Trigger-Teaching
The hard-working Sunday-school teacher picks up his cartridge, proudly
carries it to the desired destination, and there explodes it. The
shrewd Sunday-school teacher uses the scholar as a rifle, and simply
pulls the trigger. Some teachers, that is, consider themselves as big
guns. Other and better teachers seek to make practical working guns of
their scholars. Between the two styles of teaching there is this
difference, that the trigger-teaching usually hits the mark, while the
big-gun teacher finds that the mark, if it is a live one, has taken
itself out of the way by the time he has carried the cartridge to it.
In big-gun teaching the teacher does everything for the scholar; in
trigger-teaching the teacher does nothing for the scholar that he can
help. In big-gun teaching the teacher thinks; in trigger-teaching the
teacher thinks how to get his scholars to think. Big-gun teaching
parades; trigger-teaching stays in the tent and issues orders. Big-gun
teaching is amusing; trigger-teaching is suggestive. Big-gun teaching
develops the teacher; trigger-teaching develops the scholar. The
teacher's true work is to educate, and "educate" means "to draw out,"
and not "to carry to."
"Oh! our scholars are not loaded," I hear many teachers object. "If we
should pull the trigger, there would follow only a ridiculous click."
But your scholars _are_ loaded, objectors. Though they may not be
loaded with precisely the information you have been seeking from them,
they are loaded with experiences,--all their short lives will hold.
They are loaded with temptations and troubles and needs. They are
loaded with questions and curiosity. They have information, too, any
amount of it, that may be brought into suggestive connection with the
lesson, if you know how to make shrewd use of their public-school
history and geography and science.
To be sure, they probably know nothing definite about the time of the
lesson's events, or the place, or the persons, or the circumstances.
Well, make them load themselves. As you rehearse these facts
concisely, make your scholars write them on slips of paper. Send one
to the board, to set down what you dictate. Get one of their number to
read aloud some brief and comprehensive summary of the lesson details.
In one or all of these ways make them load themselves, and
then--nothing is accomplished if you stop here--pull the trigger!
More than on any other thing save the help of the Holy Spirit, a
teacher's success depends on the use he makes of the fact that his
scholars are already loaded to some effective purpose; and the wise
teacher will always ask himself, in the course of his preparation for
the lesson, "What experiences of the members of my class will help
them understand this lesson and its truths?" One has been sick lately.
One is studying geology. One has a father who is a banker. One has
just seen the Mammoth Cave.
If these things are to be likened to the bullets and shot, what is the
powder? Must the teacher depend for that, too, largely on the pupil?
Yes.
To be sure, much of the powder of successful teaching is the zeal and
eagerness of the teacher himself. But his interest is a smokeless
powder like the fulminating powder of the cap, whose value is solely
to set fire to the powder of the scholar when the trigger is pulled.
The scholar's interest, the scholar's powder, it is that must be
relied upon to do the work, to carry the ball.
And so in trigger-teaching, much depends on the teacher's ability to
excite curiosity and arouse interest. He will study his scholars'
likings, and appeal to them in his illustrations; their needs, and
refer to them in his applications. Sometimes he will state the matter
too strongly, sometimes too feebly; in each case, with the express
intention to draw out their protest. He will know how to use paradox
so as to arouse, but not confuse. He will study different methods of
emphasis, and will not use one alone. From each lesson he will select
one truth, and one only, which he will treat with all the ardor of a
lawyer arguing a matter of life or death. Above all, he will remember
that the Spirit alone quickeneth, and will earnestly pray that fire
from heaven may be added to his own little fulminating cap.
But many a teacher, conscious of all that I have been saying, does not
know how to pull the trigger. It is not so simple in the Sunday-school
as in the school of the battalion. The artful teacher will find many
ways of trigger-pulling, suited to the diverse and changing needs of his
class and of his topic. Sometimes he will put in the scholars' hands
paper and pencil, and set them to writing or drawing. Sometimes he will
send them in turn to his blackboard. Sometimes he will elicit the entire
story from one, sometimes from ten. Sometimes he will introduce pictures
for them to talk about, or maps for them to travel over, or objects for
them to group their words and thoughts around. Always, however, he will
remember that his best trigger is the little trigger-shaped
interrogation-point. He will ask questions himself with the
effectiveness born of careful preparation. Better than that, he will get
his scholars to ask questions. In all these ways, and as many more as
there are Sundays in the year, the wise teacher will pull the trigger.
Let no one pass from big-gun teaching to trigger-teaching with the
idea that the latter will prove the easier. It is far more difficult
to make the cartridge than to pick up and carry the ball which the
cartridge would propel; but, for effective and profitable teaching,
better ten minutes' work done by the class than an hour's work done by
you in the presence of the class, even though to do the latter is far
easier than to elicit the former.
If--as those who have been doing it all themselves will doubtless find
it--this trigger-teaching comes especially hard at first, let them
begin with getting their scholars to do _something_ at first hand,
though only a little, and let them work their way slowly to the
pedagogical perfection of getting their scholars to do everything.
And does any one fear that this will destroy the personality and
personal influence of the teacher? On the contrary, the trigger-teacher
has to put ten times more of himself into every lesson than the big-gun
teacher. The scholars get more of his personality, at the same time that
they are gloriously, though unconsciously, developing their own.