Teachers who get good results in appreciation secure them mainly by virtue of the fact that they have large capacity for enjoyment in the fields which they present to children.  A teacher who is enthusiastic, and who really finds great joy in music, will awaken and develop power of appreciation upon the part of his pupils.  The teacher who can enter into the spirit of the child poetry, or of the fairy tale, will get a type of appreciation not enjoyed by the teacher who finds delight only in adult literature.  It is of the utmost importance to recognize the fact that children only gradually grow from an appreciation or joy in that which is crude to that which represents the highest type of artistic production.  It is important to have children try themselves out in creative work; but the influence of a teacher may be far greater than that of the attempts of the children to produce in these fields.

Lecturing.  Among the various types of methods used in teaching there is probably no one which has received such severe criticism as the so-called lecture method.  The result of this criticism has been, theoretically at least, to abolish lecturing from the elementary school and to diminish the use of this method in the high school, although in the colleges and universities it is still the most popular method.  Although it is true that the lecture method is not the best one for continual use in elementary and high school, still its entire disuse is unfortunate.  So is its blind use by those who still adhere to the old ways of doing things.

The chief criticisms of the method are, first, that it makes of the learner a mere recipient instead of a thinker; second, that the material so gained does not become part of the mental life of the hearers and so is not so well remembered nor so easily applied as material gained in other ways; third, that the instructor has no means of determining whether his class is getting the right ideas or wholly false ones; fourth, the method lacks interest in the majority of cases.  Despite the truth of these criticisms, there are occasions when the lecture or telling method is the best one—­in fact the only one that can accomplish the desired result.

First, the lecture method may sometimes take the place of books.  Often, even in the elementary school, there is need for the children to get facts,—­information in history or geography or literature,—­and the getting of these facts from books would be too difficult or too wasteful.  In such a case telling the facts is certainly the best way to give them.  A teacher in half a period can give material that it might take the children hours to find.  By telling them the facts, he not only saves waste of time, but also retains the interest.  Very often discouragement and even dislike results from a prolonged search for a few facts.  Of course in the higher schools, when the material to be given is not in print, when the professor is the source of certain theories, methods, and explanations, lecturing is the only way for students to get the material.  It must be borne in mind that human beings are naturally a source of interest, particularly to children, and therefore having the teacher tell, other things being equal, will make a greater impression than reading it in a book.