head of habit-formation and the recitation lesson we shall treat further of the type of learning in which ideas are used. The learning of ideals, attitudes, and appreciations will also be treated under topics of the teaching process. Teaching is but the supervision of the learning process, and any discussion of the one process involves discussion of the other. In his "Psychology of the Common Branches," Professor Freeman has discussed the learning process in direct connection with the elementary-school subjects. In his "How Children Learn," he has covered the ground of this chapter and more. In his volume on "The Learning Process," Professor Colvin has treated the more general aspects as has Thorndike in his "Educational Psychology." Each teacher can and must be a first-hand student of this most interesting and important process in the world. It is said that Germany spent a hundred million dollars in publicity work that changed the minds of the Russians and led to easy victory. The science of mind-building in children and adults has all the fascination of invention and discovery. SUMMARY 1. Knowledge of the nature of children and the learning process is extremely important and rapidly increasing. 2. Learning is largely physical and it has a health and development basis. 3. The physical basis of learning has been sadly overlooked and from one-third to two-thirds of American children to-day are seriously hindered in their growth, both mental and physical, by serious ailments and defects. Teachers must learn to help discover, cure, and prevent such hindrances to the learning process. 4. The learning process is fundamentally one of adjusting oneself mentally and physically to life's needs and situations. 5. It is always a mental and physical process when at its best. We learn to meet life's needs and situations by meeting them. Guidance, reflection, and study of the situations and conditions help to economize and hasten the process. 6. The great individual differences in the nature and in the life needs of individuals must always be studied and considered. 7. Instincts, natural impulses, and interests are the natural resources of education. These inherited mental connections keep the child alive and ready to be doing things to learn. Put children in the best possible environment and help them to learn to respond to it socially. 8. Children learn best by meeting situations themselves through their own self-activity. Most teachers err in doing things for children and telling them what they think they should know. Education is a constant self-active reconstruction of experience in the direction of a socialized, cultured, efficient individual. 9. Habit and thinking are two important types of adjustment or mental connection. When habit breaks down, thinking arises. 10. The old faculty psychology has gone, but the theory of formal discipline lingers. The wise teacher learns to guide activity toward more realizable ends than a training of "the reason,' "memory," will-power, concentration, imagination, etc. 11. Knowledge gained by mere memory without reference to doing something, guiding conduct, meeting a situation, is not power. PROBLEMS IN APPLICATION 1. Make a list of the principal mistakes made in handling pupils. 2. What facts and principles of child nature and growth in social efficiency are overlooked by those making these errors? 3. Is the fact that a large proportion of boys and girls desire to "leave the farm and go to the city to live" due to poor education in the home or in the school, or is it desirable or inevitable? 4. What methods would you suggest for insuring that pupils learned how to write effective letters to mail-order houses with reasonable legibility and correctness of spelling and that they would not find letter-writing so repugnant in adult life that they would fail to make use of it when desirable for communication? 5. What great principles of method are followed in your statement of ways and means? 6. Read Strayer and Norsworthy's "How to Teach" as soon as possible in this connection. The volume is really one on child psychology and methods of learning. 7. What phases of method do farmers ordinarily stress in speaking of teaching? What ones do they usually overlook? 8. What effect has the transportation of pupils to a consolidated school on their opportunity to study? 9. Read the chapters relating to rural-school hygiene in the writer's volume on "Educational Hygiene," or the volume on "Rural 1 School Hygiene," as it relates to the health and physical development of country children. 10. Why is habit so important in promoting health in pupils and the community? Do the sanitary features of a consolidated school favor the development of hygienic habits? What is the relation of indoor flush-toilets at consolidated schools to the inculcation of anti-typhoid habits of cleanliness? BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bachman-"Principles of Elementary Education." D. C. Heath & Co. 2. Bagley-"Educational Values." The Macmillan Co. 3. "School Discipline." The Macmillan Co. 4. Colvin "The Learning Process." The Macmillan Co. 5. Colvin & Bagley-"Human Behavior." The Macmillan Co. 6. Dewey-"Democracy and Education." The Macmillan Co. -"Interest and Effort." Houghton Mifflin Co. 7. 8. "The Schools of To-Morrow." E. P. Dutton & Co. 9. Freeman "The Psychology of the Common Branches." Houghton Mifflin Co.' IO. -"How Children Learn." Houghton Mifflin Co. 11. Hoag and Terman-"Health Work in the Schools." Houghton Mifflin Co. 12. Kirkpatrick-"Fundamentals of Child Study." The Macmil lan Co. 13. Klapper-"Principles of Educational Practice." D. Appleton & Co. 14. Parker-"Methods of Teaching in High Schools." Ginn & Co. 15. Rapeer-"Educational Hygiene." Chas. Scribner's Sons. 16. -"Teaching Elementary School Subjects." Chas. Scribner's Sons. 17. Sandiford-"The Mental and Physical Life of School Children.” Longmans, Green & Co. '18. Thorndike-"Foundations of Educational Achievement in 1914." 19. 20. 21. 22. Proceedings of the National Education Association and the -"Individuality." Houghton Mifflin Co. -"Original Nature of Man." Teachers College, Columbia University. "The Psychology of Learning." Teachers College, Columbia University. 23. Wilson-"Motivation of the Elementary School Subjects." Houghton Mifflin Co. 24. Strayer and Norsworthy-"How to Teach." The Macmillan Co. 25. Vogt-"Rural Sociology." D. Appleton & Co. 26. McKeever's books on farm boys and girls. CHAPTER XVIII THE TEACHING PROCESS IN THE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL PRELIMINARY PROBLEMS 1. What advantage has the country teacher using a text like Field and Nearing's "Community Civics" (Ginn) over the teacher using the ordinary old-type texts? 2. Make a list of some of the important good points of the teaching you have observed as a pupil and student. 3. Could children be successfully taught how to invent? Can invention and originality of thinking be developed? How? 4. What are the possible advances in teaching which may be expected from such experimental schools as the Lincoln, in New York City, under the General Education Board? 5. What are some of the chief sources of waste of time in teaching? 6. What books on methods of teaching have you seen or read? Do they compare well with text-books on method for physicians and lawyers? I. THE TEACHING SITUATION The Child, the School, and Society. The public-school teacher of our democracy should be thoroughly equipped with experience relating to the nature of children and to the nature of present-day American and especially rural society. He will realize that his pupils have both private and public functions, and that the work which they do in the world, whether specifically private or public, should be social service-honest and efficient contribution to the welfare of society. The principal positive and negative problems of the individual and of society will be his problems. The failure of democracy in his own community and state, as shown in the forms of poverty, disease, crime, social in |