EXTRACTS FROM MISS BURSTALL’S RECENT WORK, “IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION.”
Miss Sara A. Burstall, head mistress of the Manchester (England) High School for Girls, traveled in the United States during the year 1908, studying and inspecting American educational systems. Miss Burstall has written out her experiences in America in a book entitled “Impressions of American Education in 1908.” The author was particularly interested in the teaching of history in American schools. The following extracts are printed in the belief that American teachers would desire “to see themselves as others see them.” In the chapter on “Method” occur the following statements:
“Recitation is indeed an accurate description of what one hears, sitting in an American class-room; the pupil stands up and recites what he has learnt, whether from the standard text-book or from other sources. The teacher may question some statement in order to make sure that the pupil understands what he has said, other pupils will also question it. A girl will put up her hand and (the teacher giving permission by looking in her direction) will say, ‘But I thought that I read in——’ and will proceed to give some other view of the subject. A general discussion will follow which the teacher will not authoritatively close by giving her correct opinion; she will pass on to another part of the subject and ask another pupil to recite what he or she has learnt about it. If the reciter makes an error the teacher will call upon another pupil to correct it; very rarely does the teacher make a correction herself, and still more rarely does she express her opinion. We were not struck by the good English or excellence of oral composition which we heard. The American boys and girls did not do any better in this respect than the English girls we know. One can hardly expect fluent, elegant oral descriptions and accounts except from practiced speakers. With a class of thirty or forty and a lesson period of forty-five minutes obviously not all in the class recite; quite half may take no share except as listeners. The presumption is that they have learnt up their work, that they are interested in listening to what others say about it; their turn will come next day, and in any case it is to their interest to follow carefully what goes on.
“Three criticisms must occur to even a sympathetic English teacher: first, the possibility of what in England would be a probable waste of time to the listeners. Americans say that these, though they often look indifferent and inattentive, are really attending; they are used to the method and they play the game, so to speak, by listening attentively as well as by reciting readily when their turn comes. Second, the whole thing is very dull and slow; each pupil speaks very slowly, with very little grace of delivery or beauty of language, such as might be expected from the teacher, and nothing like the same amount of ground is covered as is the case in a lesson on the oral method. With the recitation method in England we should not arouse sufficient interest to get the best out of our pupils; we could not get through the work we have to do in the time, nor would English boys and girls be sufficiently quick and clever to understand the difficulties in geometry, for example, or in Latin or French grammar, unless they had clear and skilful explanations from the teacher, who presumably understands the art of making things clear. Americans would probably say that their students are quick enough and earnest enough to make progress without this careful exposition and without this atmosphere of interest and intellectual stimulus, and there is probably some truth in the reply. Our pupils too often do not want to work, and their minds do move more slowly. We have been obliged to find ways of making class-work attractive, either by intellectual stimulus and interest, or by rewards and punishments, since we have not that strong outside belief in education which makes the task of the American teacher much more easy. It is also true that the examination demand has forced us to explain clearly to the duller pupils in the class difficulties which the cleverer ones could see through for themselves. Probably here Americans are right and we are wrong; we make the work too easy by, as it were, peptonizing the lesson material, before giving it to the hungry sheep who look up to us to be fed. Our aim has been to help them to assimilate the knowledge required, not to develop in them the power to grapple with new material. This aim the American recitation system undoubtedly develops, and this is one of its great merits.
“Our third criticism is that the teacher appears to do too little; her share in the lesson is at a minimum; the new ideas do not come from her, her influence is indirect. Here, again, the American would say, so much the better. The democratic ideal is undoubtedly one cause for the existence and the popularity of the recitation method. The teacher and the pupils are very much on a level. She is not teaching them; she acts rather as chairman of the meeting, the object of which is to ascertain whether they have studied for themselves in a text-book, and what they think about the material they have been studying. Clearly, then, the master is the text-book, and here we strike on a vital peculiarity of American education. Its aim has been intellectually the mastery of books; with us education has always been very much more, always and everywhere, a personal relation. The children learn from the master or mistress with or without the aid of a book.”
“The rise of the method can be explained from historical causes; in the old ungraded rural school of America, meeting perhaps only for a few months in the year, taught, it may be, by a woman in the summer, and a man in the winter, there could be no classification or organization. Each pupil worked through an authorized text-book, much as in the old Scottish rural school, when a plowman might come back for a couple of months to rub up his arithmetic or English in the book if he did not finish before leaving school. The teacher went around and helped individual pupils over difficulties, or heard them ‘recite’ the lesson they had each learnt, while the others went on with their own tasks. Then when the schools came to be graded, a number of pupils at about the same stage could recite together out of the book, and so the recitation method developed, evolved by the American genius for invention to fit the necessities of the position. Among these conditions was the absence of a body of experienced and skilled teachers; much of the work was done by all sorts of people, many with very scanty qualifications, who would ‘teach school’ for a few months to earn enough to go on with some other occupation. Such people could not be in the true sense of the word teachers; they could ‘conduct recitations’ and engage in the friendly questioning and discussion as an equal, which the American method implies. When first-rate, highly qualified, skilled teachers come to play on this instrument they bring forth from it a wonderful result.
“The writer was fortunate enough to see some very fine work by a woman teacher, brilliant, systematized, full of interest and fire, the pupils really taking part and bringing their material which the teacher skillfully percussed so that it kindled. Indeed, the recitation method at its best and our own oral method are almost identical in effect; and far excel as educational instruments anything that can be attained by lectures. But how rarely is it seen at its best? At its worst, of course, it becomes mere memoriter repetition out of the text-book with very little intelligence anywhere; any teacher would do this who could keep order.
“It is hoped that this imperfect sketch may at least afford some idea of what is to be seen in the United States by a teacher of history, and of what we can learn from them. Probably there is more to be learnt in this subject by English students of American education than in any other, and the study is the more interesting and profitable since the evolution of the present condition of history teaching there is so recent. The present writer can only say that she has heard finer history teaching in more than one American institution than she ever heard in England, though her experiences here have been fortunate, and that such teaching has set for her an ideal standard of professional skill in our difficult art. England might learn, too, from the life and vigor of the subject in the common schools, the breadth and thoughtfulness and the self-reliance in the history classes of secondary schools, and the volume and power of the historical work in the colleges and technological institutes.
“The equipment is well worth our imitation if only we could get the money for it. Every good high school has a room or rooms for the history lessons; cases of maps to be drawn down when required—a product of the American skill in mechanical appliances—are universal, and an average high school has a better supply of these maps than some of our colleges. Pictures of every sort abound.
“It is the opinion of one of the leading American authorities on the teaching of history, herself a distinguished teacher, that there is a very real increase of intellectual interest; some of it may be superficial, but it is at least widespread. A nidus has been formed and there is a real advance in the subject.