Third, there should be variety in the program. The nervous system is made up of many different centers. The variation of occupations brings different centers successively into play and gives to each the opportunity of relaxation which is most wholesome. A long school day with much variety is eminently more rational than a short session of work of a single type concentrated into a few hours.
Administrative Considerations controlling Length of the Class Period
When recommending variations in the program we collide with what may seem at first to be an insuperable difficulty. It is impossible from an administrative point of view to have class exercises of irregular lengths. Imagine what would happen if the mathematics teacher should dismiss his class after a recitation of twenty-seven minutes, and the Latin teacher should hold his for fifty-three minutes. For administrative reasons class periods must be measured by the clock.
This leads to certain absurdities in school organization. For example, in order to regularize credits in high schools a unit of credit has been defined as a certain number of hours of class work. A moment’s consideration makes it perfectly clear that an English class consisting of thirty freshmen will do less intensive work in a forty-minute period than will an advanced senior class of four students in trigonometry. The administrative fiction of uniformity when like credit is given for these two classes is grotesque.
The assignment of a double period to laboratory classes is likewise a concession to administrative convenience rather than a carefully weighed arrangement. It is easier to make up periods in multiples of the standard recitation time. But it is by no means clear that the sciences can profitably use double periods. The internal adjustment of laboratory work needs more careful study than it has received in the past. The laboratory method, as shown in an earlier chapter, is one which has excited great enthusiasm. Many a laboratory assignment which does not fill the time allotted to it is tolerated because of the vague general enthusiasm for the method and the formal arrangement of double periods.
Adjustment of Work within the Period
Such examples as these show from a new angle the importance of the movement for supervised study which was described in an earlier chapter. The teacher in charge of the class must ultimately have at hand various devices, some intended to give play to individual differences, some intended to promote social coöperation. Then, while administrative necessity dictates a uniform period for the class exercise, the educational needs of the students can be met by variations in the content and method of instruction.
Adjustment of Credits
Such a formula as this dictates also the recognition in an administrative way of the differences between the work performed by different students. There has been of late an increasing recognition of the justice of giving pupils different degrees of credit for work which they do in one and the same course. The student who carries a course in algebra with a high grade undoubtedly learns more than the student who does low-grade work in the same class.