January 21, 1926 JOURNAL OF EDUCATION

is not to make soldiers out of your boys";
.great stress is laid on the training for citizen-
.ship. In the summer camps, in a four-years
course, just eight hours, all told, are devoted
to citizenship, while 468 are devoted to mili-
tary training. The manual of infantry drill,
R. O. T. C., 1925, declares frankly: ••They are
'being trained to be soldiers."
It has been popularly understood that agri-
.culturel colleges acting under the Morrill Land
Grant Act oi 1862 are compelled to require
.military training by their students. This is
not true, they' are only .compelled to provide it;
.all the compulsion comes from the trustees.
The financial help given to poor students to
take advanced military training is a ~t
inducement to taking military training, after it
ceases to be obligatory.
The University of Delaware pays $2liO a~
expenses, and other universities' from $110-
$300 to those taking advanced military trainiDg.
In an army of about 125,000 men we ba:we
over 19,000 officers. A Iarge number' of these
are employed in giving military training ill
schools and colleges, uniforms and e!luiplJlQt
being supplied 1:ly war department for, tile
students. .The catalogues of nearly, all ,the _
colleges of the R. O.T. C. show that .in eighty-
three of them military training is 'compulsory
for the students of one or more departments.

Technique in the Recitation-I

By JOHN B. OPDYCKE
New York City

The title of .this paper is used to cover the reckon with on Jnstant notice during the
'numerous details that enter into the conduct course of battle.
-of the typical junior or senior high school reci- The teacher's point of view and purpose allll
tation, from its beginning to its conclusion. plan must all very largely be decided upon by
.For the sake of convenience, the treatment is the children of a given group. Presented to
centred in the English recitation, but the con- some children, the novel .. Ivanhoe" may best
tent applies with equal saliency to all other be treated perhaps as a picture of medieval
-subjects, From bell to bell the teacher is ob- pageantry; presented to others, it may be best
liged to work out logically and consistently a treated entirely from the point of view' of
little cross-section in educational procedure class clash and contest. To still others--to
on the merits -of which he must stand or fall a class of boys, for instance-it may _have to
.as a teacher of children, as a student of his be presented as a study in good sportsmanship,
'subject, and as a leader and manager of the in order to get from it the most satisfying
group. Here in the recitation are focused all results. Again, the teacher may at times find
the elements of his training for his profession, himself obliged to force consideration of •
.along with ali the irradiations of culture and story or a poem, or of parts of 'either, from
'personality and spur-of-the-moment tactic points of view other than those most popular
,that his preparation and his inheritance enable with the class. There are certain accepted
'him to bring to bear. In very large measure, standards of meaning that, the classic
his management of the recitation-his ability itself imposes, and these must be driven in.
to meet and solve recitation problems as they But in arriving at any point of view for the
.~re foreseen and also as they insistently arise consideration ef a piece of literature with a
'In defiance of the most searching provision- class, the teacher of English should also "feel
is the consideration upon which his superiors out" opinions and adjust his appeals accord-
'pass judgments, and this is as it should be. ingly. It is great fun to treat "The Ancient
His conduct of the recitation is the crux. It Mariner " from a variety of points of view, and
:!s to him exactly what the handling of a case to discover a band of enthusiasts for eaeh
1S to a lawyer or the performance of an opera- particular one. Some, probably most, children
iion is to the doctor. There are, therefore, in a class will readily enough see the story
two particular types of strategy to be worked first of all from the Mariner's point of view,
-eut, The one is the strategy of provision; the and if any does not see it from this point of
other is the strategy of immediacy. The for- view, and sympathetically, the teacher's job
Iner means that the teacher must have definite then and there is to make it so seen and fdt.
But the wedding guest's point of view may
POint of view and purpose and plan in staging
!he recitation, just as the general has in stag- be made most interesting, as may also that of
the fellow mariners, and of the hermit, and
lng-attack. The latter means that the teacher of the pilot's boy.' The mariner may be con-
lIlust. have resources on tap for meeting emer- sidered a sea-faring vagabond; theweddin:-
~cles that are sure to arise in every recita- guest a sort of eighteenth century Monock;
~on, but that are incapable of being definitely the pilot's boy a lesser Jim Hawkins, ,·Any
°feseen. These are the surprise manoeuvres such fanciful points of view, provided they
~tt~e enemy, or the unanticipated defections appeal to any of the children in a class, are
11! his own ranks, that the general is obliged to justifiable. But in the consideration of these
 66 JOURNAL OF EDUCATION January 21, 1926

and any others like them, the teachers should pressing themselves above the ordinary down.
see to it that the poetical allegory is empha- at-the-heel slips in mechanical forms. But
sized and construed to the pupils' own lives to this general end,' day by day, there are
and surroundings. particular aims. One day the aim is to get
In the teaching of any classic or of any the paragraphing a little more exact; another
type of composition, the good teacher of Eng- day, to clarify the uses of the comma; another,
lish will enrich the work by bringing as many to secure variety in structure, and so on. In
different points of view to bear as possible. literature, the one big ever-present aim is to
This is imperative for both subjective and ob- secure enjoyment and appreciation. But
jective reasons. The subject of study will be again, to this general end, day by day, there
revealed as a many-sided vehicle of thought are particular aims. Today it may be to con-
and emotion. The children will reveal their sider the extraordinary qualities of palship
natures in a variety of responsiveness upon possessed by Jim Hawkins; tomorrow, to dis-
which the alert teacher of English will build. cover whether after all Portia's father had
The more slants and angles of attack there are, normade a wiser provision than is at first ap-
the greater the resultant spur and enrichment parent; and the day after tomorrow to put
will be. But care must be taken to avoid con- Locksley side by side with our school athletes
fusion. The central or most important point in an interscholastic meet. But in all this,
of view should be emphasized first and chiefly. there must be no secrets. The class must be
Then the more' fanciful and less evident ones told what the recitation aim is. The memo
should be worked out. bers of the class should sometimes be per-
The point of view in considering any sub- mitted to decide the aim. And the aim should
ject with a class should be made clear by the be stated clearly at the outset of the recita-
teacher of the class to the class, as should also tion, and at the end a measurement of accom-
be the aim or purpose of any phase of study. plishment in relation to the, aim should be
There are general aims and special aims. In taken. Here, the relationship between the
teaching composition, the one big ever-p,res- special aim and the general aim should be
ent purpose is to train in thinking. After this, brought out clearly, both in recitation proc-
considerably after this, comes practice-e-prac- esses and in the summary statement at the
tice to enable children to gain facility in ex- end of the period.

The Massachusetts State-Wide Language Contest

By G. M. WILSON
Boston University

One with a major interest in the curriculum
likes to think that in his hands a testing pro- Name
gram means more than merely measuring and Grade
comparing one city with another. In fact, the Age
testing itself is not the chief purpose of test- Town
Test E. Correcting Language Errors
, .
, _
-.
0 .

ing. The first criterion of a standard test is School .

that it shall reinforce correct curricular prin-
ciples, and the second fundamental criterion is
that it shall reinforce right methods of teach-
ing.
The main purpose in a state-wide test,
therefore, is to secure data which, when prop-
erly analyzed, will reveal merits, defects, and
needs in curriculum and methods. The Massa-
chusetts State 'Wide Language Test (or Con-
test) made use of an unpublished form of the
Wilson Language Error Test. The forms of
this test are based upon a careful summary
from numerous scientific studies of errors
which pupils actually make in oral and written
speech.* The test, is in the form of pupils'
compositions, or pupils' conversation, and gives
no key to errors contained within it. The
pupil must himself discover the errors and
make the corrections. The form used in the
present contest was" A School Dialogue." The
same follows herewith:-
ewttson. G. M.: "Frequency of La nguasre Errors." Ele-
mentary School Journal. December, 1920.
Date _
Directions: This is a test to see if you can correct the
mistakes that a pupil made in writing a story. Correct by
drawing a single line through words or expressions used
incorrectly, and placing the correct words above them
For example, if you had the following sentence to correct:
"He has went home," you would correct it by drawing
a single line through weill and writing gOlle above it, thus:
"He has gone home." Make all changes necessary to se--
cure correctness. Work at your usual rate. You will be
given time to complete your work. When you have fin·
ished, turn the sheet right side down and leave it onyour
desk.
A SCHOOL DIALOGUE
John-"Has the first bell rang?"
Frank-"l ain't heard no bell."
John-"Have you solved them examples which the
teacher give us to solve to home?"
Frank-"I done all but the last one. I can't hardly ste
how to begin it. Me and Jim worked together. HoW
many did you git?"
John-"I looked them over and seen that I didn't knoW
nuthin' abont them. So I went over to see Charley. ~
and me tried too or three an couldn't get them. Can