The Bavaria system has revealed the great need of individual
instruction. This question of getting help on the difficult parts of a
lesson is not, in itself, wrong. The evil comes from the confusion of
haphazard whispering. The whispered help which one pupil gives another,
without the teacher’s consent, is attended by more than one evil. The
attention of two pupils is shifted from the central interest. The
teacher is deceived as to the real knowledge which the helped one has of
the subject and he can not therefore correctly estimate his work.
Yet the physical well-being of a child demands that he have his recess
period of relaxation. The teacher who does her duty in the matter of
supervised play will abandon “keeping children in” as a punishment for
misdemeanors.