Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - New Chemistry Building [PAGE 21]

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has any knowledge of how to study. It is a part of the benefit he gets from the course that he learns how to study and acquires the necessary habits. Listening to lectures, in such a case, if the lectures are well constructed, only deludes him into thinking that he has fully grasped the subject, and prevents him from studying. Additional class exercises given by assistants and subordinate instructors do not help the situation materially. Often the assistants do not keep in close touch with the mode of presentation of the lecturer. Always the students feel that, since assistants handle this work, it must be less important, and so it suffers in effectiveness. After trying both plans, it will be found that incomparably better results are obtained by giving two or more sections, of thirty to forty students each, to a competent instructor, and letting him conduct the whole work of each section. The lessons are assigned in advance, and due preparation is insisted upon. There are other disadvantages of the lecture method for freshmen. The lecturer must adjust his speed to that of the slower, if not the very slowest members of the class, although many of its members could follow equally well if the pace were tripled. With the slower students spending more time in preparation, and this and the other variable factors thus relegated t o the home study, the class becomes more uniform, and either twice as much ground can be covered in the hour, or the ground can be covered twice as thoroughly, according to the nature of the topic. That the student has thus acquired a more thorough foundation in chemistry, and that he has learned how to study, are both of great advantage when the next course is taken. When the lecture method has been used, the students have still to he taught the necessity for continuous study and how to do it, and progress in the next course is slow. Then also, the fleeting impressions, detained temporarily by a few days of violent but superficial study just before the examination, have almost entirely evaporated, and overlapping and repetition of all the necessary facts and principles is an absolute necessity. For this reason, also, much time is lost. Efficiency demands t h a t something of permanent value be accomplished each year, and there is every reason against postponing the application of efficient methods to the second year. Again, questioning shows at once which points have been understood by all, and which points have re08)