Proper organization as a factor in effective teaching
A well-organized lesson possesses teaching merits which may counteract almost all the usual weaknesses found in poor teaching. Good organization determines clearness of comprehension, ease of retention, and ability of recall; it makes for economy of time and mental energy; it simplifies the processes of mental assimilation; it teaches the student, indirectly but effectively, to think sequentially. We have all suffered too keenly, as auditors and readers, the inconveniences of poor organization, not to realize the worth of proper organization of knowledge in teaching.
Organization of knowledge has become a pedagogical slogan, but its increase in popularity has not been accompanied by increased clearness of comprehension of its meaning. What, then, is meant by proper organization? It must ever be borne in mind that proper organization is a relative condition, the limits of which are determined by the capacities of the students and the nature of the subject matter. What is effective organization of facts in elementary history may be very ineffective organization for students of high school or college grade. Making due allowance for relative conditions, good organization may be said to consist of five essential characteristics.
Logical sequence is the first of these. It is apparent that the more rational the sequence of facts, the more effective is the organization of knowledge. Data organized on a basis of cause and effect, similarity, contrast or any other logical relationship will help to secure the teaching advantages we have mentioned. A search for this simple principle in most textbooks on American or English history or literature reveals its complete absence. A detailed mass of historical information grouped into administrations or reigns is merely a mechanical organization in which time, the accidental element, and not the development of social movements, the logic of human history, is the determining factor. In too many courses in literature the student learns names of writers, biographical data, and literary characteristics of the masters, but fails to see the development of the movement of which the writer was a part. Events of history placed in their social movements, writers in literature placed in the school in which they belong, give the student the logical ties which bind the knowledge to him. So, too, one often analyzes the sequence of chapters in an advanced algebra or a trigonometry and fails to discover the governing rationale. It must be remembered, however, that the nature of the subject will often reduce the logical element in its organization. Instances in language teaching may be cited as illustrations of teaching situations where a mechanical organization is often the only one possible because of the arbitrary character of the subject matter.
Meaning of organization of subject matter
Relativity of importance is the second factor of good organization. A cursory study of a well-organized chapter or merely passing attention to a well-organized lecture reveals at once a distinct difference in the emphasis on the various parts or elements of the subject. The proportional allotment of time or space, the number of illustrations, the number of questions asked on a given point, the force of language—these are all means of bringing out the relative importance of constituent topics or principles. In retrospect, a well-organized lesson presents an appearance similar to a contour map; each part stands out in distinctive color according to its significance.
It is frequently argued by teachers that students of college age should be required to distinguish the relativity of importance of the parts of a lesson or the topics in a subject; that the instructor who points out the changing importance of each succeeding part of a lesson is enervating the student by doing for him what he ought to do for himself. This is true in part, but it must be realized that the instructor who through questions and directed discussions leads students to formulate for themselves the relative importance of data is not only carrying out the suggestion made in the preceding paragraph but is also developing in his students a power they too frequently lack. Those who have studied the notes that students take in their classes have seen how frequently facts are torn from their moorings; how wrong principles are derived from illustrations; how a catch-phrase becomes a basic principle; how simple truths and axioms are distorted in the frenzy of note taking. Through questions if possible, through emphasis on illustrations and explanations, where no other means is available, students must be made to see that all facts of a subject are not of the same hue, that some are faint of tint, others in shadow, and still others in high colors. Without this relativity of importance, facts are grouped; with it, they are intelligently organized.
An underlying tendency can be discerned in well-organized knowledge. Not only are facts arranged in logical sequence and emphasized according to importance, but there is in addition a central principle or an underlying purpose giving unifying force to them all. We can illustrate the need of this third characteristic of good organization by referring to a college course in American history which gives much time to the period from 1815 to 1860. The events of these forty-five years are not taught in administrations but are summed up in six national tendencies; viz., the questions of state sovereignty, slavery, territorial acquisition, tariff, industrial and transportational progress, and foreign policy. Each of these movements is treated as intensively as time permits. At the end of the study of the entire period, the student is left with these six topics but without a unifying principle; to him, these are six unrelated currents of events. In each of these problems the North and the South displayed distinctive attitudes, acted from distinctive motives, expressed distinctive needs and preferences, but these were never brought out either through well-formulated questions or through explanation. As a result, the class never realize fully that those years, 1815-1860, marked the period of growing sectional differences, misunderstandings, and animosities. Had this underlying tendency been brought out clearly at various points in the course, the students would have carried away a permanent impression of what is most vital in this period of American development.
Gradation of subject matter is another characteristic of good organization. Careful gradation is not so vital in subjects of social content as it is in mathematics, foreign languages, and exact sciences. The most important single factor in removing difficulties that beset a student is gradation. Teaching problems often arise because the instructor or the textbook presents more than one difficulty at a time. Teachers who lack intellectual sympathy or who are so lost in the advanced stages of their specialty that they can no longer image the successive steps of difficulty, one by one, that present themselves to a mind inexperienced in their respective fields, are frequently guilty of this pedagogical error. Malgradation of subject matter is the direct cause of serious loss of time and energy and of needless discouragement not only to students but to instructors as well.
Ability of the student to summarize easily is a test of good organization. At the end of a loosely organized chapter or lesson the student experiences no little difficulty in setting forth the underlying principles and their supporting data. It does not help much to have the textbook or the instructor state the summary either at the end of the lesson in question or at the beginning of the succeeding one. The summary of a lesson, given by the class, is a test of the effectiveness of instruction. Summaries given by teachers or textbooks have little or no pedagogical justification. Only in cases where the summary introduces a new point of view or unifying principles, or when it sets forth basic principles in particularly forceful language—only then is the statement by teacher or textbook justifiable.