Through Eye-Gate
Before his listless and restless audience the lecturer took in his hand
a piece of chalk, turned to the blackboard, and touched it. Instantly he
had the eager attention of all. He did nothing with the chalk; had not
intended to do anything; he carried his point with it, nevertheless.
A teacher, plus a bit of chalk, is two teachers. And any one may
double himself thus, if he choose to take a little pains.
Surely there need be no hesitation as to the materials. If you can
have a blackboard, that is fine. I myself like best a board fastened
to the wall, and a second board hinged to this after the fashion of a
double slate. The outside may be used for "standing matter," and the
inside opened up for the surprises.
But this is a great luxury. A portable, flexible blackboard will
answer, if your class is away from the wall. You can roll it up and
carry it home to practise there. You can use both sides of it. Such
blackboards may be obtained now for two dollars.
Not even a flexible blackboard, however, is essential. A slate will
serve you admirably, and some of the best chalk-talkers use simple
sheets of manilla paper tacked to ordinary pine boards.
Then, as to the chalk, by all means use colored crayons. It is easy to
learn effective contrasts of colors, and bright hues will increase
many fold the attractiveness of your pictures and diagrams. But these
crayons need not be of the square variety, sold especially for such
work at thirty-five cents a box. They produce beautiful results, but
the ordinary schoolroom box of assorted colors will serve your turn
admirably and cost much less.
And if the materials are readily obtained, so is the artistic skill.
Trust to the active imaginations of the children. Remember in their own
drawings how vivid to them are the straight lines that stand for men,
the squares that represent houses, the circles with three dots that set
forth faces with eyes and mouth. I once saw Mrs. Crafts teach the
parable of the Good Samaritan in a most fascinating way to some little
tots, and her blackboard work was merely some rough ovals, each drawn
half through its neighbor, to represent a chain of love,--love to papa,
love to mamma, to sister, brother, friend, teacher,--_neighbor_. And as
circle after circle was briskly added, every child was filled with
delight. That same parable of the Good Samaritan I once saw perfectly
illustrated--for all practical purposes--by four squares, each with two
parallel lines curving from one upper corner to the opposite lower one,
to represent the descent of the Jericho road, while the various scenes
were depicted with the aid of short, straight lines, the man fallen
among thieves being a horizontal line, the priest and Levite being
stiffly upright and placed on appropriate points in the road, while the
line for the Samaritan was leaning over as if helping his fallen brother
rise! Surely that series of drawings was not beyond the artistic skill
of any teacher.
One of the beauties of such simple work is that it may be dashed off
in the presence of the scholars, while more elaborate pictures must be
prepared beforehand; and half the value of blackboard work is in the
attention excited by the moving chalk. I use the expression "dashed
off," but I do not want to imply careless work. The straight lines
should be as straight as you can make them without a ruler, the
circles as true circles as can be drawn without a string, and the
stars should have equal points. The simpler the drawing, the more need
that every mark should have its mission and fulfill it well. A
confused scrawl will only make mental confusion worse confounded.
Don't be satisfied with rough work, or it will constantly become
rougher. Try to do better all the time.
Of course, this means home practice, even for the simplest of
exercises, like Mrs. Crafts' links of the love-chain. The nearer the
links are to perfect ovals, the better. The more nicely they are
shaded on one side, the more distinct will be the impression of a
chain. And the more rapidly they can be drawn, the more tense will be
the children's interest. A few easy lessons in drawing, from some
public-school teacher or some text-book, will prove of inestimable
value,--lessons enough to give you at least an idea of perspective, so
that you can make a house or a box stand out from the board, and know
which sides to shade of the inside of a door. Make such simple
beginnings as I have indicated, and determine to advance, however
slowly. It is hard to draw a man, but not so difficult if you are
willing to begin with a little circle for the head, an oval for the
body, and two straight lines for legs.
But even if you do not draw at all, it is well worth while to use
chalk. Almost magical effects may be produced by a single sentence,
sometimes a single word, _written_ on the board. If your lesson is the
last chapter of the Bible, the one word "Come!" will be blackboard
work enough. Add to it, if you will, at the close of the recitation,
this earnest question: "Why not to-day?" Every lesson has its key-word
or its key-sentence. Write it large on your scholars' hearts by
writing it large upon the blackboard.
In such work, as in drawing, you may begin with simple writing (your
best script, however!) and go on to as high a degree of elaborateness
as you fancy. A printer's book of samples will introduce you to
fascinating and varied forms of letters. Your colored chalks may be
used in exquisite illumination. You may learn from penmen their most
bewitching scrolls. And all of this will be enjoyed by the children,
and will contribute to the impressiveness of the truth, _provided_
you are jealous to keep it subordinate to the truth. Otherwise, plain
longhand is to be preferred to the end of the chapter.
Another easy way to use the blackboard--still without venturing on
drawing--is by constructing diagrams. What a key to Scripture
chronology, for instance, is furnished your scholars when you draw a
horizontal line to represent the four thousand years from Adam to
Christ, bisect it for Abraham, bisect the last half for Solomon,
bisect the third quarter for Moses, and continue to bisect as long as
a famous man stands at the bisecting-point! How it clears up the life
of Christ to draw two circles, the inner one for Jerusalem, the outer
for Nazareth, dividing them into thirty-three parts for the years of
our Saviour's life, and running a curved line in and out according as
his journeys took him to Nazareth and beyond its circle, or back to
Jerusalem at the feast-times! Such circles will also serve to depict
graphically Paul's missionary journeys, the outer circle representing
Antioch. Any series of historical events may well be strung along a
vertical line divided into decades, and parallel series, as in the
history of the northern and southern kingdoms, along two parallel
verticals. An outline map, such as the teacher may draw from memory,
will furnish an excellent basis for another kind of diagram, the
progress of persons or of series of events being traced from place to
place by dotted lines, a different color for each person or journey or
group of incidents.
Acrostics furnish still another use for the blackboard. For example,
draw out from the class by questions a list of the prominent
characteristics of David. He was
Daring
Active
Vigilant
Inspired
Dutiful
Not until the list is completed does the class see that its initial
letters spell David's name. You have attained the element of surprise,
so valuable in work of this sort. Again, in a lesson on the rich young
man, or on Dives and Lazarus, or on Zaccheus, write in a vertical column
the letters of Christ's name, and draw straight lines to the right in
various directions, as shown in the following diagram. Transferring the
letters, or getting some scholar to transfer them, to the points
indicated, you quickly insert an E, and it reads: "Christ--richest."
[Illustration]
The application is obvious, and will never be forgotten.
Often, in seeking for such an effective presentation of a lesson's
truth, we hit upon alliteration, and then our blackboard work is easy.
Three P's:
P P P
Fill them out, as the lesson proceeds, thus:
harisee ompously
P Prayed P
ublican enitently
And often, again, our form will be based upon similar terminations or
beginnings of words, such as:
{ choosing
Solomon { reigning
{ sinning
Suggestions and examples of such work might be indefinitely
multiplied. It is one of the easiest, yet one of the most effective,
methods of fixing the points of a lesson.
The earnest teacher will be drawn irresistibly from the use of the
chalk in diagrams, acrostics, and the like, to simple drawings; and by
this time he will realize the importance of simplicity. A set of
steps, for instance, is easy to draw; we may use only the profile; but
the drawing will fix forever in your scholars' minds the events in
Solomon's life. To a certain point the steps are all upward. Yellow
chalk shows them to be golden. A word written over each step gives
the event it symbolizes. On a sudden the steps turn downward, become a
dirty brown, each representing a sin, and break short off as Solomon
takes his terrible fall.
Who cannot draw a number of rough circles? They will stand for the
stones thrown at Stephen. A word or initial written in each will
represent the different kinds of persecutions that assail faithful
Christians in our modern days. Who cannot draw a shepherd's crook, and
write alongside it the points of the Twenty-third Psalm, or the ways
in which Christ is the Good Shepherd? Who cannot draw a large
wineglass, and write inside it some of the evils that come out of it?
Who cannot draw a rectangle for a letter, and write upon it a
direction, to make more vivid some of the epistles? or a trumpet
inside seven circles, to brighten up the lesson on the fall of
Jericho? As a rule, the very best chalk-talks are the simplest, and
require the least skill in drawing.
But how to get the ideas? Where to find the pictures?
Of course, in the first place, from the books of first-rate
chalk-talkers, such as Pierce's "Pictured Truth," Frank Beard's "The
Blackboard in the Sunday-school," and Belsey's "The Bible and the
Blackboard" (an English book). Of course, also, from the many
admirable periodicals that publish blackboard hints, such as the
"Lesson Illustrator," the "Sunday-school Times," and the teachers'
magazines of the various denominations. Get hints also from the
blackboard work of the public school and the kindergarten, as to
manner, if not as to matter.
But as for the design, your own is the best for you, and not
another's. Study all the blackboard work you can find, and retain
whatever gravitates to you; but your own original design is the one
you will best understand, and in presenting it you will have more of
that enthusiasm which makes success.
Learn to find pictures all through the Bible. I have just been searching
my mind for a Bible text that promised nothing in the way of a picture.
At last I thought that "All have sinned and come short of the glory of
God" would do. But in another second two pictures popped into my mind. I
saw a river whose further bank was beautiful with flowers and trees, the
paradise of "the glory of God," and across the river a bridge--lacking
its final portion. I saw a ladder reaching up into some golden clouds
back of which shone heaven, the city of "the glory of God"; but all the
top rounds of the ladder were missing. Bridge and ladder had "come
short." God's hand was needed, reaching across, reaching down, to help
us over the sin-gap into "the glory of God." I do not believe it
possible to find any Bible texts, still less any twelve consecutive
verses of the Bible, that do not hide somewhere a capital picture.
Read your Bible pictorially. Make sketches everywhere upon the margin.
For practice, often take some passage sure to come up in the
International Lessons, such as Psalm 1, Isaiah 53, Proverbs 3,
Matthew 5, Luke 2, John 14, Acts 9, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13,
Hebrew 11, James 3. Delve into the passage, meditate long over it, and
see how many pictures you can get out of it.
Of the greatest assistance will be a book,--indexed as to texts, and
also as to subjects, such as "temperance," "missionary,"
"resurrection," "courage,"--in which you will preserve every drawing
you make, and all the most suggestive blackboard hints you clip from
the teachers' magazines, together with simple outlines of all sorts of
common subjects. These last will be particularly useful. There will be
a ladder, an anvil, a horse, a lily, a broom, a fountain,--anything
likely to be of use for a symbol. You will clip these from
advertisements, catalogues, the illustrated papers and magazines, and
you will find your collection useful in many ways.
I have spoken as if the teacher should do all the blackboard work. On
the contrary, he should do none that he can get his scholars to do for
him. No matter if they do not do it as well as he. Get them to
practise beforehand. Let them begin with only the simplest work; they
will soon astonish you with their proficiency. And the class will take
far more interest in a poor drawing by one of their own number than in
a good drawing by you.
Yes, and even when you preside at the blackboard yourself, give the
class pencils and paper occasionally, and let them copy what you draw.
Their attention will be assuredly fixed, and an ineffaceable
impression made on their memory. The drawings they complete, however
crude, they will be glad to carry home to show their parents, and
treasure as souvenirs of the lesson, or keep, if you choose, against
the coming review day. If you use this method, you will soon come to
cherish a deeper liking for that prime pedagogical virtue, simplicity.
For a final word: Take pains that your word-pictures keep pace with
your chalk. Don't _ask_ your class what you have drawn--that might
lead to embarrassing results! _Tell_ them. Put in all sorts of graphic
little touches, even though you cannot draw a tenth of what you are
talking about. The man on the Jericho road--how full of fear he was as
he walked; how he whistled to keep up his courage; how one robber
peeped from behind a rock, and another whispered, "He's coming!" how
they sprang out, and he ran, and a third rascal sprang out in front
and knocked him down; how he shouted, "Help! Thieves! Help!" and how
only the echo answered him in that lonely place--all this must have
happened many a time on that Jericho road, and you have a perfect
right to stimulate with such natural and inevitable details the
imagination of the children.
That is what they are for--both our word-picturing and our
chalk-picturing: not to exhibit our nimbleness of wit or of finger,
but to quicken the minds of the children,--that alone,--and make them
more eager in the pursuit of truth.