There are additional suggestions particularly applicable to the teacher of history.

     1.  In all the questioning remember the purposes of the recitation. 
        Ask questions knowing exactly what you wish as an answer.  There
        is no time for aimless or idle questioning.

     2.  Inquire frequently as to the books used in preparation of the
        lesson.  Let no allusion or statement in the text go unexplained. 
        Let none of the author’s conclusions or opinions go
        unchallenged.  Ask the student for inconsistencies, inaccuracies,
        or contradictions in the text.  Put a premium on their discovery. 
        Insist on the student’s authority for statements other than
        those given in the text.

     3.  Do not use the heavy-typed words frequently found at the head of
        the paragraph or the topical heads furnished by the text, if it
        can be avoided.  The pupil should not be allowed to remember his
        history by its location in the text.

     4.  Be sure that the class have an opportunity to recite on the
        questions assigned for their advance preparation.  Nothing is
        more discouraging to a student than carefully to prepare the
        work required and then fail of an opportunity either to recite
        upon or to discuss it.

     5.  Discover the tastes, shortcomings, and abilities of your
        individual students and direct your future questions
        accordingly.  There will usually be in the class the boy who is
        glib without being accurate.  He should be questioned on definite
        facts.  There will be the student whose analysis of events is
        good, but whose powers of description are poor.  Adapt your
        questions to his special need.  There will be the pupil with the
        tendency to memorize the text verbatim.  There will be the
        student who knows the facts of the lesson, but who fails to
        remember the sequence of events—­the kind who never can tell
        whether the Exclusion Bill came before or after the Restoration. 
        There will be the usual amount of specialized tastes, curiosity,
        timidity, laziness, and rattle-brained thinking.  The questioning
        should probe these peculiarities, and stimulate the pupil’s
        ambition to improve his preparation at its weakest point. 
        Needless to say the questions should not be asked with the daily
        idea of making the pupil fail.  Like any other surgical
        instrument the question probe should be used skillfully and with
        a proper motive.  It would be as great an error to bend your
        questions continually away from the student’s special tastes and
        abilities as to be perpetually guided by them.