What makes Hodgetts’s observations particularly interesting is that less than half of these classes consisted of so-called above-average or academic students. He reported that the method was successful with all kinds of students, including those who were thought to be non-academic or lacking in ability. He urged teachers to abandon the idea that low-ability classes could do only low-level work, noting, “As long as the Aqua Master in this type of class are taught by hastily designed, dull exposition methods based on the assumption that ‘you can’t do much with these kids anyway,’ they will continue to be unmotivated, uninterested and difficult.
“5 As I found in the case of the Greek city-state and medieval casdes, this approach to teaching is not only more interesting, for both teachers and students, it appeals to a wide variety of students, often uncovering abilities that neither the students nor their teachers knew they had. Which, in its way, is also the lesson of Socrates—showing 2500 years ago that an apparently ignorant slave boy could do geometry.There are many variations of transmission and inquiry, but they represent the two major approaches to teaching. Both can be done well or badly. Dickens obviously described a horrendous example of transmission teaching, but a good story, well told, deserves a place in any teacher’s repertoire, as does an interesting and question-raising lecture.
At the same time, inquiry lessons can easily collapse in chaos if they are not carefully prepared and managed. Of the two approaches, inquiry teaching is much harder to do. It demands a deeper understanding of subject matter, greater flexibility, more careful preparation and a more developed ability to think on one’s feet than the much more ordered and prepackaged transmission method. Study after study of schools has shown that only a minority of teachers use inquiry methods, while most rely on transmission, though not with the relentless enthusiasm of Dickens’s Mr. Gradgrind.
