high school building should be concentrated the intellectual life of young people during the formal learning period. Here the environment can be made conducive to studying. The tools of studying are easily assembled. The most logical individual to do the work is here present, for the teacher's task should be largely to prevent the pupil from forming bad habits of study and to help him to form correct habits of intellectual work. Arguments in behalf of supervised study are more justified when one considers the results of this new method. In Chapter XVII some of these benefits are noted in detail, but, to anticipate, it has been found by many superintendents that retardation and elimination have been greatly reduced by this means. Greater enthusiasm and initiative are noticeable. The effect on the teachers is likewise wholesome, for supervised study involves a reduction of the "telling" method. The teacher is not expected to ask as many questions as now seem necessary in all too many schools. 3. The Modern Emphasis on Individual Differences. To the student of the history of education the modern tendency to treat scientifically the problem of individual differences is especially interesting. For centuries individual instruction was the common method of class management. Each pupil was called to the teacher's desk for the purpose of reciting usually an exhibition of memory efficiency. The noteworthy efforts of Lancaster and Bell to improve this wasteful method had wholesome results. Groups containing usually ten pupils were given in charge of a superior pupil titled "monitor." Several of these groups would recite at the same time to their respective monitorial instructors. Ample provision was made for individual capacities by allowing pupils to recite in each subject with the group to which his progress most logically fitted him. In arithmetic, for example, he might be a member of a very advanced group, and in spelling find his place in a slower group. The recognition of individual differences has recently received more careful observation and organization. Thorndike, Ayres, Courtis, and others have performed various kinds of experiments and have devised methods of exact measurements, so that what has commonly been accepted as true namely, that pupils in a class cannot all progress at the same rate is now scientifically demonstrated and by different methods provided for. These methods will be discussed in a later chapter. Class instruction, having proved an immense time-saver over the centuries-old individual instruction, is inadequate and unjust to the differing capacities of school children. Some pupils easily adopt effective methods of study and achieve quick results. Others work less effectively and more inaccurately. The former deserve greater opportunities for original and advanced work. The latter require and should have instruction in how to study. Although, in the main, mental processes are alike in all individuals, differing qualities and amounts of instruction and learning tend to produce marked differences among pupils in their ability to grasp new material. Vicious habits of study, easily acquired in earlier grades, persist and become increasingly stubborn as the pupil goes from grade to grade. He adopts the easy method of memorizing. Independent thinking has never been taught him he believes that this is the ability of only a favored few. Consequently, when he finds in high school that memorizing is not a successful method and has no substitute, his progress is retarded, and he loses interest and courage. The trouble began early in his school career. It could have been corrected or prevented in the lower grades, as Lida B. Earhart, Ph.D., has shown, but in mass organization the individual was submerged. "The survival of the fit" controlled promotions — the weak had to fall by the wayside. Supervised study in the high school is a definite and scientific attempt to correct these long prevalent evils. It comes late, but better so than never coming at all when the intellectual and social advantages of pupils are at stake. The supervision of study makes possible the advance of each pupil according to his individual capacities. There is an equal chance for every one-equal in the sense that standards are individual, not class - so that whenever each pupil masters his difficulties, however large or small the percentage of quality may be, he may advance. SUMMARY These considerations, then, are some of the more evident social and educational conditions that have stimulated educators to revise methods of class management. The family is no longer the close unit of former days. Its members are more independent of one another, and this independence becomes evident early. The rich program of the schools renders it quite impossible for members of the family, even if so disposed, to help the pupil accurately with home study. Individual differences are being more adequately recognized. Schemes of class promotions are now felt to be unfair to pupils often retarded for perfectly legitimate reasons. Opportunities must be provided for every pupil to advance according to his capacity. This need, with fairness to the standards of the school as well as to the limitations of its pupils, is met by supervising the study habits of each pupil. CHAPTER II THE CONCEPTION OF SUPERVISED STUDY I. SUPERVISED STUDY A NEW TERM THE current movement of uniform terminology in high school administration, stimulated and developed in the main by Dr. Charles Hughes Johnston of the University of Illinois, is one of the fortunate outcomes of scientific thinking on the problems of secondary education. The list of terms on which there should be general agreement is comparatively long and comprehensive. Each term, such as "program of studies," "curriculum," " course, "unit of instruction," "pupil," "credit," etc., reflects careful and coöperative thinking. The many intricate problems of the high school are here dealt with in a clear and intelligible form. Many high school problems would appear less complex and hopeless if schoolmen employed a language whose various terms indicated a clear-cut distinction of purpose, function, and method. super It is interesting to find, however, that the term vised study" is not included in the list. At first this might seem a serious oversight, but in reality it is a silent confession of the fact that no one engaged in high school work or concerned with the problems of secondary education has been able to define the term. It is new. One does not find it in educational literature of five years ago. Only within the last two years has its usage become fairly well organized. It is still, however, unknown to many teachers, and there is no general understanding of its technical signification. II. MISCONCEPTIONS OF SUPERVISED STUDY This condition doubtless accounts for some of the indifference, and even antagonism, displayed toward what is supposed to be its method. One hears it frequently said by high school teachers that the pupil must rely on himself. Grappling with a problem until eventually he solves it, gives the pupil confidence and ambition. "It makes him think." It happens only too frequently that travelers in a new country lose their way. They may know many things about traveling. By tedious, arduous, discouraging, and perhaps injurious attempts they eventually may find familiar paths and havens. Doubtless they did considerable thinking, and their satisfaction upon at last finding the right way was, of course, a natural state of feeling. But would it not have been better never to have missed the path? If the pupil's power to think depends on tedious, prolonged, and all too frequently unsuccessful effort, then it is small wonder that so few high school pupils think --- nay, more it is the possible explanation of the dearth of thinking among the masses. The doctrine of difficulty has its martyr-host as numerous and pathetic as the victims of untested opinion and ideas in religion and government. The learning process is difficult enough without putting a special premium on difficulties. Intense Effort must be Directed. Advocates of the strenuous life in education at times seem to ignore the fact that effort for its own sake is sheer waste. Effort is a means, not an end. The automobile stalled in a mudhole will grumble and roar с |