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.
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