History 9 Transitional

"I want to see somebody try teaching - not by recitations in a formal recitation room where the teacher is on a platform raised above the pupils and there is a class of twenty or more boys who recite lessons. That is what I am trying to get rid of.... What I have in mind is teaching boys in sections of about eight in a section, not in a formal recitation room, where there would be ... a raised platform with an instructor behind a desk, but where eight boys could sit around a table with a teacher who would talk with them and instruct them by a sort of tutorial or conference-method, where...[the student]...would feel encouraged to speak up, present his difficulties, and the teacher would know... what his difficulties were."

-- Edward Harkness from A Memorandum of Conversation, April 9, 1930.