money in order to prevent repeaters rather than on the repeaters. If one estimates the drain of retards and eliminates on the school treasury and compares it with the estimated cost of increased teaching force, it is likely that the cost will be either so nearly the same or so much more wisely appropriated that the treasury will not be seriously handicapped.

An interesting statement of cost is furnished by Mr. E. A. White, Principal of the High School, Kansas City, Kansas.1

TABLE III. COMPARATIVE REPORT FOR FIRST SIX WEEKS' WORK 1913-1914

Or 25 cents per pupil class, which makes $1.25 for each pupil, each having five studies for $12. It makes a saving of $15 for six weeks and $90 for the year.

Supervised study was introduced in 1914. The high school employs fifty teachers and has an enrollment of over 1200 pupils. About thirty minutes of each period (there are five 1 Journal of Educational Administration and Supervision, April, 1915.

sixty-five-minute periods with no laboratory periods) are devoted to study directed by the teachers, except in manual work and on laboratory days in science. Every teacher teaches five periods and five classes.

V. THE MEANING OF SUPERVISED STUDY

The foregoing comments and analysis have paved the way Ior a more compact statement of the conception of supervised study adopted in this book. Supervised study is that plan of school procedure whereby each pupil is so adequately instructed and directed in the methods of studying and thinking that his daily preparation will progress under conditions most favorable to a hygienic, economical, and self-reliant career of intellectual endeavor. It seeks to prepare pupils not simply for high school graduation or courses in higher education, but to an even greater extent for successful coping with problems in a world of intense competition, where superior achievement depends on initiative, clear thinking, and confidence in one's ability to organize experience for new adjustments. What is aimed at in supervised study is an individual who is trained to attack problems, and to organize his experiences into large controlling concepts, and who, moreover, has acquired ability to initiate or to serve without merely doing what he is told to do. The world of business is choked with unthinking imitators who parrotlike repeat exactly what has been said, but who cannot be depended upon to perform a task without being given constant and minute directions.

The world at large, business, and professions, are crying for independent thinkers, men and women who see a task and who can readily work toward its successful accomplishment without being watched at every step. College needs them. Pitiful

is the ignorance of students in a library or in their attempt to make an original report. Inaccuracies, haste, confusion abound. But they were able to enter college simply because they had certain units of subject matter! The world smiles and sneers at our ludicrous formalism. The time is ripe for another class of young people. Our high schools must face the need of producing individuals who, in every phase of school life, have been taught the meaning of and have been trained in the exercise of accurate, organized, independent, and practical thinking.

CHAPTER III

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

I. THE TRANSITION FROM CLASS TO INDIVIDUAL
INSTRUCTION

SUPERVISED study rests partly on the now well-established doctrine of individual differences. Class instruction has proved ineffective in many respects because it employs arbitrary group standards suited to average or to superior pupils, but usually ill adapted to individual traits and capacities present inevitably in every class. Individual instruction was once the common method of teaching. As formerly employed, however, it was wasteful and wholly unscientific. The pupil recited at the teacher's desk, while the remainder of the class I cut up" and in various ways made it impossible to conduct an effective school. In smaller schools it of course worked better, but even here it lacked the background and efficiency that are embraced in the more modern form of individual instruction.

The disadvantages of class methods have been cited by many superintendents and teachers. These objections may be summarized in the criticism that individual pupils are at a disadvantage in large groups where, perforce, the rate of progress must be determined either by the brightest or by the slowest pupils or by the average with resulting injustice

to the whole class and to each group in particular. Obviously, the social law of retribution - the innocent must suffer with the guilty - should not mean in school work that the bright must conform to the weak or the weak to the bright. If there be any sincerity in our American creed of democracy, ample provision should be given by the state for each individual to reach his maximum in the best and quickest way. This is just to the state and fair to the taxpayer as well as to the pupil.

The difficulties of providing a class organization to meet this need of individuals are obvious. Elaborate systems have been suggested. The St. Louis, Elizabeth, Santa Barbara, Cambridge, Le Mars (Iowa), Portland (Ore.), Denver (Colo.) plans in this country, and the Charlottenburg and Mannheim plans of Germany, have sought to avoid class promotions in the elementary grades. The Pueblo (Colo.) plan and the several types of organizations discussed in the following chapters also aim to modify class teaching so as to give a more adequate amount of attention to the individual. It is at present impossible to judge the superiority of any of these types of organizations over one another. Considerable investigation must be carried on before it will be possible to define scientifically the advantages of any one above the others for high school purposes. It is interesting, however, to note that these attempts at efficient individual instruction are current; that there is a return to a type of individual instruction which at the same time preserves the advantages of class organization, for one must not ignore the social as well as the economic needs of group teaching.1

1 W. H. Holmes, School Organization and the Individual Child, Davis Press.