Principles of Teaching Part 24

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS--CHAPTER XX

1. Why is it essential to good teaching that regular reviews be conducted?

2. Why are reviews more necessary in our religious work than in regular school work?

3. What are the chief purposes of a review?

4. By taking a current lesson of one of the auxiliary organizations, ill.u.s.trate the work done in a good review.

5. Why it is of vital importance that a teacher give special preparation to a review?

6. Show how good cla.s.s preparation is conditional upon the proper kind of a.s.signment.

7. What are the characteristics of a good a.s.signment?

8. What is the best time for making the a.s.signment?

9. Show how to make a good a.s.signment of a current lesson from one of the organizations.

HELPFUL REFERENCES

Betts, _The Recitation_; Betts, _How to Teach Religion_; Colvin, _The Learning Process_; Colgrove, _The Teacher and the School_; Strayer and Norsworthy, _How to Teach_.

CHAPTER XXI

THE QUESTION AS A FACTOR IN EDUCATION

OUTLINE--CHAPTER XXI

Taking Stock.--Miss Stevens' study on questioning.--Miss Stevens quoted.--Various types of questions: a. The review question; b. The fact question; c. The leading question; d. The thought or challenging question.--Some questions on questioning.

How many questions do you ask regularly during a recitation?

What proportion of those questions are answered in full and complete statements?

How many of the answers to your questions are a matter merely of memory?

How many reveal original, creative thinking?

Such questions as these not only impress us with the force of the question as a means of teaching, but they lead us to examine into our own method of asking them. The whole teaching process so easily and unconsciously develops into a matter of routine that it is good practice occasionally to take stock of ourselves. It is surprising to find how many teachers develop a particular type of question which becomes their sole stock in trade.

Miss Ronniett Stevens, in her thesis, _The Question as a Measure of Efficiency in Instruction_, has made one of the most enlightening studies yet made on the matter of questioning. Her results are quoted by Weigle, in his _Talks to Sunday School Teachers_, in a pa.s.sage of interest, not only because of Miss Stevens' findings, but also because of Mr. Weigle's own conclusions:

"One of the outstanding differences, in present practice, between the public and the Sunday school, is that most public school teachers ask too many questions and most Sunday school teachers do not ask questions enough. For the first half of this statement there is ample evidence in the careful study by Miss Ronniett Stevens on _The Question as a Measure of Efficiency in Instruction_. Miss Stevens secured complete stenographic reports of twenty high school lessons in English, history, science, Latin, modern languages, and mathematics; she observed one hundred more such lessons chosen at random, with a view to counting and noting the number and nature of the questions asked in each; and she followed each ten cla.s.ses through an entire day's work for the purpose of studying the aggregate question-stimulus to which each was subjected in the course of the day.

"The results of her study are surprising. In only eight of the twenty lessons completely reported the teacher asked less than ninety questions in the period of forty-five minutes, the average being sixty-eight. In each of the remaining twelve lessons more than ninety questions were asked in the same period of time, the average being 128. A freshman cla.s.s in high school, in a day's work of five periods of forty minutes each, not counting gymnasium, was subjected to 516 questions and expected to return 516 answers, which is at the rate of 2:58 questions and 2:58 answers per minute. The lowest number of questions recorded in a day's work for a cla.s.s was 321, and the average number 395.

"Such rapid-fire questioning, Miss Stevens rightly holds, defeats its own ends. It maintains a nervous tension in the cla.s.sroom that must in the long run be injurious. More than that, it is a symptom of the fact that the real work of the hour is being done by the teacher, and the pupil's share is reduced simply to brief, punctuation-like answers to the teacher's questions. Such questions appeal to mere memory or to superficial judgment rather than to real thought; they cultivate in the pupil neither independent judgment nor the power of expression; they ignore individual needs and discourage initiative; they make out of the cla.s.sroom a place to display knowledge, rather than a laboratory in which to acquire it.

"The second half of the proposition, that most Sunday school teachers do not ask questions enough, has not been established by any such investigation as that of Miss Stevens. A similar study, on the basis of complete stenographic reports, of typical Sunday school lessons, would be a most valuable addition to our resources in the field of religious pedagogy. Till such a study is made, one must simply record his conviction that Sunday school teachers, as a general rule, ask too few, rather than too many questions. This conviction is based upon general observation and upon the frequency of such remarks as, 'I just can't get my cla.s.s to study,' 'There are only two or three who ever answer my questions,' 'My pupils don't know anything about the Bible,' 'As long as I do all the talking, things go all right,'

etc." Weigle, _Talks to Sunday School Teachers_.

The whole matter of questioning can be made to stand out most clearly, perhaps, by listing the various types of question, the purposes which each type serves, and the characteristics of a good question.

First of all there is the _Review question_. The great purpose of this type of question is to systematize knowledge. Of course, it is valuable as an aid to recollection--it is a challenge to memory--but it is particularly helpful in that it makes the big essential points in a course stand out in relief with minor points properly correlated and subordinated. The review question is a guide to the pupil whereby he may see the relative significance of the work he has covered. One of our great difficulties lies in the fact that our teaching is so largely piece-meal. Today's lesson is hurried through, isolated as it is from all that has gone before and all that may follow. The successful teacher through the review makes each lesson a link in the chain of thought that underlies the whole development of the subject in hand.

The review question is essentially a carefully thought out, searching inquiry. It calls for a turning over, in the mind, of the material of the whole course and therefore should allow ample time for pondering. If it does not stimulate a "weighing process," it likely is merely a fact question--a test of memory. Of course, there is a place at times for this hurried type of question, but it serves the purpose only of "connecting up" and should not be mistaken for the evaluating question of review.

The following questions on the expulsion of the Saints from Missouri are ill.u.s.trative review questions:

1. To what extent, if any, were the Latter-day Saints themselves responsible for their expulsion from Missouri?

2. To what extent were the persecutions of Missouri political?

Religious?

3. How do you account for the fact that the Lord's people have always been a chastened people?

4. Show how the Missouri persecutions have been ultimately a blessing to the Latter-day Saints.

The second type of question is the _fact_ question. It serves to check up on mental alertness and recall. It is often helpful in arresting attention and therefore has a certain disciplinary function. The teacher, of course, must make sure that his pupils are grasping the subject-matter presented, and the fact question serves admirably as a test of knowledge. It is usually a short question calling for a short answer, and therefore may be used in a rapid-fire way that stimulates thought. It is this type of question that is hurled so frequently at cla.s.ses with the consequences pointed out in the quotation from Miss Stevens.

The same author lists as objections to the continued use of these rapid-fire questions the following bad features. They result in:

1. Nervous tension.

2. The teacher's doing most of the work.

3. Emphasis upon memory and superficial judgment.

4. Little time for the art of expression.

5. Little attention to the needs of particular individuals in a cla.s.s.

6. The cla.s.s being made a place for displaying knowledge.

7. Little self-reliant, independent thinking.

As ill.u.s.trative of the fact question may we set down the following:

Who was Joseph Smith?

What was his father's name?

What was his mother's name?