=Some advantages.=—­It requires far more time to describe these preliminary arrangements than it does to put them into operation.  Indeed, after the first day, they become well-nigh automatic.  Because of their adaptableness the pupils look upon the new order as the established order, and, besides, the rotation in the chair affords a pleasing antidote to monotony.  Each day brings just enough novelty to generate a wholesome degree of anticipation.  They are all stimulated by an eagerness to know just what the day will bring forth.  The class exercise is relieved of much of the heavy formalism that characterizes the traditional recitation and that is so irksome to children of school age.  The socialized recitation is a worthy enterprise that enlists the interest of all members of the group and unifies them upon the plane of a common purpose.  In the common quest they become members in a social compact whose object is the investigation of some subject that has been found worthy the attention and thoughtful consideration of scholars and authors.

=The gang element.=—­The members of the group represent all strata of society, and the group is, in consequence, a working democracy.  Moving in the same direction under a common impulse and intent upon a laudable enterprise, race and class distinctions are considered negligible, if, indeed, they are not entirely overlooked or forgotten.  The group is, in truth, a sublimated gang with the undesirable elements eliminated and the potential qualities of the gang retained.  The gang spirit when impelling in right directions and toward worthy ends is to be highly commended.  In the gang, each member stimulates and reenforces the other members, and their achievements in combination amply justify their cooeperation.  The potency of the gang spirit is well exemplified in such enterprises as “tag day” for the benefit of charity, the sale of Red Cross stamps, and the sale of special editions of papers.  People willingly enlist in these enterprises who would not do so but for the element of cooeperation.  We have come to recognize and write upon the psychology of the gang, and the socialized recitation strives to utilize these psychological principles for the advancement and advantage of the enterprise in hand.

=Proprietary interest.=—­In a cooeperative enterprise such as the one under consideration each member of the group feels a sense of responsibility for the success of the enterprise as a whole, and this makes for increased effort.  In the traditional recitation the pupil feels responsibility only for that part of the lesson upon which he is called to recite.  In his thinking the enterprise belongs to the teacher, and therefore he feels no proprietary interest.  If the lesson is a failure, he experiences no special compunction; if a success, he feels no special elation.  If the trunk with which he struggles up the stairs is his own, he has the feeling of a victor when he reaches the top; but since it belongs to the teacher, he feels that he has finished a disagreeable task, takes his compensating pittance in the form of a grade, and goes on his complacent way.  The boy who digs potatoes from his own garden thinks them larger and smoother than the ones he digs for wages.  The latter are potatoes, while the former are his potatoes.  Proprietary interest sinks its roots deep into the motives that impel to action.