welcome every kind of experiment, find place for every kind of study, test every hypothesis, grapple with every difficulty in a search for those kinds of education which, at one and the same time, awake enjoyment and demand discipline of body and mind alike. This I believe to be a time of radical venturesomeness in education, for trying all things, for being guided by the instincts of the community, for offering courses to which young people are drawn, not by their easiness but by reason of their inherent interest and of the enjoyment which they give to those who strenuously endeavor to excel. In other words, at this juncture, I for one would lay stress not on the selective function of secondary education but on its assimilative power. SIR MICHAEL SADLER. except July Issued Monthly [x] by the Department of the Interior Office of Education Washington, D. C. For sale by the SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS, Washington, D. C. See page 2 of cover for prices CONTENTS Teaching Technique and Size of Class. William A. Wetzel . County Library Service of the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Jackson E. Towne Two International Expositions in Belgium. James F. Abel. Meeting of the International Congress of Mental Hygiene. James Frederick Rogers, M. D. English Educator Visits Office of Education Education Exhibit Wins Gold Medal. John O. Malott Tenth Annual Conference of the Progressive Education Association. Mary Dabney Davis Page 181 183 186 188 189 190 190 190 191 192 193 195 197 197 197 198 198 199 199 200 Page 3 of cover Page 4 of cover How Home Economics Improves Home Life. Robert N. Chenault New American Library Recently Inaugurated in France. John Q. Wood Walter J. Greenleaf Kansas State Teachers College Students Survey High-School Libraries. Edith A. Lathrop Brief Items of Educational News. Barbara E. Lambdin CHOOL LIFE is intended to be useful to all persons whose interest is in education. It is not devoted to any specialty. Its ambition is to present well-considered articles in every field of education which will be not only indispensable to those who work in that field but helpful to all others as well. Articles of high character on secondary education have been printed under the auspices of the National Committee on Research in Secondary Education, of which Dr. J. B. Edmonson is chairman and Carl A. Jessen is secretary; these articles will continue. Miss Emeline S. Whitcomb, specialist in home economics of the Office of Education, has been instrumental in procuring many excellent papers by leading specialists in her subject. Through the courteous cooperation of Mrs. S. M. N. Marrs and others, achievements of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, and progress in parent education are set forth in an important series. Similarly, the activity of Miss Edith A. Lathrop, assistant specialist in school library service, and of Mr. Carl H. Milam, secretary of the American Library Association, has produced a significant series of papers upon county libraries. The papers in these four unified series will not overshadow others of equal value. Consular reports on education in other countries constantly come to us through the State Department; frequent articles are printed on child health and school hygiene; higher education is represented in reasonable measure. In short, SCHOOL LIFE means to cover the whole field of education as well as its limited extent will permit. CHOOL LIFE is an official organ of the Department of the Interior, Office of Education. It is published monthly, except in July and August. The subscription price, 50 cents a year, should be sent to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., and not to the Office of Education. Single copies are sold at 5 cents each. For postage to countries which do not recognize the mailing frank of the United States, add 25 cents a year. Club rate: Fifty copies or more will be sent in bulk to one address at the rate of 35 cents a year each. Issued Monthly, except July and August, by the Department of the Interior, Office of Education VOL. XV WASHINGTON, D. C., JUNE, 1930 No. 10 Teaching Technique and Size of Class Report of Technique Followed with an Experimental Group of High-School Students, Over a Period of Two Years, in the Effort to Determine the Most Desirable Size of a Recitation Class, and the Part that Technique Bears to Such HE history of the con Determination By WILLIAM A. WETZEL Principal, Senior High School, Trenton, N. J. class is an illustration of the need of a more scientific attitude toward the solution of some of the problems of secondary education. In the first place, without the warrant of scientific evidence, it has been assumed that there is a norm of numbers beyond which it is not safe to go. This opinion is probably a relic of the old college preparatory high school, with its limited curriculum and a group of students made homogeneous by the merciless elimination of the "unfit." In recent years we have begun to test this opinion by classroom experiment. When we found that the experiments conducted showed as good results with classes of 30 as with classes of 25, we drew a conclusion just as illogical as the first one, namely, that size of class is immaterial. Technique Developed in the Classroom In our pedagogical literature there is little that throws light on the technique of instruction as applied to specific classroom tasks. The reason probably is that such technique can be developed only in the classroom by experienced teachers possessed of a scientific turn of mind, and in schools in which research work of this kind is encouraged. Such situations are still rare in the field of secondary educa tion. Assuming teaching skill as constant, the technique peculiar to any classroom situation is conditioned by two factors, the teachability of the group and the nature of the task. Publication of this article is sponsored by the National Committee on Research in Secondary Education, J. B. Edmonson, chairman; C. A. Jessen, secretary. 113826-30-1 cent years than the increase in the rang of mental abilities. At least one-fifth of the pupils now found in a metropolitan high school fall below the mental ability that would have been tolerated in a high school 20 years ago. If we grant that teachability varies directly as mental ability, then it follows that for the same task, size of class is conditioned by the mental ability of the group. There are as yet no scientific data to establish a formula, but it is a safe guess that what might be considered a group of normal size at one ability level could be quadrupled in numbers at another ability level. Nature of Task a Determining Factor The teaching of history furnishes an illustration of this statement. In one school which tries to adapt technique to the project at hand, the size of the history class varies from a group of 15 pupils composed of very poor readers, paying little attention to the study of a textbook but busy with the study of pictures and the making of drawings, to a group of 80 pupils, good readers, working in a history library with a task of assigned readings. The second factor which helps to determine technique is the nature of the task itself. Here again the troubles of the modern secondary school have increased tremendously. There is no longer the uniform task of mastering a definite block of knowledge. Attitudes, appreciations, habits, and a wide range of skills have a definite place in the scheme of instruction, and to the list of classrooms are added shops, laboratories, demonstration rooms, art rooms, band rooms, and chorus rooms. It would be difficult to show that a group working in a physics laboratory would be of the proper size for band practice, or that the class assembled for an illustrated lecture on Roman architecture should not exceed in numbers the class assembled to read Cicero's Orations. Two things have helped recently to bring to the foreground the size of the teaching group. In the first place, the modern tendency toward a more definite organization of teaching materials, with more clearly defined objectives and standards of attainment, and with greatly improved methods of measuring outcomes by means of the objective test, makes possible a more careful equating of results obtained under different conditions. In the second place, the greatly increased cost of instruction in secondary schools forces the issue of economy. When the per capita cost of high-school instruction averages $200 and over, highschool principals may well be expected to utilize the teaching force of the school to its utmost efficient capacity. Teaching Technique in a Special Subject The purpose of this article is to report the results of teaching technique as applied to a specific subject. The subject is intermediate algebra, in which the aim is chiefly to develop abilities to perform certain definite mathematical processes. These abilities can be definitely listed, and practice material can be set to determine whether any pupil has the desired power in a given case. In other words, the subject has the advantage of definiteness. Another peculiarity of the subject is that the technique must provide much opportunity for individual activity. In this subject pupils learn to do preeminently by doing. |