"The sum and substance of my recommendations is that you provide a competently trained instructor, and let him teach psychology as he best can. What the student needs is the effect of an individuality, a personality; and the lecture system provides admirably for such effect."
The recitation
Though the lecture system is used with great success by a number of professors, the general practice inclines more to the plan of oral recitations on assigned readings in one or more texts, and large classes are often handled in several divisions in order to make the recitation method successful. Not infrequently a combination of lectures by the professor and recitations conducted by his assistants is the plan adopted, the lecturer to add impressiveness to the course, and the recitations to hold the student up to his work. Written exercises, such as those already mentioned, are often combined with the oral recitation; and in some cases themes are to be written by the students. Probably the seminar method, in which the subject is chiefly presented in themes prepared by the students, is never attempted in the introductory course.
Class discussion
On the other hand, a number of successful teachers reject both the lecture and the recitation methods, and rely for the most part upon class discussions, with outside readings in the textbooks, and frequent written recitations as a check on the student's work. A champion of the discussion method writes as follows:[[55]]
"A teacher has not the right to spend any considerable part of the time of a class in finding out by oral questions ... whether or not the student has done the work assigned to him. The good student does not need the questions and is bored by the stumbling replies which he hears; and even the poor student does not get what he needs, which is either instruction a deux, or else a corrected written recitation.... Not in this futile way should the instructor squander the short hours spent with his students. The purpose of these hours is twofold: first, to give to the students such necessary information as they cannot gain, or cannot so expediently gain, in some other way; second, and most important, to incite them to 'psychologize' for themselves. The first of these purposes is best gained by the lecture, the second by guided discussion. 'Guided discussion' does not mean a reversal of the recitation process—an hour in which students ask questions in any order, and of any degree of relevancy and seriousness, which the instructor answers. On the contrary, the instructor initiates and leads the discussion; he chooses its subject, maps out its field, pulls it back when it threatens to transgress its bonds, and, from time to time, summarizes its results. This he does, however, with the least possible show of his hand. He puts his question and leaves it to the student interested to answer him; he restates the bungling answer and the confused question; he leaves one student to answer the difficulties of another.... The advantage of the discussion over the lecture is, thus, that it fosters in the student the active attitude of the thinker in place of the passive attitude of the listener.... Obviously it is simplest to teach large classes by lecturing to them. Yet a spirited and relevant discussion may be conducted in a class of a hundred or so. Of course no more than eight or twelve, or, at most, twenty of these will take even a small part on a given day; perhaps a half or two thirds will never take part; and some will remain uninterested. But there will be many intelligent listeners as well as active participants; and these gain more, I believe, by the give and take of a good discussion than by constant lectures however effective."
Class experiments
Brief mention should be made of a form of class exercise peculiar to psychology, the "class experiment." This is in some respects like a demonstration, but differs from that in calling for a more active participation on the part of the student. Any psychological experiment is performed on a human (or animal) subject, and many experiments can be performed on a group of subjects together, each of them being called on to perform a certain task or to make a certain observation. Each of the class having made his individual record, the instructor may gather them together into an average or summary statement, and the individual variations as well as the general tendency may thus be brought to light. Very satisfactory and even scientific experiments can thus be performed, with genuine results instructive to the class.
Checking the work of the students
Of methods of holding the student to his work, mention has already been made of the much-used written recitation. The usual plan is to have frequent, very brief written examinations. Sometimes the practice is to correct and return all the papers; sometimes to place them all on file and correct samples chosen at random for determining the student's "term mark." A plan that has some psychological merit is to follow the examination immediately by a statement of the correct answers, with brief discussion of difficulties that may arise, and to ask each student to estimate the value of his own paper in the standard marking system. The papers are then collected and examined, and returned with the instructor's estimate.