The Recitation | Page 5

he already has attained and mastered to new attainments and new
mastery. This is accomplished through teaching. It is not enough,
therefore, to employ the recitation as a time for testing the class; the
recitation is also the teacher's opportunity to teach. Teaching as
distinguished from testing becomes, therefore, one of the great aims of
the recitation.
Teaching should accomplish the following objects in the recitation:--
a. Give the child an opportunity for self-expression.--"We learn to do
by doing," providing the doing is really ours. If the doing holds our
interest and thought nothing will serve to clear up faulty thinking and
partly mastered knowledge like attempting to express it. One really
never fully knows a thing until he can so express it that others are
caused to know it also.
Further, every person needs to cultivate the power of expression for its
own sake. Expression consists not only of language, but the work of the
hand in the various arts and handicrafts, bodily poise and carriage,
facial expression, gesture, laughter, and any other means which the
mind has of making itself known to others. These various forms of
expression are the only way we have of causing others to know what
we think or feel. And the world cares very little how much we may
know or how deeply we may feel if we have not the power to express
our thoughts and emotions.
The child should have, therefore, the fullest possible opportunity in the
recitation for as many of these different kinds of expression as are
suitable to the work of the recitation. Not only must the teacher be
careful not to monopolize the time of the class himself, but he must
even lead the children out, encouraging them to express in their own
words or through their drawings and pictures, or through maps they
make or through the things they construct with their hands, or in any
other way possible, their own knowledge and thought. The timid child
who shrinks from reciting or going to the blackboard to draw or write

needs encouragement and teaching especially. The constant danger
with all teachers is that of calling upon the unusually quick and bright
pupil who is ready to recite, thus giving him more than his share of
training in expression and robbing thereby the more timid ones who
need the practice.
b. Give help on difficult points.--A complaint frequently heard in some
schools, and no doubt in some degree merited in all, is, "Teacher will
not help," or, "Teacher does not explain." No matter how excellent the
work being done by the class or how skillful the teaching, there will
always be hard points in the lessons which need analysis or explanation.
This should usually be done when the lesson is assigned. A teacher
who knows both the subject-matter and the class thoroughly can
estimate almost precisely where the class will have trouble with the
lesson, or what important points will need especial emphasis. And in
the explanation and elaboration of these points is one of the best
opportunities for good teaching. The good teacher will help just enough,
but not too much; just enough so that the class will know how to go to
work with the least loss of time and the greatest amount of energy; not
enough so that the lesson is already mastered for the class before they
begin their study.
But it is necessary to help the class on the hard points not only in
assigning the lesson, but also in the recitation. The alert teacher will in
almost every recitation discover some points which the class have
failed to understand or master fully. It is the overlooking of such
half-mastered points as these that leaves weak places in the pupil's
knowledge and brings trouble to him later on. These weak points left
unstrengthened in the recitation are the lazy teacher's greatest reproach;
the occasion of the unskillful teacher's greatest bungling; and the
inexperienced teacher's greatest "danger points."
c. Bring in new points supplementing the text.--While the lesson of the
textbook should be followed in the main, and most of the time devoted
thereto, yet nearly every lesson gives the wide-awake teacher
opportunity to supplement the text with interesting material drawn from
other sources. This rightly done lends life and interest to the recitation,

broadens the child's knowledge, and increases his respect for the
teacher. In this way many lessons in history, geography, literature--in
fact, in nearly all the studies,--can have their application shown, and
hence be made more real to the pupils.
d. Inspire the pupils to better efforts and higher ideals.--The recitation
is the teacher's mental "point of contact" with his pupils. He meets them
socially in a friendly way at intermissions and on the playground. His
moral character and personality are a