The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Recitation, by George Herbert Betts

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Title: The Recitation

Author: George Herbert Betts

Release Date: June 26, 2006 [eBook #18698]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECITATION***

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Riverside Educational Monographs

Edited by Henry Suzzallo
President of the University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

THE RECITATION

by

GEORGE HERBERT BETTS, Ph. D.

Professor of Psychology
Cornell College, Iowa

Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston New York Chicago San Francisco
The Riverside Press Cambridge
Copyright, 1910, by George Herbert Betts
Copyright, 1911, by Houghton Mifflin Company

CONTENTS

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

I. THE PURPOSES OF THE RECITATION

II. THE METHOD OF THE RECITATION

III. THE ART OF QUESTIONING

IV. CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO A GOOD RECITATION

V. THE ASSIGNMENT OF THE LESSON

OUTLINE

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

Teachers are not always clear as to what they mean when they speak of
the recitation. Many different meanings are associated with the term.
Some of these are suggestive but quite vague; and others, although
more definite, are but partial truths that hinder as much as they
help. It is not surprising that a confused usage of the term is
current among teachers.

From one point of view, the recitation is a recitation-period, a
segment of the daily time schedule. In this sense it is an
administrative unit, valuable in apportioning to each school subject
its part of the time devoted to the curriculum. Thus, we speak of five
recitations in arithmetic, three in music, or two in drawing, having
in mind merely the number of times the class meets for instruction in
a particular school study. A recitation here means no more than a
class-period, a more or less arbitrary device for controlling the
teacher's and pupils' distribution of energy among the various
subjects taught.

From another point of v