6. Write an account of an important agricultural event and take it to the local editor for criticism. Rewrite until it meets his approval. From what you have learned write other articles and offer them for publication. (Chapter XVIII.)

7. Name five kinds of agricultural matter which you think the local paper would like to have. Obtain the criticism of the local editor upon your list. 8. State five subjects from which you think it advisable to select if asked by a farmers' club in your locality to "give a talk." State five others for use before a town business men's club.

9. Lay out a plan for your giving one lesson a week in a country school, the teacher of the school to conduct the lessons you arrange for her on the other four days.

10. Name five conditions or acts that might prevail in a class in agriculture; decide whether each is principally concerned with management, government, or the teaching process and in what ways it affects the other two.

11. Name five regulations intended to produce good government and decide whether they contemplate primarily the creating of favorable conditions in which the group can work or the development of the individual pupil in behavior.

12. Make a list of regulations that will tend to do both.

13. Examine the school laws and decisions of your state and see how many you can find that relate to the behavior of the pupil at school. What are the provisions?

14. What rules regarding pupil behavior have been enacted by the school board under which you are now working or last worked?

15. What supplementary rules regarding pupil behavior has the principal made?

16. What additional ones has the teacher made?

REFERENCES

BAGLEY, WILLIAM CHANDLER: "Classroom Management."

BAGLEY, WILLIAM CHANDLER: "School Discipline.'

CHANCELLOR, WILLIAM ESTABROOK: "Class Teaching and Management."
COLVIN, STEPHEN SHELDON: "An Introduction to High School Teaching.”
PERRY, ARTHUR C., JR.: "Discipline as a School Problem."

PERRY, ARTHUR C., JR.: "The Management of a City School."
STOUT, JOHN E.: “The High School.”

CHAPTER IV

METHODS OF TEACHING

Teacher's Knowledge of Psychology and Agriculture Assumed.—The necessity of knowing the three M's-Mind, Matter, Method, is as great for the teacher as is that of knowing the three R's for the pupil. No teacher can hope to reach his highest degree of efficiency unless he knows the mind of the pupil and how it functions in learning, the subject matter of the curriculum he is to teach, and the proper methods by means of which the subject matter is used to educate the pupil.

This chapter is written on the assumption that the teacher of agriculture has a practical working knowledge of the psychology of education, particularly of the mental processes of learning. It is assumed that sensation, perception, conception, memory, judgment, reasoning, apperception, attention, interest, habit, imitation, emotion, thinking, will, motivation, association, and similar terms relating to mental processes are already significant to him. Therefore, no special treatment will be accorded them. If the one who desires to teach is not familiar with them, he ought to study carefully a few of the best books upon the subject, some of which are listed in the references at the close of this chapter and referred to by number at the close of this topic. It is also assumed that he has both a practical and a scientific knowledge of agriculture of the type prevailing in the region in which the teaching is to be done. (References1 at close of chapter: 1, 12, 13, 18, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 37, 45, 46, 47, 52.)

Some General Considerations. As schools are organized there are three more or less distinct steps in the teaching process: The assignment of the "lesson," the setting of the task for the pupils by the teacher; the preparation-study of the lesson by the pupils (and by the teacher); and the consideration of the task by the teacher and the pupils together a joint meeting the recitation. In many countries, including our own, the recitation has been considered to be much more important than the other two and in the minds of many persons "methods of teaching" are interpreted to be methods of the recitation. Recently, however,

1 Numbers at the end of each topic allude to references at close of chapter.

INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION

37

much greater consideration has been given to the value of proper assignments and even more thought has been given to proper methods of study.

Induction and deduction are modes of thought. In the former, the mind from its familiarity with individual or specific ideas or notions, proceeds to a general notion or truth common to them all. In the latter, the mind accepting a general truth or notion proceeds to the application of it to specific or individual notions. In brief, it may be said that the inductive procedure is best adapted to teaching the young pupil, to laboratory work, and to scientific discovery. Its procedure is largely from the concrete and objective to the abstract and subjective. Its advantages are that it gives clearness of comprehension; interest in the learning process; confidence in the general truth, rules, definitions, principles obtained; and independence of future action in the pursuit of knowledge. Its disadvantages are that it consumes much time; may lead to erroneous conclusions unless well guided and exhaustive; and is needless and wasteful as a teaching process when pupils have already in their past experience sufficiently traversed its essential steps. For its successful use in school it requires broad and deep knowledge and superior skill on the part of the teacher and these are not always present. It is expensive not only of time, but of equipment.

The deductive process is economical of time, especially with persons whose experiences have supplied the apperceptive foundation for a comprehension of the general truth; enables one to take advantage of the achievements of the ages and hence of books, libraries, and other storehouses of knowledge, and to start at the point where the scientists, discoverers and scholars have stopped; and is the natural process in applying to the practical affairs of life the discoveries made by study. In schools it increases the efficiency of the poorly informed or poorly trained teacher by supplementing her teaching with textbooks which are principally deductive in character. It is economical in equipment since in most of the school studies application requires less expense for equipment than does discovery.

Both induction and deduction are essential to every complete learning process. With certain types of pupils or subjects or lessons one may well predominate over the other, but there are few, if any, lessons in which each is not present in some degree even though the pupil or teacher may not be conscious of it.

In each of the methods mentioned later these two processes will be found to be present in varying proportions (1, 6, 8, 12, 13, 16, 23, 39, 44, 51).

The Formal Steps.-The followers of Herbart in Germany and in the United States have developed a standard form of teaching procedure called in this country the "Five Formal Steps." These "steps" have gained general recognition and acceptance as amplified and utilized by American teachers and writers. They are usually designated as, first, preparation; second, presentation; third, comparison (and abstraction); fourth, generalization; fifth, application.

The first step sets before the pupil the problem and arouses his apperceiving masses related to it. It consists in arousing in the minds of the pupils their past experiences and their accumulation of information and ideas which will lead to an interest in further knowledge, to a comprehension (apperception) of the new truths and a concentration of effort toward the accomplishment of a definite known aim. In presentation, new facts, or experiences, or ideas, in sufficient quantity and of sufficient variety and comprehensiveness are brought before the pupils to form a basis for the fourth step. Comparison and abstraction consist of detecting the characteristics of the different individual facts or ideas, and their likenesses and unlikenesses and hence the relations they bear to each other. Generalization discovers the common characteristics abstracted in the third step and states the finding in the form of a general truth or conclusion. Definitions, rules, and principles are types of the results of generalization. In the fifth step, application, the general truth evolved through the first four steps, is utilized for the interpretation of specific, individual cases.2 The first four of these steps are distinctly inductive and have the characteristics and advantages of that system of procedure. The fifth is as distinctively deductive with all that is implied thereby. A more complete explanation of this step will be made under the "Four Formal Steps" later in this topic.

These five steps (including the four parts of the fifth step mentioned later) are necessary to a complete learning unit and constitute the inductive-deductive process.

The various "methods" mentioned later will be found to place a varying amount of emphasis upon these five formal steps accord

2 For more complete treatment see McMurry's "General Method"; Earhart's "Types of Teaching"; Bagley's "Educative Process"; Colgrove's "The Teacher and the School"; McMurry's "Method of the Recitation."

ing to the purpose to be accomplished. It must not be understood that all five steps are taken in every lesson. A teaching unit fulfilling the five formal steps might cover the work of a week or might occupy half a recitation period. Neither should it be understood that in the learning process the five steps are distinct from each other. In preparation truths may be presented that are new to some pupils; in presentation some minds are constantly making abstractions and comparisons and even leaping forward to generalizations or even going farther and seeking applications.

While much has been written upon the inductive development lesson and the five formal steps (of which the second, third and fourth are definitely inductive), less has been done for the deductive procedure.

3

Bagley divides the deductive development lesson into four steps: viz. (1) the data; (2) the principles; (3) the inference; (4) the verification.

In suggesting its substitution for the mere "telling" of facts so common in education to-day he states that it (1) introduces organization; (2) gives meaning to principles previously mastered; (3) "supplies a motive for searching out empirical evidence and therefore makes intelligible the use of textbooks and source materials"; (4) utilizes the "puzzle" instinct; (5) reveals the need for future study; (6) amplifies the inductive processes (8, 10, 23, 44, 51).

The Assignment. Under the system of organizing American educational institutions, it is assumed that the teacher and the pupils will be together for coöperative work at regular periods of a few minutes to an hour or two every day or once every few days; that the teacher announces at every session certain work for the pupils to do before the next session; that the interim is used by the pupil in preparation for his part in the next joint meeting and that likewise the teacher in the same time makes his preparation for the same occasion. This interim task set for the pupil is the assignment. Its importance is sadly underrated by most teachers. The fulness, thoroughness, and systematic character of the study during the interim and the richness and vitality of the succeeding meeting of teacher and pupils are frequently most largely determined by the quality of the assignment. Loss of time in study and recitation is avoided by a goodrassignment, while a poor one may cause almost a total loss of both. Besides its far-reaching effect upon the char3 The Educative Process, p. 305–315.