The Recitation | Page 3

three great purposes to be accomplished through the
recitation: testing, teaching, and drilling. These three aims may all be
accomplished at times in the same recitation, may even alternate with
each other in successive questions, but they are nevertheless wholly

distinct from each other, and require different methods for their
accomplishment. The skillful teacher will have one or the other of these
three aims before him either consciously or unconsciously at each
moment of the recitation, and will know when he changes from one to
the other and for what reason. Let us proceed to consider each of these
aims somewhat more in detail.
3. Testing as an aim in the recitation
Testing deals with ground already covered, with matter already learned,
or with powers already developed. It concerns itself with the old,
instead of progressing into the new. It seeks to find out what the child
knows or what he can do of that which he has already been over in his
work. Of course every new lesson or task attempted is in some measure
a test of all that has preceded it, but testing needs to be much more
definite and specific than this.
The testing discussed here must not be confused with what we
sometimes call "tests," but which really are examinations, given at
more or less infrequent intervals. Testing may and should be carried on
in the regular daily recitations by questions and answers either oral or
written, bearing on matter previously assigned; by discussions of topics
of the lesson assigned; or by requiring new work involving the
knowledge or power gained in the past work which is being tested. The
following are some of the principal things which we should test in the
recitation:--
a. The preparation of the lesson assigned.--The preparation of every
lesson assigned should be tested in some definite way. This is of the
utmost importance, especially in all elementary grades. We are all so
constituted mentally that we have a tendency to grow careless in
assigned tasks if their performance is not strictly required of us. No
matter how careful may be the assignment of the lesson, and no matter
how much the teacher may urge upon the class at the time of the
assignment that they prepare the lesson well, the pupils must be held
responsible for this preparation day by day, without fail, if we are to
insure their mastery of it.

Nor is it enough to inquire, "How many understand this lesson?" or
"How many got all the examples?" It is the teacher's business to test
thoroughly for himself the pupil's mastery of the lesson or the
knowledge or power required for the examples, in some definite and
concrete way. It will not suffice to take the pupil's judgment of his own
preparation and mastery, for many will allow a hazy or doubtful point
to go by unexplained rather than confess before teacher and class their
lack of study or inability to grasp the topic. Further, pupils seldom have
the standards of mastery which enable them to judge what constitutes
an adequate grasp of the subject.
b. The pupil's knowledge and his methods of study.--Entirely aside from
the question of the preparation of the lesson assigned, the teacher must
constantly test the pupil's knowledge in order that he may know how
and what next to teach him; for no maxim of teaching is better
established than that we should proceed from the known to the related
unknown. And this is only another way of saying that we should build
all new knowledge upon the foundation of knowledge already
mastered.
To illustrate: Pupils must have a thorough mastery and ready
knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division before
we can proceed to teach them measurements or fractions. And without
doubt much time is wasted in attempting to teach these subjects without
a ready command of the fundamental operations. Further, pupils must
know well both common and decimal fractions before they can proceed
to percentage. They must know and be able to recognize readily the
different "parts of speech" before they can analyze sentences in
grammar.
But not less important than what the pupil knows is how he knows the
thing; that is, what are his methods of study and learning. The pupil in a
history class may be able to recite whole pages of the text almost
verbatim, but when questioned as to the meaning of the events and
facts show very little knowledge about them. A student confessed to
her teacher that she had committed all her geometry lessons to memory
instead of reasoning them out. She could in this way satisfy a careless

teacher who did not take the trouble to inquire how the pupil had
prepared her lessons, but she knew little or no geometry.
The mind has what