Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1879 — A School-Room Experiment. [ARTICLE]

A School-Room Experiment.

A Massachusetts teacher writes to the National Journal of Education describing an experiment in the schoolroom which seems to be successful. Instead of facing his pupils he has his desk behind them, and thus overlooks them to good advantage. The naughty little ones, not knowing when his eye is on them, dare not whisper and play. “They have,” he says, “so frequently come to grief in attempting to calculate chances, that they have concluded to make a virtue of necessity, and give up play in the school-ioom as unprofitable, costing more than it comes to.” Another decided advantage of this system is that it completely isolates classes reciting from the rest of the school; the recitation benches being in front of the teacher’s desk, between him and the school, and the backs of the pupils toward each other, communication by look or sign is out of the question. The only special rule made is that children shall not look around.