THE TIME ELEMENT
=The question stated.=--There are many, doubtless, who will deny, if not
actually resent, the statement that some do more real teaching in ten
minutes than others do in thirty minutes. But, in spite of denials, the
statement can be verified by the testimony of a host of expert observers
and supervisors. Indeed, stenographic reports have been made of many
class exercises by way of testing the truth of this statement, and these
reports are a matter of record. Assuming the validity of the statement,
therefore, it is pertinent to inquire into the causes that underlie the
disparity in the teaching ability of the ten-minute teacher and the
thirty-minute teacher. The efficiency expert would be quick to seize
upon this disparity in the rate of progress as the starting point in his
critical examination. In a factory a like disparity would lead to
unpleasant consequences. The workman who consumes thirty minutes in
accomplishing a piece of work that another does in ten minutes would be
admonished to accelerate his progress or else give way to a more
efficient man. If we had instruments of sufficient delicacy to test the
results of teaching, we should probably discover that the output of the
ten-minute teacher is superior in quality to that of the thirty-minute
teacher. For we must all have observed in our own experience that the
clarity of our thinking depends upon its intensity.
=Examples.=--A young man who won distinction as a college student had a
wide shelf fitted up on one side of his room at which he stood in the
preparation of all his lessons. His theory was that the attitude of the
body conditions the attitude of the mind. Professor James gives assent
to this theory and avers that an attitude of mind may be generated by
placing the body in such an attitude as would naturally accompany this
mental attitude. This theory proclaims that, if the body is slouching,
the mind will slouch; but that, if the body is alert, the mind will be
equally so. Another college student always walked to and fro in his room
when preparing his history lesson. A fine old lady, in a work of
fiction, explained her mental acumen by the single statement, "I never
slouch." Every person must have observed many exemplifications of this
theory in his own experience even if he has not reduced it to a working
formula.
=Basic considerations.=--Any consideration of the time element, in
school work, must take into account, therefore, not only the number of
minutes involved in a given piece of work, but also the intensity of
effort during those minutes. Two minds, of equal natural strength, may
be fully employed during a given period and yet show a wide difference
in the quality and quantity of the results. The one may be busy all the
while but slouch through the minutes. The other may be taut and
intensive, working at white heat, and the output will be more extensive
and of better quality. The mind that ambles through the period shows
forth results that are both meager and mediocre; but the mind whose
impact is both forceful and incisive produces results that serve to
magnify the work of the school. Thus we have placed before us two basic
considerations, one of which is the time itself, in actual minutes, and
the other is the character of the reactions to external stimuli during
those minutes.
=Two teachers compared.=--In order to consider these factors of the
teaching process with some degree of definiteness it will be well to
have the ten-minute teacher and the thirty-minute teacher placed in
juxtaposition in our thinking. We shall thus be able to compare and
contrast and so arrive at some clear judgments that may be used as a
basis for generalizations. We may assume, for convenience and for
concreteness, that the lesson is division of fractions. There will be
substantial agreement that the principle involved in this subject can be
taught in one recitation period. The reasons for some of the steps in
the process may come later, but the child should be able to find his way
to the correct answer in a single period. Now if one teacher can achieve
this result in thirty minutes and the other in ten minutes, there is a
disparity in the effectiveness of the work of these teachers which is
worthy of serious consideration. The ten-minute teacher proves that the
thirty-minute teacher has consumed twenty minutes of somebody's time
unnecessarily. If the salary of this thirty-minute teacher should be
reduced to one third its present amount, she would inveigh against the
reduction.
=School and factory compared.=--If she were one of the operators in a
factory, she would not escape with the mere penalization of a salary
reduction. The owner would argue that he needed some one who could
operate the machine up to its full capacity, and that, even if she
should work without salary, her presence in the factory would entail a
loss in that the output of her machine was so meager. If one operator
can produce a shoe in ten minutes and the other requires thirty minutes
for the same work, the money that is invested in the one machine pays
dividends, while the other machine imposes a continuous tax upon the
owner. This, of course, will be recognized as the line of argument of
the efficiency expert, but it certainly is not out of place to call
attention to the matter in connection with school work. The subject of
efficiency is quite within the province of the school, and it would seem
to be wholly within reason for the school to exemplify its own
teachings.
=Appraisal of teaching expertness.=--The teacher who requires thirty
minutes for division of fractions which the other teacher compasses in
ten minutes consumes twenty minutes unnecessarily in each recitation
period, or two hundred minutes in the course of the day. The efficiency
expert would ask her to account for these two hundred minutes. In order
to account for them satisfactorily she would be compelled to take an
inventory of her acquired habits, her predilections, her attitude toward
her pupils and her subjects, and any shortcomings she may have in regard
to methods of teaching. She would, at first, resent the implication that
the other teacher's method of teaching division of fractions is better
than her own and would cite the many years during which her method has
been used. When all else fails, tradition always proves a convenient
refuge. We can always prove to-day by yesterday; only, by so doing, we
deny the possibility of progress.
=The potency of right methods.=--A teacher of Latin once used twenty
minutes in a violent attempt to explain the difference between the
gerund construction and the gerundive construction. At the end of the
time she had the pupils so completely muddled that, for months, the
appearance of either of these constructions threw them into a condition
of panic. To another class, later, this teacher explained these
constructions clearly and convincingly in three minutes. In the meantime
she had studied methods in connection with subject matter. Another
teacher resigned her position and explained her action by confessing
that she had become so accustomed to the traditional methods of teaching
a certain phase of arithmetic that it was impossible for her to learn
the newer one. Such a teacher must be given credit for honesty even
while she illustrates tragedy.
=The waste of time.=--In explaining the loss of two hundred minutes a
day the teacher will inevitably come upon the subject of methods of
teaching, and she may be put to it to justify her method in view of its
results. The more diligently she tries to justify her method, the more
certainly she proclaims her responsibility for a wrong use of the
method. Those twenty minutes point at her the accusing finger, and she
can neither blink nor escape the facts. The other teacher led her pupils
into a knowledge of the subject in ten minutes, and this one may neither
abrogate nor amend the record. As an operative in the factory she holds
in her hand one shoe as the result of her thirty minutes while the other
holds three. Conceding that results in the school are not so tangible as
the results in the factory, still we have developed methods of
estimating results in the school that have convincing weight with the
efficiency expert. We can estimate results in school work with
sufficient accuracy to enable us to assess teaching values with a goodly
degree of discrimination.
=Possibilities.=--It would be a comparatively simple matter to compute
in days and weeks the time lost during the year by the thirty-minute
teacher, and then estimate the many things that the pupils could
accomplish in that time. If the thirty-minute teacher could be
transformed into a ten-minute teacher, the children could have three
more hours each day for play, and that would be far better for them than
the ordeal of sitting there in the class, the unwilling witnesses, or
victims, of the time-wasting process. Or they might read a book in the
two hundred minutes and that would be more enjoyable, and the number of
books thus read in the course of a year would aggregate quite a library.
Or, again, they might take some additional studies and so make great
gains in mental achievements in their twelve years of school life. Or
they might learn to work with their hands and so achieve self-reliance,
self-support, and self-respect.
=Conservation.=--In a word, there is no higher type of conservation than
the conservation of childhood, in terms of time and interest. The two
hundred minutes a day are a vital factor in the life of the child and
must be regarded as highly valuable. The teacher, therefore, who
subtracts this time from the child's life is assuming a responsibility
not to be lightly esteemed. She takes from him his most valuable
possession and one which she can never return, try as she may. Worst of
all, she purloins this element of time clandestinely, albeit
seductively, in the guise of friendship. The child does not know that he
is the victim of unfair treatment until it is too late to set up any
defense. He is made to think that that is the natural and, therefore,
only way of school, and that he must take things as they come if he is
to prove himself a good soldier. So he musters what heroism he can and
tries to smile while the teacher despoils him of the minutes he might
better be employing in play, in reading, or in work.
=The teacher's complacency.=--This would seem a severe indictment if it
were incapable of proof, but having been proved by incontrovertible
evidence its severity cannot be mitigated. We can only grieve that the
facts are as they are and ardently hope for a speedy change. The chief
obstacle in the way of improvement is the complacency of the teacher.
Habits tend to persist, and if she has contracted the habit of much
speaking, she thinks her volubility should be accounted a virtue and
wonders that the children do not applaud the bromidic platitudes which
have been uttered in the same form and in the same tones a hundred
times. She is so intoxicated with her own verbosity that she can neither
listen to the sounds of her own voice nor analyze her own utterances.
While her neighbor is teaching she is talking, and then with sublime
nonchalance she ascribes the retardation of her pupils to their own
dullness and never, in any least degree, to her own unprofitable use of
their time.
=The voluble teacher.=--And while she rambles on in her aimless talking
the children are bored, inexpressibly bored. It is axiomatic that the
learning process does not flourish in a state of boredom. Under the
ordeal of verbal inundation the children wriggle and squirm about in
their seats and this affords her a new point of attack. She calls them
ill-bred and unmannerly and wonders at the homes that can produce such
children. She does not realize that if these children were grown-ups
they would leave the room regardless of consequences. When they yawn,
she reminds them of the utter futility of casting pearls before swine.
All the while the twenty minutes are going and the pupils have not yet
learned how to divide fractions. Over in the next room the pupils know
full well how to divide fractions and the teacher is rewarding their
diligence with a cookie in the form of a story, while they wait for the
bell to ring. Out of the room of the thirty-minute teacher come the
children glowering and resentful; out of the other room the children
come buoyant and happy.
=The test of teaching.=--Not alone did the former teacher use the time
of her pupils for her own ends, but, even more, she dulled their
interest, and the damage thus inflicted cannot be estimated. Many a
child has deserted the school because the teacher made school life
disagreeable. She was the wet blanket upon his enthusiasm and chilled
him to the marrow when he failed to go forward upon her traditional
track. The teacher who can generate in the minds of her pupils a
spiritual ignition by her every movement and word will not be humiliated
by desertions. Indeed, the test of the teacher is the mental attitude of
her pupils. The child who drags and drawls through the lesson convicts
the teacher of a want of expertness. On the other hand, when the pupils
are all wide-awake, alert, animated, eager to respond, and dynamic, we
know that the teacher has brought this condition to pass and that she is
a ten-minute teacher.
=Meaningless formalities.=--One of the influences that tends to deaden
the interest of children is the ponderous formality that sometimes
obtains. The teacher solemnly calls the roll, although she can see at a
glance that there are no absentees. This is exceedingly irksome to
wide-awake boys and girls who are avid for variety. The same monotonous
calling of the roll day after day with no semblance of variation induces
in them a sort of mental dyspepsia for which they seek an antidote in
what the teacher denominates disorder. This so-called disorder betokens
good health on their part and is a revelation of the fact that they have
a keen appreciation of the fitness of things. They cannot brook monotony
and it irks them to dawdle about in the anteroom of action. They are
eager to do their work if only the teacher will get right at it. But
they are impatient of meaningless preliminaries. They see no sense in
calling the roll when everybody is present and discredit the teacher who
persists in the practice.
=Repeating answers.=--Still another characteristic of the thirty-minute
teacher is her habit of repeating the answers that pupils give, with the
addition of some inane comment. Whether this repeating of answers is
merely a bad habit or an effort on the part of the teacher to
appropriate to herself the credit that should otherwise accrue to the
pupils, it is not easy to say. Certain it is that school inspectors
inveigh against the practice mightily as militating against the
effectiveness of the teaching. Teachers who have been challenged on this
point make a weak confession that they repeat the answers unconsciously.
They thus make the fatal admission that for a part of the time of the
class exercise they do not know what they are doing, and admitting so
much we can readily classify them as belonging among the thirty-minute
teachers.
=Meanderings.=--Another characteristic is her tendency to wander away
from the direct line and ramble about among irrelevant and
inconsequential trifles. Sometimes these rambles are altogether
entertaining and enable her pupils to pass the time pleasantly, but they
lack "terminal facilities." They lead from nowhere to nowhere in the
most fascinating and fruitless meanderings. Such expeditions bring back
no emoluments. They leave a pleasant taste in the mouth but afford no
nourishment. They use the time but exact no dividends. Like sheet
lightning they are beautiful but never strike anything. They are
soothing sedatives that never impel to action. They lull to repose but
never vitalize.
=The ten-minute teacher.=--It is evident, therefore, that only the
ten-minute teacher is worthy of a place in the vitalized school. She
alone is able and willing to conserve, with religious zeal, the time and
interest of the pupils. To her their time and interest are sacred and
she deems it a sacrilege to trifle with them. She knows the market value
of her own time but does not know the value of the time of the possible
Edison who sits in her class. She gives to every child the benefit of
the doubt and respects both herself and her pupils too much to take
chances by pitting herself against them and using their time for her own
purposes. Moreover, she never permits their interest to flag, but knows
how to keep their minds tense. Their reactions are never less than
incisive, and, therefore, the truths of the lesson groove themselves
deep in their consciousness.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What is meant by the time element in teaching?
2. How is an operation in a factory timed? For what purpose? What are
some of the results that have accrued from the timing of work by
efficiency experts?
3. How can teaching be timed approximately? Is it probable that more of
this will be done in the future by supervisors and investigators? Would
you resent the timing of your work? Would you appreciate it? Why?
4. What may be done, in the matter of bodily positions, to improve
mental time-reactions of the student? Of the teacher?
5. The literature of a typewriter manufacturer carries the precept "Sit
erect." What are the reasons?
6. What two factors must be considered in estimating mental work with a
view to time considerations?
7. If the attainment of school results by the teacher were treated as
the attainment of factory results by the operator, what would happen if
a large per cent of the time spent on a process were unnecessary?
8. Apply the factory manager's argument in detail to the teacher's
efficiency. If you can, show wherein it fails to apply.
9. What result besides waste of time may come of a cumbersome method of
teaching?
10. How can one acquire a clear-cut method?
11. A professor of physics was asked by a former student who was
beginning to teach for suggestions on the teaching of physics. His only
reply was "Know your subject thoroughly." Was this a satisfactory
response? Give reasons for your opinion.
12. If the teacher can have lessons finished with greater rapidity, what
can be done with the time thus remaining?
13. Show that the teacher must attend to the conservation of time in
order to protect the child.
14. In what way besides the direct waste of the minutes is the
expenditure of undue time unfortunate?
15. In what particular way do many teachers lose much of the
recitation-lesson or study-lesson period?
16. What are the results of an undue expenditure of time in this way?
17. What is the relation between the waste of time in school and the
exodus of children from the upper grades?
18. What do you think of a teacher who persists in "meaningless
formalities"?
19. How does the repeating of answers by the teacher affect the pupils?
20. A teacher says she repeats answers often because pupils speak low
and indistinctly. What are the proper remedies for this?
21. What should be the teacher's rule in regard to digressions?
22. Why should every teacher strive to be a "ten-minute" teacher, and
why should every supervisor strive to recommend no others?
23. What corollary can be drawn on the advisability of the employment of
no teachers except those recommended by competent supervisors?