It is a general impression among teachers that specific habits may be generalized; that habits of neatness and accuracy developed in one line of work, for example, will inevitably make one neater and more accurate in other things.  It has been definitely proved that this transfer of training does not take place inevitably, but in reality demands the fulfillment of certain conditions of which education has become fully conscious only within a comparatively short time, and as a result of careful, systematic, controlled experimentation.  The meaning of this in the prevention of waste through inadequate teaching is fully apparent.

Again, it has been supposed by many teachers that the home environment is a large factor in the success or failure of a pupil in school.  In every accurate and controlled investigation that has been conducted so far it has been shown that this factor in such subjects as arithmetic and spelling at least is so small as to be absolutely negligible in practice.

Some people still believe that a teacher is born and not made, and yet a careful investigation of the efficiency of elementary teachers shows that, when such teachers were ranked by competent judges, specialized training stood out as the most important factor in general efficiency.  In this same investigation, the time-honored notion that a college education will, irrespective of specialized training, adequately equip a teacher for his work was revealed as a fallacy,—­for twenty-eight per cent of the normal-school graduates among all the teachers were in the first and second ranks of efficiency as against only seventeen per cent of the college graduates; while, in the two lowest ranks, only sixteen per cent of the normal-school graduates are to be found as against forty-four per cent of the college graduates.  These investigations, I may add, were made by university professors, and I am giving them here in a university classroom and as a university representative.  And of course I shall hasten to add that general scholarship is one important essential.  Our mistake has been in assuming sometimes that it is the only essential.

Very frequently the controlled experience of scientific investigation confirms a principle that has been derived from crude experience.  Most teachers will agree, for example, that a certain amount of drill and repetition is absolutely essential in the mastery of any subject.  Every time that scientific investigation has touched this problem it has unmistakably confirmed this belief.  Some very recent investigations made by Mr. Brown at the Charleston Normal School show conclusively that five-minute drill periods preceding every lesson in arithmetic place pupils who undergo such periods far in advance of others who spend this time in non-drill arithmetical work, and that this improvement holds not only in the number habits, but also in the reasoning processes.