DALTON TEACHING METHOD

Evening Star, Issue 18288, 30 May 1923, Page 9

DALTON TEACHING METHOD

TRIAL IN OTAGO. HEAD MASTER CONSIDERS IT SUCCESSFUL. In their report to tho department, the Otago inspectors state: A modified form of what is known as the Dalton plan has’for some months been in operation in a division of a secondary department of a district high school, the subjects treated being English, history, algebra, and mathematics. The head master considers it has been successful, and proposes to extend the method to the senior classes and to include geography and geometry. Tho inspectors are inclined to recommend that, for the present, experiments of this nature should be confined to the secondary department, the primary pupils being, they think, too immature mentally to work independently of tho help and guidance of the teacher. The Dalton plan is a scheme of educational reorganisation applicable to tho school work of pupils from eight to eighteen years of age. It aims at giving the child "freedom, making the school a community where the mutual interaction of groups is possible, and it approaches the whole problem s>f work from the pupil’s point of view, giving him more responsibility for and interest in his education. The form roams become subject laboratories. wherein are collected all the books and apparatus relative to the particular subjects. The pupils are still grouped in forms for convenience sake. Certain modifications, however, may well be made use of where these are thought to be beneficial: in fact, several of these were used in Otago schools before the name was coined. Some teachers allow the brighter pupils, who show that they have mastered the difficulties of a new rule, to attack independently more advanced work, while the teacher assists the more backward pupils to assimiliate the principles of tho ordinary class lesson, thus allowing the quicker scholars to extend their powers to a higher degree than they otherwise would. Sometimes tho group or team system is used in the upper classes, when the brighter pupils act as captains and are partly responsible for tho progress of the members of their team; at tho same time they are making themselves more efficient, as the best way to_ master a subject thoroughly is to teach it. In adopting plans of this kind, teachers must be careful not to fall into the error that merely acquiring a knowledge of facts from text books is education (continues the report). Teaching has been said to consist in the presentation of the best conditions for the exercise of judgment. The teacher, by skilful questions, can lead pupils to reason out results in connection with the subjects studied, and he should always have a definite purpose in framing the questions so as to lead his pupils to make original inferences. One authority has said that original inference is the highest test of knowledge, which is power. This training in reasoning_is freely made use of in connection with geography, grammar, and arithmetic, but we should like to see it applied more in connection with the teaching history. The mere memorising of certain statements from text books is not going to be of much assistance to our pupils when they pass out into the world and have to exercise their functions as citizens. They should be trained to see that in the past, whenever trouble arose in the State or changes took place in any matters pertaining to the welfare of the people, there was always more than one side to the question, and that the citizens of old had to consider both sides carefully and make their decision as to which they should support.