a careful preparation and critical discussion of these reports. The rivalry of students for excellence in this work is not difficult to stimulate. A premium should be put on criticism which finds mentioned in the characterization qualities inconsistent with the facts recorded in the text, or omissions which the facts of the text seem to justify.

Fundamental principles of good questioning

It is not likely that the teacher will find it advisable to require reports at every recitation nor that the reports and their discussion will consume, at the most, longer than ten or fifteen minutes of any class period. There must always be time for direct oral questioning on the facts of the lesson; questioning that will test the student's memory, ability to analyze, and powers of expression. Certain principles are fundamental to good questioning in any recitation.

1. The questions should be brief.
2. They should be prepared by the teacher before coming to recitation. This will insure rapidity. A vast deal of time is lost by the unfortunate habit possessed by many teachers of never having the next question ready to use.
3. They should precede the name of the pupil required to answer it.
4. They should not be leading questions to which the pupil can guess the answers.
5. They should be grammatically stated with but one possible interpretation.
6. Except for purposes of rapid review they should not be answerable with yes or no.
7. They should be asked in a voice loud enough to be heard by all the class, and only once.
8. They should be asked in no regular order, but nevertheless in such a way that every member of the class will have a chance to recite.

Some additional suggestions for teachers of history

There are additional suggestions particularly applicable to the teacher of history.

1. In all the questioning remember the purposes of the recitation. Ask questions knowing exactly what you wish as an answer. There is no time for aimless or idle questioning.
2. Inquire frequently as to the books used in preparation of the lesson. Let no allusion or statement in the text go unexplained. Let none of the author's conclusions or opinions go unchallenged. Ask the student for inconsistencies, inaccuracies, or contradictions in the text. Put a premium on their discovery. Insist on the student's authority for statements other than those given in the text.
3. Do not use the heavy-typed words frequently found at the head of the paragraph or the topical heads furnished by the text, if it can be avoided. The pupil should not be allowed to remember his history by its location in the text.
4. Be sure that the class have an opportunity to recite on the questions assigned for their advance preparation. Nothing is more discouraging to a student than carefully to prepare the work required and then fail of an opportunity either to recite upon or to discuss it.
5. Discover the tastes, shortcomings, and abilities of your individual students and direct your future questions accordingly. There will usually be in the class the boy who is glib without being accurate. He should be questioned on definite facts. There will be the student whose analysis of events is good, but whose powers of description are poor. Adapt your questions to his special need. There will be the pupil with the tendency to memorize the text verbatim. There will be the student who knows the facts of the lesson, but who fails to remember the sequence of events—the kind who never can tell whether the Exclusion Bill came before or after the Restoration. There will be the usual amount of specialized tastes, curiosity, timidity, laziness, and rattle-brained thinking. The questioning should probe these peculiarities, and stimulate the pupil's ambition to improve his preparation at its weakest point. Needless to say the questions should not be asked with the daily idea of making the pupil fail. Like any other surgical instrument the question probe should be used skillfully and with a proper motive. It would be as great an error to bend your questions continually away from the student's special tastes and abilities as to be perpetually guided by them.
6. The bulk of the teacher's attention should be given neither to the few exceptionally able students nor to the few very poor pupils. It is to the average normal boy and girl that the most of the questioning should be directed. The brilliant student should be called on sufficiently to retain his interest and to set a standard of excellence for the class. He should be given the most difficult of the assignments of outside work and if necessary an additional number of them. As to the few pupils whom the teacher deems exceptionally poor, it may be said that the effect of questioning should never be to discourage the pupil who has made an honest effort at preparation. During the early part of the course the efforts of the teacher may well be directed to asking the backward student questions to which he can make reasonably satisfactory answers. By saving the student from the daily humiliation of failure before the class, and by tactfully encouraging him to greater effort, the teacher may shortly discover that the poor pupil is far from hopeless.
7. Do not allow your questions to consume a disproportionate amount of time with details. Until very recently in all our history teaching, battles have been exalted to a place immeasurably greater than their importance. We are coming to see that the fighting is one of the least important things in the war. The causes and results, the financial, political, and social effects now absorb our attention. One or two battles in a course may profitably be studied in detail, particularly in the history of our own country, but in the press of considerations far more interesting and vital, it is a waste of time to give more than a moment's notice to the remainder. Student descriptions of battles are bound to be stereotyped. The ordinary textbook describes each of the thousand battles of the world in about the same fifty words.
8. Let some of the questions be directed towards cultivating the student's powers of oral description. History is not altogether a matter of analysis or generalization. There can scarcely be assigned a lesson in history that does not contain events which lend themselves to dramatic description. Their recital should be made the occasion of the student's best efforts in this direction. Let the pupils be taught to use adjectives and adverbs. Break down the barrier of listlessness or fear or self-consciousness which keeps the student from rendering a graphic and thrilling account of great events.
9. Let the questions from day to day develop the continuity of history. Avoid questioning that fails to unite the events of previous lessons with the one being studied. Bring out the connection of the past and the present. Slavery existed in America for two hundred years before the Civil War was fought. Your teaching of those two centuries of history should be so conducted that when the Civil War is finally reached, the class can tell the process by which anti-slavery sentiment was finally crystallized. The hiatus between the mobbing of Garrison in Boston and the extraordinary contribution of Massachusetts to the Northern army should be bridged, not by a heroic question or two when the war is finally reached, but by a daily attention to the events which effected the metamorphosis.
10. If the answer to your question requires the use of a map, ask it in such a way that the student can talk and use the map at the same time. The geographical provisions of a treaty, the routes of explorers, the grants of commercial companies, campaigns, or military frontiers should all be recited in this way. A wall map with simply the outline of the territory, with its rivers, will be of considerable assistance in testing the accuracy of the student's geographical knowledge. While reciting, let him locate