The Recitation | Page 2

time assigned him. But who will be
bold enough to assert that the psychological movement for the
development and solution of the particular problem at hand will always
be exactly thirty minutes long? It is possible, and quite probable, that
the typical movements in instruction--development, drill, examination,
practice, and review--may occur within a single class-period, following
fast upon the heels of each other as the situation may demand. It is
equally probable that in many cases any one of them may reach across
several class-periods. We need a more flexible way of thinking of the
recitation and of the teaching activities involved in class-periods and of
other administrative factors which condition the effectiveness of
teaching.
Such a clear, flexible treatment of the recitation is offered in this
volume. We feel that it will be particularly welcome to the practical
teacher since so many previous treatments of this subject have been

formal or obscure. Combining the training of a psychologist with the
experience of a class teacher, Professor Betts has given us a lucid,
helpful, and common-sense treatment of the recitation without falling
into scientific technicality or pedagogical formalism.

I
THE PURPOSES OF THE RECITATION
The teacher has two great functions in the school; one is that of
organizing and managing, the other, that of teaching.
In the first capacity he forms the school into its proper divisions or
classes, arranges the programme of daily recitations and other exercises,
provides for calling and dismissing classes, passing into and out of the
room, etc., and controls the conduct of the pupils; that is, keeps order.
The organization and management of the school is of the highest
importance, and fundamental to everything else that goes on in the
school. A large proportion of the teachers who are looked upon as
unsuccessful fail at this point. Probably at least two out of three who
lose their positions are dropped from inability to organize and manage
a school. While this is true, however, the organizing and managing of
the school is wholly secondary; it exists only that the teaching may go
on. Teaching is, after all, the primary thing. Lacking good teaching, no
amount of good management or organization can redeem the school.
1. The teacher and the recitation
Teaching goes on chiefly in what we call the recitation. This is the
teacher's point of contact with his pupils; here he meets them face to
face and mind to mind; here he succeeds or fails in his function of
teaching.
Failure in teaching is harder to measure than failure in organization and
management. It quickly becomes noised abroad if the children are not
well classified, or if the teacher cannot keep order. If the machinery of

the school does not run smoothly, its creaking soon attracts public
attention, and the skill of the teacher is at once called into question. But
the teacher may be doing indifferent work in the recitation, and the
class hardly be aware of it and the patrons know nothing about it. There
is no definite measure for the amount of inspiration a teacher is giving
daily to his pupils, and no foot-rule with which to test the worth of his
instruction in the recitation.
And it is this very fact that makes it so necessary that the teacher
should study the principles of teaching as applied to the recitation. The
difficulty of accurately measuring failure in actual teaching tends to
make us all careless at this point. Yet this is the very point above all
others that is vital to the pupil. Inspiring teaching may compensate in
large degree for poor management, but nothing can make up to a pupil
for dull and unskillful teaching. If the recitations are for him a failure,
nothing else can make the school a success so far as he is concerned.
The ultimate measure of a teacher, therefore, is the measure taken
before his class, while he is conducting a recitation.
2. The necessity of having a clear aim
Any discussion of the recitation should begin with its aims or purposes;
for upon aim or purpose everything else depends. For example, if you
ask me the best method of conducting a recitation, I shall have to
inquire before answering, whether your purpose in this recitation is to
discover what the pupils have prepared of the work assigned them; or
to introduce the class to a new subject, such as percentage in arithmetic;
or to drill them, as upon the multiplication table. Each of these
purposes would demand a different method in the recitation. Again, if
your purpose is to show off a class before visitors, you will need to use
a very different method from what you will employ if your aim is to
encourage the class in self-expression and independence in thinking.
There are