be: "It depends." In certain high schools experiments with a form of group work applied to the studying of history, civil government and the like, under the direction of the teachers, have been decidedly successful.[1] When students, outside of school hours and without supervision, combine in the preparation of their assignments, the results may be good, provided the students in question are more or less of the same grade of ability, and provided they take pains to share the labor in such a manner that each one of them continues to participate in the several aspects of the assignment. The tendency that too often develops within such voluntary groups for a few of the students to do the work and pass it over to their weaker brothers or for the several tasks to be delegated, so that one student looks up the vocabulary, another keeps watch on the grammar, a third makes a rough translation and a fourth polishes it off for the group, is plainly an undesirable tendency. If group studying brings about a real and active discussion of the material of the assignment with interchange of opinion and argumentation, the result is highly beneficial and contributes to the efficiency of all members of the group by putting their knowledge into use as advised in the rule given above.
34. Do not hesitate to commit to memory verbatim such materials as definitions of technical terms,
- ↑ See, for instance, Lotta A. Clark, Group work in the high school. Elem. School Teacher, 7: 1907, 355-444. Also C. B. Shaw. Some experiments in group work. Ibid., 329-334.
