Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/249

Rh have a larger change than occurred between any two elementary grades. Pupils in a given subject go to the special room of the teacher for their recitations, recite and receive their assignment and then go to another class room for another subject, or return to their assembly room or to their homes with their assigned work for the next clay. The teacher in the elementary school ordinarily meets the pupils of a given grade for most or all of their work, and knows them as they appear in all their work. In high school each teacher is especially interested in one or a few subjects and this one or few are the only ones in which the teacher knows his pupils. In the elementary schools the teacher usually stands as representative of one grade of pupils. In the high school the teacher usually stands as representative of a subject.

Not only does the first-year high school student encounter a new content of subject matter, but usually a new kind of school day. Many high schools begin work at 8:30 or 9:00 o'clock and close at 1:00 or 1:30 or 2:00 o'clock. In many high schools all of the hours in school are occupied in recitation or laboratory work, all individual study or assignments being done away from school.

The conditions for home study present all the possible variations, but most home study must be done under discursive influences—a little study, a little conversation about irrelevant matter, an intermittent discontinuance for small household duties, a prolonged intermission for recreation, with the half-consciousness of wrong-doing because of unfinished and overhanging lessons, even interrupted sleep because of a number of unfinished tasks, a final effort to secure categorically such facts regarding the assignment as are essential to enable the pupil to meet the teacher, a consciousness of incompleteness of preparation and a hope that, if called upon at all, the call may come for the facts that are in the pupil's meager store. Often the pupil's own initiative to home study must be supplemented by commands or entreaties from parents, and sometimes parents must do pupil's work for them, under penalty of family chagrin due to impending failure of the child. In most cases poor habits of study and an essentially immoral attitude toward study result from purported home study, though some pupils of good ability and strong individuality may do quite effective or superior work through home study. The habit of dawdling, waste of time in getting to work, wondering whether the work really must be done, whether a lexicon, cyclopedia, or parental answer to questions may not be found, leaves an entirely improper attitude toward real study. Sham work, at first as a makeshift, later becomes the only kind of which some individuals are capable.

Some important experiments have been made to determine the relative value of directed and individual class-room study.

It has seemed to several teachers to be worth while to see if more