ADVICE FROM FR HENLE.

What does the concept of mastery imply?

What is its nature, and how is it achieved?

Mastery implies first of all habitual knowledge and lasting abilities. Good performance in a classroom recitation or a good showing in an examination for which there has been immediate preparation is not in itself proof of mastery. Habitual knowledge is knowledge which is always within the control of the mind and will and which can be recalled and used without previous reviewing. Hence the only adequate gauge of mastery lies in surprise tests and comprehensive examinations. Merely offering the matter day by day and being content with a good recitation on a limited area of prepared matter is not teaching for mastery.

The knowledge carried over the summer, the knowledge that does not vanish within a few months after a test, is habitual knowledge. Most of us have an habitual knowledge of the multiplication tables. We have really mastered them. A student in third-year Latin who cannot, without preparation, recognize and analyze a purpose clause has no mastery of the purpose clause.

Besides habitual knowledge and lasting abilities, mastery implies accuracy. If a student cannot tell you whether the genitive plural of rex ends in -um or –ium, he does not have mastery. If he thinks that a certain clause is some sort of temporal clause, if he remembers only that a certain verb takes some case other than the accusative, if he selects the right mood for a construction but is not sure of the tense required – in all these cases his knowledge is not mastery, for it is not sufficiently accurate to enable him to do his work correctly.

Mastery also implies a high degree of sureness. If the student is guessing or if he thinks a form might be so-and-so, he has not arrived at mastery. The student must be able to use his knowledge and assert it with confidence.

Mastery implies, finally, facility in use. This facility admits of degrees, but if his performance is labored and slow, then certainly the student does not have mastery. If he declines a word with hesitance and many false starts, he has not attained mastery.

Mastery may therefore be defined as the possession of a knowledge clearly understood, habitually and accurately retained, and easily reduced to practice.

TAKEN FROM: Henle Latin

IMAGE CREDIT: Detail from The Devin Family by Louis-Michel van Loo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons