THE USE OF METHODS AND DEVICES. By Carrie A.
Syracuse,
Ritter,
N. Y.
special teaching which is being done by the writer aims to why children do not get on in school. It endeavors to stimuthem to succeed, and especially to help the defective and
The discover late
deficient. Often the pupil continues in school but is tutored out of hours him up with his classes. This is frequently done at the recommendation of the teacher, who is not supposed to do tutoring in addition to her regular school work. In such cases the teacher sends a written statement of what the child lacks, what sort of work he is doing in school, and what he is expected to cover in that term's work. At first she sends a daily statement of lessons but after the
to
keep
first week it
usually fails to be sent. It would be difficult to determine whether she loses interest, or thinks the special teacher can her own
run
alone
ing
amounts to
responsibility, or whether she considers the teachlittle it is a waste of her time to send statements. At all events she accepts the word of the special teacher at the end of the term that all the ground has been covered which she designated. and we infer that the pupil showed improvement in his school on
so
work. Sometimes the special teacher has the entire training of the child when he is unfit to be with normal children in school. First it is necessary to find out how little or how much the pupil knows and wherein lies the trouble. There are various ways of ascertaining this. When one means is unsuccessful another is tried. Usually the first or second written lesson shows the deficiencies but Some children at the first lesson appear brighter than not always. they really are, for they throw all their energies into making a good impression. Some are not accustomed to doing written work and hesitate over it. Some are nervous or excited in oral work, especially in reciting to a stranger and do even worse than usual. Also sometimes they feel that the report given of them by teacher or parents
they were consigned to the tutor's care, showed them as hard who could not or would not learn. Naturally they are depressed by this feeling. To win the child's confidence first, then to teach him to have faith in his own ability and to respect himself is the
when cases
work of the teacher. After years of experience
one
naturally looks
(13)
for
physical
defects
14
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
cause the trouble when the child does not get on well at Often circumstances are found not conducive to study. Children who go auto-riding or upon long pleasure excursions all day Sunday are unfit for work Monday. They are, as they themselves express it, "just dead," that is they are tired out and the
that
might
school.
brain is
sluggish. Their fatigue affects their memory. They are irritable and easily get into quarrels. They have to drive themtheir selves to work, sometimes even writing is shaky, like that of or an elderly person. oneself being driven by a teacher is Driving The child not conducive to good work, and little is accomplished. used to come John or rest to home play. might just as well be sent It was discovered finally to school on Mondays completely used up. that his Sunday afternoons were given to long drives in the car, followed by visiting and a heavy dinner. The strain told. Evening performances of all kinds and late hours, especially when the child has taken part in the entertaining, tend to lower the standard of work he can do next day. It may sound severe, but a child ought not to be out in the evening at all during the school week. Of the "movies"?judge for yourself! It is not easy to convince parents that these activities have anything to do with poor lessons. They think the teacher is to blame if the child is not promoted, or the school board that devises too much work for their sensitive darlings. Here is a case in point. Mabel was not a poor student, in fact she could do fair work if she put time enough on it, but her mother had social ambitions.
Night after night Mabel had to be church or social function that she might catch a desirable husband, for Mabel was in the High School. She begged to be allowed to stay at home to study, but pleadings were of no driven to
some
avail, she had to go or there was a scene. The mother called her an ungrateful, selfish child to be unwilling to further these worldly ambitions. Consequently Mabel barely made her grades, and the mother declared favoritism was shown by the teachers, for her daughter was as bright as the honor students. The years have passed? Mabel is unmarried and with no definite profession, but having to her bread. Is there any known method of bringing the child to study profitably? Surely many of them. Of necessity the method varies according to the age, grade, and mental capacity of the child, also
earn
according to what is expected of him. If he is to keep up with a class in school, the work must conform somewhat at least with that being taught there. With the defective, many devices are necessary and infinite patience advances.
on
the part of parents and teachers
over
slow
THE USE OF METHODS AND DEVICES.
15
This being a specialty in teaching, the great point is to arouse These are read interest by any method or mixture of methods. about in magazines and books, then subjected to experiment. After a time one gets to know what is most likely to succeed but it is always well to watch for new suggestions. One idea becomes prominent in dealing with those children who have fallen behind a class,?that a lesson given to be clone, must be done. Work carried home to be done, brought incomplete with the statement "I didn't do it, I didn't have time" or "I didn't know how" or "I went over to Jean's house and we got to playing games so I forgot my lessons" must be done for the next day before anything new is taken up. One educational writer says the trouble is that children do not know how to obey, to do exactly what they are told. Never having to obey at home, they cannot do it at school. Generally speaking there is not very much use in sending work home It had better be done under the teacher's eyes, then we to be done. can avoid a great deal of waste in time and energy.
smiling
Some children will lose their lessons.
Bertha is
good girl
but
she loses her papers, she never knows what lessons were assigned. She forgets what was said or loses the pages she had marked. She is not sufficiently interested to remember the connection between tomorrow's lesson and today's, so as to be able to find it in the book. She is a trial?all teachers have seen her. She has not yet conquered her proclivity to lose things?her books, her sewing, her purse, her rubbers?she never knows where they are, but she is trying. Her mother has the same failing of losing and letting things go half finished. Can we blame the daughter? Loose papers are fastened to her history by means of patent-fasteners, and unless she loses her history, which is not improbable, they are there. In time we hope to teach her to take care of her possessions. In sharp contrast is Felicia, a little defective, who puts away materials before she goes. If she takes home a book, she her all She never forgets material remembers to bring it back next day. her deficient for mind cannot retain them. her lessons, affairs, only is to teacher teach the child "to get a of the task The special as one on his work'' principal expresses it. The teacher who has grasp
just graduated, or been at work only a few years, or who never investigates but keeps on doing the same thing year after year, will tell just what to do and how to do it. But where one has been experimenting and testing, say, for twenty years and has run up against
all kinds of snags in the way of children and parents, one realises how little is known about the much discussed "child-study" and how much has yet to be learned. Many of the books written upon
16
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
this inexhaustible subject do not seem to throw much light upon it. "The Backward Child" by Barbara Spofford Morgan gives many excellent devices and tests which, as she says, "do not require elaborate material nor involve unusual methods. They are intended to utilise the things that a child does every day and to make them serve the purpose of builidng up the mental faculties in which he She also states that any single kind of training is not a cure-all,?"The individual difficulty is the thing and any device, fantastic or obvious, which tends to remove that difficulty is the
is weak."
cure worth considering." With each individual the method may have to be different. A visitor was present when a deaf mute was brought by her mother The visitor heard much to see if she could be taught anything.
only
of the conversation with the mother. After they had gone, she became insistent to know what we were going to do, how we would begin the lessons. She was told, much to her disgust, we did not
know, it would depend entirely on how the thing worked out. With the troubled child the first point is to become acquainted so he will be The plan of operation works itself out. at his ease with the teacher. When one thinks of the multitude of things there are to do to interest a child, it would not seem hard to find something with which to begin. Different things are tried until one fits the case of this particular pupil. The special teacher has many books on all subjects, primers, readers, histories, arithmetics, English books?language and gramShe has blocks, cards, colored paper, beads, crayons, mar proper. dominoes, spelling books, sets of letters, toothpicks, pitcures, puzzles, a great variety of things and is getting more all the time. Children like to make something to illustrate their idea?draw pictures or cut paper?to help express their meaning, their words Sometimes these illustrations are groseem to them inadequate. unlike the and totally reality, but they seem to convey an tesque idea in the child's mind. Sometimes if they portray some object with which the pupil is unfamiliar, the teacher may discover wherein lies the wrong impression given by the description the child has heard. One of the funniest things ever seen was a set of drawings by a class of city children, many of them members of an orphanage family, showing a carrot, tops and tiny roots. Most of them knew a carrot only as seen in the markets, the results were queer yellow and green vegetables. The child's sense of proportion is also often little pupil was asked how large a playmate was. as a paste-board box which had held stockings.
sadly She
at fault.
said,
as
A
large
One did not need
THE USE OF METHODS AND DEVICES.
17
the playmate to know this was no comparison. After a little training in relative sizes, she could get it much nearer right. Little children may draw illustrations in their writing lessons, generally balls, and color them to learn the colors. They may be crude but
to
see
when the child can get one fairly round, she is proud of it. There's nothing like a child's imagination to help out reality. Sometimes when the pupil has had previous instruction it is advisable to take away the book with which he is to a degree familiar, and has studied with only a partial understanding and substitute an unknown book, because he may say when you designate a lesson, yes, we had
so fail to study it, though he thoroughly. You cannot interest him in it as you can in a new lesson though the new one is the same lesson with This is especially true of language work. a new setting. Arlene was a pupil during school vacation time. When asked to write a story about a picture or from an outline of a composition, she could not originate anything, but only write what the teacher or her
"Oh,
does not
really
I know it" and
that,
know it
A book was subschoolmates had said in class the term before. stituted, which she had never seen. Oral instruction, if things can can
be told in words
new
common
No
a way to
things one
hold the child's
or names can
has
he has ever
be
explained
attention,
is often
helpful
for
and illustrations taken from
seen.
been able to
expalin why
children
prefer
stories
about animals, especially those supposed to talk, to tales about real children. With the paper-bound books furnished by many educational publishing houses at five and ten cents each, one may get plenty of supplementary reading of the best quality. Current often have pretty stories, too, and attractive pictures. Do not think because you like a book the child must perforce enjoy it. Tastes differ in persons of a like age and a child's opinion
magazines
differs greatly from literary transition.
that of a grown-up, because of development and Some stories have never been known to fail When the reading must be very simple, the children, to interest. " especially the deficient ones, prefer The Three Bears'' to anything
They read and reread it, yet they seem to never tire of it. perhaps comes the story of the Goose that laid the Golden Eggs," which varies considerably in the telling, and one child
else. Next
"
adores "Mother Hubbard." Charles B. Gilbert says that school readers contain much "silly, idle thoughts," that do not really train the child mind at all, except in learning the words. One of that variety appeared not ago, such
long
a
before.
of words without any definite story was never met One was about a boy who went out and sat "on a wet,
jumble
18
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
"I think he was a silly boy," mossy rock," naturally he caught cold. said the little defective pupil, "anybody would know better than that." Mr. Gilbert continues that there is "an abundance of available material in the natural activities of children and in the delightful field of children's lore to equip any primer builder. Reading books
highest to lowest, should satisfy the two main desires behind all voluntary reading, getting information and finding enjoyment Children should come to look upon a and inspiration book as a treasure-house to be approached with glad anticipation." When one compares the old school and reading books of our ancestors with our modern works of art called readers, compares especially the famous New England Primer with its crude illustrafrom
tions in which you could almost tell wonderful that any child felt interest in it.
Yet
one can
a
tree from
enough
get excellent results from
unillustrated?it is far better than one with tally with the reading matter, for children are
a
man, it
in
reading
a
reader
seems
persist absolutely to
pictures that do not quick to detect these
incongruities. Standing
before the book-shelves in our public libraries, we the multitude of books upon child life and training, upon methods, upon every phase of the child problem, realise, too, the vastness of the subject. And yet, it may be questioned whether we are going
see
make, with all our investigations and our methods and devices general, better men and women than those who absorbed education in the primitive "little red school-house," or the log cabin of the to
in
decade before. ter is the first One
one has said,?"Discipline of mind and characall else is secondary to character building." may strive to do, assisted by the physicians, to
Some
object,
thing we wisely with the backward, the defective, the wayward; through a knowledge of his physical and mental misfortunes train him as far as possible to cease to be a burden to the community and to find some joy for himself in life. deal
Syracuse,
Ritter,
N. Y.
special teaching which is being done by the writer aims to why children do not get on in school. It endeavors to stimuthem to succeed, and especially to help the defective and
The discover late
deficient. Often the pupil continues in school but is tutored out of hours him up with his classes. This is frequently done at the recommendation of the teacher, who is not supposed to do tutoring in addition to her regular school work. In such cases the teacher sends a written statement of what the child lacks, what sort of work he is doing in school, and what he is expected to cover in that term's work. At first she sends a daily statement of lessons but after the
to
keep
first week it
usually fails to be sent. It would be difficult to determine whether she loses interest, or thinks the special teacher can her own
run
alone
ing
amounts to
responsibility, or whether she considers the teachlittle it is a waste of her time to send statements. At all events she accepts the word of the special teacher at the end of the term that all the ground has been covered which she designated. and we infer that the pupil showed improvement in his school on
so
work. Sometimes the special teacher has the entire training of the child when he is unfit to be with normal children in school. First it is necessary to find out how little or how much the pupil knows and wherein lies the trouble. There are various ways of ascertaining this. When one means is unsuccessful another is tried. Usually the first or second written lesson shows the deficiencies but Some children at the first lesson appear brighter than not always. they really are, for they throw all their energies into making a good impression. Some are not accustomed to doing written work and hesitate over it. Some are nervous or excited in oral work, especially in reciting to a stranger and do even worse than usual. Also sometimes they feel that the report given of them by teacher or parents
they were consigned to the tutor's care, showed them as hard who could not or would not learn. Naturally they are depressed by this feeling. To win the child's confidence first, then to teach him to have faith in his own ability and to respect himself is the
when cases
work of the teacher. After years of experience
one
naturally looks
(13)
for
physical
defects
14
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
cause the trouble when the child does not get on well at Often circumstances are found not conducive to study. Children who go auto-riding or upon long pleasure excursions all day Sunday are unfit for work Monday. They are, as they themselves express it, "just dead," that is they are tired out and the
that
might
school.
brain is
sluggish. Their fatigue affects their memory. They are irritable and easily get into quarrels. They have to drive themtheir selves to work, sometimes even writing is shaky, like that of or an elderly person. oneself being driven by a teacher is Driving The child not conducive to good work, and little is accomplished. used to come John or rest to home play. might just as well be sent It was discovered finally to school on Mondays completely used up. that his Sunday afternoons were given to long drives in the car, followed by visiting and a heavy dinner. The strain told. Evening performances of all kinds and late hours, especially when the child has taken part in the entertaining, tend to lower the standard of work he can do next day. It may sound severe, but a child ought not to be out in the evening at all during the school week. Of the "movies"?judge for yourself! It is not easy to convince parents that these activities have anything to do with poor lessons. They think the teacher is to blame if the child is not promoted, or the school board that devises too much work for their sensitive darlings. Here is a case in point. Mabel was not a poor student, in fact she could do fair work if she put time enough on it, but her mother had social ambitions.
Night after night Mabel had to be church or social function that she might catch a desirable husband, for Mabel was in the High School. She begged to be allowed to stay at home to study, but pleadings were of no driven to
some
avail, she had to go or there was a scene. The mother called her an ungrateful, selfish child to be unwilling to further these worldly ambitions. Consequently Mabel barely made her grades, and the mother declared favoritism was shown by the teachers, for her daughter was as bright as the honor students. The years have passed? Mabel is unmarried and with no definite profession, but having to her bread. Is there any known method of bringing the child to study profitably? Surely many of them. Of necessity the method varies according to the age, grade, and mental capacity of the child, also
earn
according to what is expected of him. If he is to keep up with a class in school, the work must conform somewhat at least with that being taught there. With the defective, many devices are necessary and infinite patience advances.
on
the part of parents and teachers
over
slow
THE USE OF METHODS AND DEVICES.
15
This being a specialty in teaching, the great point is to arouse These are read interest by any method or mixture of methods. about in magazines and books, then subjected to experiment. After a time one gets to know what is most likely to succeed but it is always well to watch for new suggestions. One idea becomes prominent in dealing with those children who have fallen behind a class,?that a lesson given to be clone, must be done. Work carried home to be done, brought incomplete with the statement "I didn't do it, I didn't have time" or "I didn't know how" or "I went over to Jean's house and we got to playing games so I forgot my lessons" must be done for the next day before anything new is taken up. One educational writer says the trouble is that children do not know how to obey, to do exactly what they are told. Never having to obey at home, they cannot do it at school. Generally speaking there is not very much use in sending work home It had better be done under the teacher's eyes, then we to be done. can avoid a great deal of waste in time and energy.
smiling
Some children will lose their lessons.
Bertha is
good girl
but
she loses her papers, she never knows what lessons were assigned. She forgets what was said or loses the pages she had marked. She is not sufficiently interested to remember the connection between tomorrow's lesson and today's, so as to be able to find it in the book. She is a trial?all teachers have seen her. She has not yet conquered her proclivity to lose things?her books, her sewing, her purse, her rubbers?she never knows where they are, but she is trying. Her mother has the same failing of losing and letting things go half finished. Can we blame the daughter? Loose papers are fastened to her history by means of patent-fasteners, and unless she loses her history, which is not improbable, they are there. In time we hope to teach her to take care of her possessions. In sharp contrast is Felicia, a little defective, who puts away materials before she goes. If she takes home a book, she her all She never forgets material remembers to bring it back next day. her deficient for mind cannot retain them. her lessons, affairs, only is to teacher teach the child "to get a of the task The special as one on his work'' principal expresses it. The teacher who has grasp
just graduated, or been at work only a few years, or who never investigates but keeps on doing the same thing year after year, will tell just what to do and how to do it. But where one has been experimenting and testing, say, for twenty years and has run up against
all kinds of snags in the way of children and parents, one realises how little is known about the much discussed "child-study" and how much has yet to be learned. Many of the books written upon
16
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
this inexhaustible subject do not seem to throw much light upon it. "The Backward Child" by Barbara Spofford Morgan gives many excellent devices and tests which, as she says, "do not require elaborate material nor involve unusual methods. They are intended to utilise the things that a child does every day and to make them serve the purpose of builidng up the mental faculties in which he She also states that any single kind of training is not a cure-all,?"The individual difficulty is the thing and any device, fantastic or obvious, which tends to remove that difficulty is the
is weak."
cure worth considering." With each individual the method may have to be different. A visitor was present when a deaf mute was brought by her mother The visitor heard much to see if she could be taught anything.
only
of the conversation with the mother. After they had gone, she became insistent to know what we were going to do, how we would begin the lessons. She was told, much to her disgust, we did not
know, it would depend entirely on how the thing worked out. With the troubled child the first point is to become acquainted so he will be The plan of operation works itself out. at his ease with the teacher. When one thinks of the multitude of things there are to do to interest a child, it would not seem hard to find something with which to begin. Different things are tried until one fits the case of this particular pupil. The special teacher has many books on all subjects, primers, readers, histories, arithmetics, English books?language and gramShe has blocks, cards, colored paper, beads, crayons, mar proper. dominoes, spelling books, sets of letters, toothpicks, pitcures, puzzles, a great variety of things and is getting more all the time. Children like to make something to illustrate their idea?draw pictures or cut paper?to help express their meaning, their words Sometimes these illustrations are groseem to them inadequate. unlike the and totally reality, but they seem to convey an tesque idea in the child's mind. Sometimes if they portray some object with which the pupil is unfamiliar, the teacher may discover wherein lies the wrong impression given by the description the child has heard. One of the funniest things ever seen was a set of drawings by a class of city children, many of them members of an orphanage family, showing a carrot, tops and tiny roots. Most of them knew a carrot only as seen in the markets, the results were queer yellow and green vegetables. The child's sense of proportion is also often little pupil was asked how large a playmate was. as a paste-board box which had held stockings.
sadly She
at fault.
said,
as
A
large
One did not need
THE USE OF METHODS AND DEVICES.
17
the playmate to know this was no comparison. After a little training in relative sizes, she could get it much nearer right. Little children may draw illustrations in their writing lessons, generally balls, and color them to learn the colors. They may be crude but
to
see
when the child can get one fairly round, she is proud of it. There's nothing like a child's imagination to help out reality. Sometimes when the pupil has had previous instruction it is advisable to take away the book with which he is to a degree familiar, and has studied with only a partial understanding and substitute an unknown book, because he may say when you designate a lesson, yes, we had
so fail to study it, though he thoroughly. You cannot interest him in it as you can in a new lesson though the new one is the same lesson with This is especially true of language work. a new setting. Arlene was a pupil during school vacation time. When asked to write a story about a picture or from an outline of a composition, she could not originate anything, but only write what the teacher or her
"Oh,
does not
really
I know it" and
that,
know it
A book was subschoolmates had said in class the term before. stituted, which she had never seen. Oral instruction, if things can can
be told in words
new
common
No
a way to
things one
hold the child's
or names can
has
he has ever
be
explained
attention,
is often
helpful
for
and illustrations taken from
seen.
been able to
expalin why
children
prefer
stories
about animals, especially those supposed to talk, to tales about real children. With the paper-bound books furnished by many educational publishing houses at five and ten cents each, one may get plenty of supplementary reading of the best quality. Current often have pretty stories, too, and attractive pictures. Do not think because you like a book the child must perforce enjoy it. Tastes differ in persons of a like age and a child's opinion
magazines
differs greatly from literary transition.
that of a grown-up, because of development and Some stories have never been known to fail When the reading must be very simple, the children, to interest. " especially the deficient ones, prefer The Three Bears'' to anything
They read and reread it, yet they seem to never tire of it. perhaps comes the story of the Goose that laid the Golden Eggs," which varies considerably in the telling, and one child
else. Next
"
adores "Mother Hubbard." Charles B. Gilbert says that school readers contain much "silly, idle thoughts," that do not really train the child mind at all, except in learning the words. One of that variety appeared not ago, such
long
a
before.
of words without any definite story was never met One was about a boy who went out and sat "on a wet,
jumble
18
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
"I think he was a silly boy," mossy rock," naturally he caught cold. said the little defective pupil, "anybody would know better than that." Mr. Gilbert continues that there is "an abundance of available material in the natural activities of children and in the delightful field of children's lore to equip any primer builder. Reading books
highest to lowest, should satisfy the two main desires behind all voluntary reading, getting information and finding enjoyment Children should come to look upon a and inspiration book as a treasure-house to be approached with glad anticipation." When one compares the old school and reading books of our ancestors with our modern works of art called readers, compares especially the famous New England Primer with its crude illustrafrom
tions in which you could almost tell wonderful that any child felt interest in it.
Yet
one can
a
tree from
enough
get excellent results from
unillustrated?it is far better than one with tally with the reading matter, for children are
a
man, it
in
reading
a
reader
seems
persist absolutely to
pictures that do not quick to detect these
incongruities. Standing
before the book-shelves in our public libraries, we the multitude of books upon child life and training, upon methods, upon every phase of the child problem, realise, too, the vastness of the subject. And yet, it may be questioned whether we are going
see
make, with all our investigations and our methods and devices general, better men and women than those who absorbed education in the primitive "little red school-house," or the log cabin of the to
in
decade before. ter is the first One
one has said,?"Discipline of mind and characall else is secondary to character building." may strive to do, assisted by the physicians, to
Some
object,
thing we wisely with the backward, the defective, the wayward; through a knowledge of his physical and mental misfortunes train him as far as possible to cease to be a burden to the community and to find some joy for himself in life. deal
