Experiments and Studies which aim to supply both Individual Instruction and Class Instruction
The indefensible reasons given above for advancing pupils ought to make anyone who expects to become a teacher the more ready to turn to the careful study of the problem. It is undoubtedly a social and financial necessity that pupils be grouped in classes. It is equally necessary for purposes of administration that the groups have some kind of permanency and some degree of internal uniformity. It is certainly legitimate that the individual’s needs be asserted to the extent of freeing him from absolute subordination to the interests of the group.
Such a statement of the case would seem to dictate a double type of instruction which will recognize more than does the present rigid class system the need of individual freedom and the value of class solidarity.
Many experiments have been tried in the effort to solve this problem. The Batavia system, so called, puts two teachers into a room, one to supervise individual work and one to teach groups. There are various systems of individual promotion which advance a pupil whenever he is ready.
Recently Principal Allen[40] of the high school of Springfield, Illinois, has developed a system of supervised study in which the students put themselves through certain prepared exercises and in this part of their work receive individual help and are allowed to progress at their own individual rate. Later the class meets for recitation as a group. The recitation group is made to depend for its composition on the rate at which students complete the individual exercises. The class is accordingly readjusted frequently, and in order to provide time for individual work the length of its meetings is somewhat less than the conventional high-school period.
The instructional plan thus arranged requires certain readjustments of the program and certain divisions of labor among the teachers which differ from the ordinary. But, above all, it calls for the separation of those aspects of the subjects of instruction which are suitable for individual work from those aspects which are suited to class exercises.