Excerpt from School Records-an Experiment

A mere list of subject matter topics is of use neither to a new teacher nor to parents. Catalogues of private schools are obliged to add photographs to show the children's active use of the subject presented. The actual response of the children is needed to tell the tale. Tradi tional subject matter terms do not describe these reactions. History the Revolutionary War gives no real information. The following notes show what the children did: The class paid three visits to the ruins of an old fort. They read up local history between visits, and reconstructed the positions of the two armies on the spot, comparing their respective advantages and disadvantages. These comparisons unexpectedly led to the discovery that the course of the stream close by had changed since revolutionary days, and the discussions that followed formed a new topic which required a good deal of research by the children in geography books.

The teacher of a new class cannot afford to neglect the information about the class contained in the preceding teacher's notes. A teacher of eight-year-old children did not look up what their teacher of the year before had written about them. Her own notes criticised their slowness in arithmetic. She said she had tried having a match, which the children were not familiar with. In this case it was the teacher who was not familiar with her children. The notes of their previous teacher showed that they had delighted in all sorts of arithmetic games and matches the year before. When, in January, the second teacher read the previous year's notes of these children she frankly admitted that she her self. Had confused and retarded them by not finding out what they had done before. She had asked for quantitative reports, - how many, how much of each kind of subject matter, and for some time she was not interested in concrete reports Of the children's responses, or how children use material, but only in what she or a preceding teacher had presented.

Important facts to get into a record are those which tell whether the subject noted has developed spontaneous activity on the part of the children, and what conditions, or what treatment of the subject by the teacher helped to bring spontaneous response from the children. The notes of a teacher of seven-year-old children show their active use Of number and the spontaneous drill they gave each other in order to achieve a group response.

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