Danger in Mere Repetition.—In connection with the repetition necessary in the second stage of the drill lesson, an important precaution should be noted. It is impossible for anybody to repeat anything attentively many times in succession unless there is some new element noted in each repetition. When there is no longer a new element, the repetition becomes mechanical, and hence comparatively useless so far as acquisition of knowledge or even habit is concerned. To ask a pupil who has difficulty with a combination in addition, or a product in multiplication, or the spelling of a word, to repeat it many times in succession, may be not only waste of time, but even worse, because a tendency toward mind-wandering may be encouraged. The practice of requiring pupils to write out new words, or words that have been mis-spelled in the dictation lesson, five, ten, or twenty times successively, cannot be too strongly condemned. The attention cannot possibly be concentrated upon the work beyond two or three repetitions, and the fact that pupils frequently make mistakes two or three words down the column and repeat this mistake to the end, is sufficient proof of the mechanical nature of the process. The little boy who had difficulty with the use of "went" and "gone," and was commanded by his teacher to write "I have gone" a hundred times on his slate, illustrates this principle exactly. He had been left to finish his task alone and, after writing "I have gone" faithfully forty or fifty times, grew tired of the monotony of the process. Turning the slate over, he wrote on the other side, "I have went home" and left it on the desk for the teacher's approval.
How to Overcome Dangers.—To avoid this difficulty, some device must be adopted to secure attention to each repetition until the knowledge is firmly fixed. For instance, instead of asking the pupil many times one after the other, what seven times six are, it would be better to introduce other combinations and come back frequently to seven times six. In that way the pupil would have to attend to it every time it came up. Similarly, in learning to spell a troublesome word like "separate," the best plan would be to mix it up with other words and come back to it often. Repetition is always necessary in the drill lesson, but it should always be repetition with attention.
THE REVIEW LESSON
Purpose of Review Lesson.—As the name implies, a review is a new view of old knowledge. While the drill lesson repeats the matter in the same form as it was originally learned, the review lesson repeats the matter from another standpoint or in new relations. The function of the review lesson is the organization of the material of a series of lessons into an inter-connected whole, and incidentally the fixing of these facts in the mind by the additional repetitions.
Kinds of Review.—Almost every lesson gives opportunities for incidental reviews. The step of preparation recalls old ideas in new connections, and may be properly considered a review. A lesson on the "gerund" in grammar would require a recall of the various relations in which a noun may stand, and the various ways in which a verb may be completed. It is quite probable that the pupils have never before brought these facts together in an organized way. Similarly, the step of expression affords opportunity for review. The solution of problems in simple interest confronts the pupils with new situations in which this principle can be applied. The reproduction of the matter of the history lesson requires the selection of the important facts from the mass of details given and the placing of these in their proper relationship to one another.
But besides the incidental reviews which form a part of nearly all lessons, there must be lessons which are purely reviews. Without these, the pupil, because of insufficient repetition, would rapidly forget the facts he had once learned or would never really know the facts at all, because he had not seen them in all their connections. There are two methods of conducting these reviews: (1) by means of the topical outline, (2) by means of the method of comparison.
THE TOPICAL REVIEW
Purpose of Topical Outlines.—By this method the pupil gets a bird's-eye view of a whole field. In learning the matter originally, his attention was largely concentrated upon the individual facts, and it is quite probable that he has since lost sight of some of the threads of unity running through them. The topical outline will bring these into prominence. It will enable the pupil to keep in his mind the most important headings of a subject, the sub-headings, and the individual facts coming under these. Whatever may be said against the practice of memorizing topical outlines, it must be acknowledged that unless it is done the pupil's knowledge of the subject is likely to be very hazy, indefinite, and disconnected.
Illustrations from History.—As an illustration of the review lesson by means of the topical outline, take the history of the Hudson's Bay Company. If the pupil has followed the order of the text-book, he has probably learned this subject in pieces—a bit here, another some pages later, and still another a few chapters farther on. In the multiplicity of other events, he has probably missed the connections among the facts, and a topical review will be necessary to establish these. He may be required to go through his history text-book, reading all the parts relating to the Hudson's Bay Company. He will thus get a grasp of the relationships among the facts, and this will be made firmer if an outline such as the following is worked out with the assistance of the teacher.
THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY