"The results of her study are surprising. In only eight of the twenty
lessons completely reported the teacher asked less than ninety
questions in the period of forty-five minutes, the average being
sixty-eight. In each of the remaining twelve lessons more than ninety
questions were asked in the same period of time, the average being
128. A freshman class in high school, in a day's work of five periods
of forty minutes each, not counting gymnasium, was subjected to 516
questions and expected to return 516 answers, which is at the rate of
2:58 questions and 2:58 answers per minute. The lowest number of
questions recorded in a day's work for a class was 321, and the
average number 395.
"Such rapid-fire questioning, Miss Stevens rightly holds, defeats its
own ends. It maintains a nervous tension in the classroom that must
in the long run be injurious. More than that, it is a symptom of the
fact that the real work of the hour is being done by the teacher, and
the pupil's share is reduced simply to brief, punctuation-like
answers to the teacher's questions. Such questions appeal to mere
memory or to superficial judgment rather than to real thought; they
cultivate in the pupil neither independent judgment nor the power of
expression; they ignore individual needs and discourage initiative;
they make out of the classroom a place to display knowledge, rather
than a laboratory in which to acquire it.
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