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Show j Educational Reforms Absorb Good and Evil Points of Predecessors Ey DAVID KIXLEY, President University of Illinois. FASHION in a large measure, dominates methods of teaching and administration. We constantly delude ourselves with the thought that we are improving our methods of teaching and our forms of organization by changing from old ways to some alleged new' ones. One reform which one of the greatest of American educators made when he became president of Harvard university was the introduction of the lecture system to replace the recitation system that had prevailed. That system had become dry, mechanical, a mere matter of memory and rote. Its evils were evident. We must have "the inspiration and freshness of the expert teacher and investigator in lectures," became then the cry of reform. The advantages of the lecture system loomed large. Its disadvantages were unknown or passed over. Now the movement is reversed. This and other educational reforms are, in one respect, like all reforms. We compare the evils of the existing system with the good of the proposed new ones. So we swing over, abandoning the good of the one, as well as its evils, and taking on the evils of the other, as well as its good. We may gain little or nothing by swinging from recitation, question and answer, to "class discussion," to class debates and other methods supposed to "make the student do the work." "All of them are but devi-ces to attract the attention and arouse the interest of the student. They may succeed in getting him to go through the external motions of learning and of being interested in his studies, hut may fail to bring him the rich reward that comes from interest in the subject rather than in the method of approach to it. |
