Miss Atkinson was an intelligent, quick, good-natured little woman whom
the children really liked. She never got angry, and her discipline was
good so far as the big misdemeanors were concerned.
The A division was reciting its arithmetic lesson while the B division
studied. Miss Atkinson sent half of her class to the board and started
to give out an example.
[Sidenote: Talking During Recitation]
“May I find out the lesson from Tom?” A boy who had been absent the day
before was speaking, without pausing to raise his hand for permission.
Miss Atkinson nodded and read the example over again.
“We had that example yesterday,” came from one of the pupils in the
class.
“No, we didn’t. It was something like it but it wasn’t the same,”
replied another.
Before the dispute was settled and the children at work, five minutes of
the recitation period had been wasted. Ten minutes later, Alice, of the
B division, asked if she might open a window. Then Grace wanted to
borrow a pencil. While Miss Atkinson was showing Joe how to point off,
Henry called out, “How many places must we carry it out?” By the time
the various queries were answered, Joe’s attention had wandered and in
order to make his difficulty clear to him, the teacher had to go back
over the ground already covered.
Thus every class period was frittered away. Questions were continually
being fired at the teacher like shots out of a gun. One bold pupil was
constantly making remarks intended to be funny or to delay the progress
of lessons. Miss Atkinson could not see the harm in answering the
seemingly legitimate inquiries, and her efforts to curb the general
habit of talking aloud were altogether too mild.
Fully one-half of both the children’s and the teacher’s time was wasted
by such interruptions. Serious, concentrated effort was impossible and
the duller pupils were confused and distracted by this endless breaking
into their train of thought.