hese not only impress us with the force of the
question as a means of teaching, but they lead us to examine into our
own method of asking them. The whole teaching process so easily and
unconsciously develops into a matter of routine that it is good practice
occasionally to take stock of ourselves. It is surprising to find how
many teachers develop a particular type of question which becomes their
sole stock in trade.

Miss Ronniett Stevens, in her thesis, _The Question as a Measure of
Efficiency in Instruction_, has made one of the most enlightening
studies yet made on the matter of questioning. Her results are quoted by
Weigle, in his _Talks to Sunday School Teachers_, in a passage of
interest, not only because of Miss Stevens' findings, but also because
of Mr. Weigle's own conclusions:

"One of the outstanding differences, in present practice, between the
public and the Sunday school, is that most public school teachers ask
too many questions and most Sunday school teachers do not ask
questions enough. For the first half of this statement there is
ample evidence in the careful study by Miss Ronniett Stevens on _The
Question as a Measure of Efficiency in Instruction_. Miss Stevens
secured complete stenographic reports of twenty high school lessons
in English, history, science, Latin, modern languages, and
mathematics; she observed one hundred more such lessons chosen at
random, with a view to counting and noting the number and nature of
the questions asked in each; and she followed each ten classes
through an entire day's work for the purpose of studying the
aggregate question-stimulus to which each was subjected in the course
of the day.

"The results of her study are surprising. In only eight of the twenty
lessons completely reported the teacher asked less than ninety
questions in the period of forty-five minutes, the average being
sixty-eight. In each of the remaining twelve lessons more than ninety
questions were asked in the same period of time, the average being
128. A freshman class in high school, in a day's work of five periods
of forty minutes each, not counting gymnasium, was subjected to 516
questions and expected to return 516 answers, which is at the rate of
2:58 questions and 2:58 answers per minute. The lowest number of
questions recorded in a day's work for a class was 321, and the
average number 395.

"Such rapid-fire q