PART III CHAPTER XVII THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SUPERVISED STUDY I. MEASURED RESULTS OF SUPERVISED STUDY Unfortunately it 1. Symposium at Columbia University. is difficult to find teachers and principals who have kept adequate records of the results of this new type of class management. There are a few, however, who in various ways have indicated what they regard as worthwhile results. Some of these will now be referred to. In the summer of 1912 while teaching at the Summer School of Columbia University, Dr. Charles Hughes Johnston found opportunity to get from several high school principals reactions on this method of teaching. A composite list of these reactions from principals who had had some experiences with the method is as follows: (1) it saves time; (2) prevents waste of energy; (3) makes for definiteness; (4) allows leisure for extra school work, family life, athletics, music, art, reading, social and religious activities without neglecting school work; (5) teaches children how to use their minds; (6) gives pupils a working day the same as people generally have; (7) aids discipline by keeping the child active all the time; (8) reduces the reiteration plan of recitation to a minimum; (9) makes the classroom a live workshop; (10) inspires pupils to study because they know how; (11) provides an atmosphere of study everybody's doing it; (12) brings about a better mutual understanding between teacher and individual pupil; (13) because of better prepared lessons it relieves the teacher of the sense of failure in her teaching; (14) reduces the amount of home study in the grades and the first two years of high school. 2. Results obtained at Trenton, N.J. H. E. Webb in The Pivot, published by the Central High School of Trenton, N.J., writes of the general results of the directed study period in that school. Briefly summarized his comments are as follows: (a) Earnest, sincere students now had the chance they had long deserved and were given the first place in the teacher's attention regardless of their innate abilities. (b) Idlers showed their character very quickly and no amount of smartness could conceal it. The great majority of them, therefore, set about to change it by the simple expedient of going to work. (c) A large number of idlers went to work during the study conference because there was nothing else to do and supervised themselves by finding that they enjoyed it. (d) Teachers found the character of the other part of the period (the method in this school is the divided recitation period already referred to) changing, owing to their better acquaintance with their pupils and the fact that the general policy of the school is one of helpfulness rather than of repression. (e) Students were not slow to appreciate that with the teacher at hand to help over the hard places it was well worth while to concentrate on one study at a time and to economize the classroom hour to the utmost. 3. The Newark Results. Mr. Wiener, in his chapter in The Modern High School, by Johnston and others, cites several tables indicating the benefits of the divided period. The teacher who promoted the fewest pupils did not use super vised study at all. Those who used it only indifferently had average results, whereas the teachers who emphasized supervised study had the best promotion records. TABLE XXI. -TABLES OF TOTALS FOR ENGLISH The general tendency of tables indicating results in other subjects is the same. It will be noted that classes not having supervised study achieved 62.8 and 74.4 per cent of promotions. The enrollments here given are totals of all the classes taught by each teacher named. 4. Results in Joliet, Ill. So far as the writer knows, the most elaborate employment of supervised study is found in the high school of Joliet, Ill., where the double period is in vogue for the first two years in the high school. In the recent article in School and Home Education for February, Dr. J. Stanley Brown, the principal of this school, writes: "I have kept for the past ten semesters the percentage of failure in the various subjects taught by the various teachers. Every teacher is required to make a report at the close of the semester showing these things in every class, viz.: the number originally enrolled in the class; the number in the class at the close of the semester; the number passed at the close of the semester; the number failed with the names of each and the cause of the failure; the number dropped with cause stated for dropping. A tabulation is made of all these teachers' reports at the close of the semester and opportunity is given for comparing one semester's work with another for the past four or five years. The past semester which ended in June, 1914, showed thirty-eight different classes in which there were no failures. It showed further that the percentage of failures is gradually being reduced to a minimum. For us an average minimum will be from ten to thirteen per cent. There will be an occasional class that will run very much higher, but a very much larger number that will run very much lower." Last spring Dr. Brown gave the writer the following table which illustrates the reference made in the foregoing quotation. TABLE XXII.-TABLE OF PERCENTAGE OF FAILURES It will be noted from this table that there is a consistent decrease of failures from 1911 to 1914. The few exceptions are due to conditions that must be contended with in connection with every method; for example, the general ability of the entire class, some classes having a higher general efficiency than others. From his own observations of the method at work in the Joliet High School, the writer can bear witness to the general workableness of the scheme. All the teachers with whom the writer spoke were in hearty accord with the method. 5. Results by Mr. J. H. Minnick of Bloomington, Ind. Mr. Minnick performed an interesting experiment in super vised study with results confirming in substance those already cited.1 Selecting 60 pupils from classes beginning plane geometry, Mr. Minnick drew at random thirty-six names and divided these thirty-six pupils, giving one division supervised study and the other remaining unsupervised. The following curves show the results as explained. 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 CURVE SHOWING WEEKLY AVERAGES OF RECITATION GRADES |