commend. He will not open himself to the criticism that his praise is
overdue; nor will he, on the other hand, constantly scold and complain
and nag his pupils. He will insist upon order and industry and will
labor assiduously to arouse enthusiasm in the class. He will
constantly endeavor to see things from the pupils' point of view and
sympathize with the pupils' plan of thought. He will not forget that
he was once a child, and he will steadily pray for that wise charity
that knows the difference between childish caprice and youthful
viciousness. He will not seriously regard the former; he will not fail
to check and rebuke the latter.
#25.# A wise teacher will #aim at a few things# and bend his energies
to achieve them. He will not dissipate his power by undertaking to do
too many things. He will fix upon some dominant purpose and cause it
to run like a thread of gold throughout the recitation. I once heard a
preacher begin his discourse with the Garden of Eden and end it with
the New Jerusalem. He said so many things in an unrelated way that his
effort was wholly wasted. It is a mark of weakness to engage in mental
sauntering. The wise teacher will hold a thought before his pupils
until, like a jewel, it flashes light from every facet. He will also
use the best things done by some one pupil to stimulate like results
in others. Above all, a consecrated teacher will not grow weary in
well doing, for he should have an unflinching faith in God, in his
pupil, and in the power of his teaching to produce Christian
character.
Test Questions
1. What is the teacher's goal?
2. At what point in the teaching plan do many teachers go wrong?
3. Who must lead in the teaching process--teachers or pupils? Why?
4. What is the highest art in teaching?
5. Who should do most of the talking--pupils or teacher?
6. Why should a teacher work with pupils out of the class hour as well
as in it?
7. What should be the teacher's attitude toward caprice or toward
viciousness?
8. Should the teacher aim at a few things or many? Why?
Lesson 4
What the Pupil Should Do
#26. The Pupil's Part.#--The part the pupil takes in the act of
learning is all-important. The success of the recitation is in a large
degree conditioned by the attitude of the pupil. He must be organized
and directed by the teacher for the process of instruction. What the
pupil will do in the recitation is conditioned upon the skill and
power of the teacher. When the pupil fails to do what he should do the
fault usually lies with the teacher. The pupil does that which the
teacher stimulates him to do.
#27.# The pupil should approach the recitation _willingly and gladly_.
The pupil who is in class against his will is a difficult pupil to
teach, and it is doubtful whether or not any lasting good results from
enforced attendance. Parents should not overlook this fact, and
teachers will find here a hint of unusual significance. This willing,
joyous approach to the lesson is conditioned upon at least four
things: (a) the preparation of the lesson by the pupil in advance; (b)
the absence of other appeals more enticing to the interest of the
pupils; (c) the quality of teaching power and skill exercised by the
teacher; (d) the spirit of good-will and of kindly concern that rules
the school as a whole.
#28. The Pupil's Preparation.#--From the smaller pupils no formal
preparation can be demanded in advance. But for all, the lesson should
be read, either by the pupil or by some one in the home, prior to the
time of the recitation. It is a good plan to indicate briefly the week
preceding just what leading ideas and incidents the pupils should
master before the recitation occurs. There are many indirect acts that
the pupil may perform during the week that may fittingly be regarded
as preparation for the lesson; such as visits to the sick, efforts to
bring new members to the class, incidents of the week which made a
marked impression for good, and kindred matters. These can all be
touched upon by the teacher by judicious questioning, and in this way,
at the opening of the recitation, lead each pupil to make some
statement of a good done. This will promote the moral atmosphere so
vital to successful interpretation of the lesson.
#29. Divided Interests.#--Many times the pupil comes reluctantly to
the Sunday-school because his interests lie for that hour elsewhere.
If the parents go on a pleasure trip, it is unfair to compel the child
to forfeit the same opportunity. Wise parents will show the more
excellent way by themselves accompanying their children to the
Sunday-school. My own father never led his boys to the silent recesses
of the mountain brooks to see God's wonder world until after we had
returned from the Sunday-school. To enjoy the former we were
unconsciously encouraged to attend the latter. The so-called "liberal"
Sabbath is the foe of the Sunday-school, and all friends of the best
things should oppose the lessening of the power that wins childhood
for the Master through regular attendance upon his school.
#30.# When pupils dislike the teacher because he is weak or rude or
petulant or unprepared to teach, it is difficult to keep these pupils
in regular attendance. Each teacher should constantly ask himself, How
may I personally add to the attractiveness of the Sunday-school?
Careful inquiry and close supervision of the classes by the
superintendent should compel good teaching or a prompt change of
teachers. It is useless to expect pupils to love the Sunday-school
well enough to endure a worthless teacher. How often pupils grow weary
in attendance because the teacher has no power to woo the young spirit
to the fountains of love and light! On the other hand, how gladly and
how regularly children turn to the Sunday-school when a great-hearted
and warm-spirited teacher is always there to welcome and to nourish
them!
#31.# There is a marvelous attractive power in a well-organized
school. When the spirit that rules in it and the organization that
guides it are so wisely fostered as to create in the school an
atmosphere of genuine stimulation the pupil will find it easy to come
gladly, to say with the Psalmist, "I was glad when they said unto me,
let us go unto the house of Jehovah."
#32. Reverence.#--In the recitation proper, the pupil should be helped
to be reverent, well-behaved, and actively absorbed in the lesson. He
should be shown the gains of complying promptly and cheerfully with
the requests of his teacher; the King's business must be conducted
with decency and dispatch. He should develop a quickening concern for
the welfare of his classmates and foster a wholesome support to the
class as an organization. It is not always the lesson taught but the
spirit that rules during the lesson that wins the young spirit to
adoration and service.
#33. Regularity and Promptness.#--The early acquisition of the habits
of regularity and promptness in attendance are virtues of no mean
moment in the life of the learner. Whatever may be legitimately done
to promote these habits is worthily done. An essential part of the
discipline of life lies in acquiring dependable habits. It is the
systematic attendance upon the Sunday-school that at last leads the
pupil to say again, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go unto
the house of Jehovah." Some unique and valuable exercise at the
opening of the recitation, occupying but a minute or two of time, will
often prove of great value. I have headed this chapter, "What the
pupil should do," because it is not what the pupil thinks, nor what he
says, that is of greatest moment. It is his conduct in the class and
his conduct during the week in home, in school, in play, that tests
most directly the value of the teaching he receives. The focus of
teacher concern is not what the pupil learns, but what the pupil does;
not thought, but conduct; not theory, but practise; not ideas, but
acts; not ability to answer questions, but ability to live a clean,
sweet, quiet Christian life. All teaching that falls short of this
goal is unworthy teaching. The supreme test of teaching, laid down by
the Master, is that we should do the will of our Father that is in
heaven.
Test Questions
1. Whose fault is it, generally, if the pupil fails to do what he
ought in the class?
2. What four things help to the pupil's willing approach to the
lesson?
3. In what ways may a pupil prepare for the lesson period?
4. How may the pupil be spared a division of interest?
5. What should be the pupil's attitude and bearing during the
recitation?
6. What should be the real focus of the teacher's concern about the
pupil?
Lesson 5
What Teaching Is
#34. Teaching Defined.#--The Sunday-school teacher as much as any
other teacher should understand clearly what teaching is. Teaching is
not telling, and no amount of talking to the pupil can be considered
as teaching. Teaching is not determined by anything that happens
outside the pupil, but by the action of the pupil's soul upon the
things that are presented to it through the senses. _Teaching may be
defined as causing a human soul to know._
#35.# Everything outside the learner may be considered his teacher. We
are taught in the broadest sense by the spirit of God's universe
expressed in terms of order and law. We are taught in a more
restricted sense by our immediate environment, and especially by the
people whose lives come in close contact with our own. In the most
restricted sense we are taught by a trained mind, and this trained
mind belongs to a person called a teacher. The process of teaching may
be considered as the act of bringing into the consciousness of the
learner the knowledge already in the consciousness of the teacher. We
cannot teach what we do not know. Teaching ends when the pupil knows
all that the teacher knows.
#36. Impression and Expression.#--When I say that I know a certain
thing, I mean that my soul possesses that thing and knows that it
possesses it; this is _consciousness_. The teaching act completes
itself when the learner is able to express in language or otherwise to
the satisfaction of the teacher the facts in consciousness. In other
words, the soul is not fully educated until it has reached the point
of expression.
#37.# It will be seen from this that teaching is possible only when
the soul is actively seeking new knowledge. This attempt of the soul
to seek new knowledge causes it, for one reason or another, to focus
itself upon some one object of thought to the exclusion of all other
objects of thought. _This act is called attention._ When the will
directs the attention it is called _voluntary_ attention. When some
other agency than the will directs the attention it is called
_involuntary_ attention.
#38. Securing Attention.#--The greatest art in teaching is to secure
attention. The highest form of attention is voluntary attention. The
young child does not possess sufficient will-power to control
attention; consequently in the early grades some other agent than a
command of the will must hold attention. This other agent in a general
way may be characterized as _interest_. In other words, the young
child's interests hold his attention, and the thing in which he takes
the greatest interest will easiest attract his attention.
#39.# There are certain well-known principles underlying the interest
of the child. First, his curiosity; second, novelty, or
unexpectedness; third, imitativeness; fourth, illustrations based upon
his experience. The teacher cannot be too careful to consider what is
of interest to a child. We cannot measure the interests of a child by
the interests of an adult. Here the study of child nature is the only
safe and adequate guidance.
#40. How Knowledge Reaches the Soul.#--There are but five gateways to
the soul of a child, called the senses:--Seeing, hearing, touching,
tasting, smelling. There are no other channels of approach. Whatever
increases the breadth of this sense-approach in a subject of study
increases the interest of the learner in that subject. If I tell a
child about a _ball_, I utilize his sense of hearing; if I show him a
ball, at the same time I describe it, I utilize seeing and hearing; if
I hand him a ball, as I describe it, I utilize touching, seeing, and
hearing. A single fact reaching consciousness through the senses and
recognized in consciousness is called a percept or a particular
notion. It is sometimes called an idea. The soul in giving expression
to an idea uses a word or some other sign for the idea. Thus words are
the signs of ideas.
#41.# When other facts of a similar character reach consciousness, and
are identified there with the first percept, the percept becomes a
concept, general notion or general idea, just as the percept is an
individual idea; that is, the percept stands for one object
apprehended in consciousness; the concept stands for a group of
similar objects under one name apprehended in consciousness. All the
common nouns are concepts just as all proper nouns are percepts. For
example, in the sentence, "Washington was a brave man," it is plain
that "Washington" is a particular idea or percept and "man" is a
general idea or concept.
#42. Judgment and Reasoning.#--The aim of the teacher is, first, to
secure clear percepts, and then rapidly to change these percepts into
concepts, which is only another way of saying that good teaching
relates the things in the soul in such a way as to give the child the
fewest possible terms with which to carry the largest possible number
of particular facts. Concepts are the shorthand of the soul's
language. When these concepts are compared and their agreement or
disagreement noted the soul is forming judgments. When these judgments
are expressed in language the soul is forming sentences. When these
judgments are compared and their agreement or disagreement noted, the
soul is reasoning. Sentences are the signs of judgments or reasons,
just as words are the signs of percepts or concepts. Thus the percept
first comes; the percept grows into the concept; the concept into the
judgment; the judgment into reasoning; and these are the four steps in
the process of knowing. They are the tools of thought. Teaching must
be a training in the use of these tools.
#43. Memory# is of little use unless it is simply the power to hold
things clearly understood by the soul. It is not good teaching to
burden the memory with masses of things not clearly perceived and
conceived, although it may be at the beginning not at all
objectionable to commit to memory certain great utterances from the
Bible and other standard literature, even when the meaning is not
clearly and fully apprehended. But at the earliest time possible these
should be analyzed and the meaning worked into forms of clear
knowledge.
#44. Imagination.#--Imagination is the power of the soul to work up
into new combinations the things in memory. Memory keeps things as the
soul got them through the senses. The products of memory have a basis
in experience. The products of imagination have no such basis in
experience. Imagination is the creator of new products. It cares not
for facts, but works after its own fancy. It is a more dangerous
power because more free. To curb it at the outset is necessary. To
allow it free range is to open the way for statements from the child
that often alarm the parent or teacher. But when once the moral sense
is awakened and governs imagination the latter becomes the agency that
creates all art and enriches all life.
#45.# Teaching aims to develop by appropriate exercise all these
powers of the soul. What the pupil learns is not so important as what
power he gains in the control and use of his thinking processes under
the guidance of a skilful teacher.
Test Questions
1. What is teaching?
2. When does teaching end?
3. What is consciousness?
4. What marks the completion of the teaching act?
5. What is attention? Voluntary? Involuntary?
6. What will most easily attract the attention of a young child?
7. State four principles underlying the child's interest?
8. Name the gateways to the soul.
9. What is a percept?
10. What is a concept?
11. State the four steps in the process of knowing.
12. When is memory of most use?
13. What is imagination?
Test Questions for Review
Lessons 1 to 5
1. What point of view must the teacher take?
2. Is it true that teachers are "born" not "made"?
3. What does apperception mean?
4. By what means does knowledge enter the soul?
5. What is the teacher's goal?
6. What is the highest art in teaching?
7. What four things help to the pupil's approach to the lesson?
8. What should be the teacher's real concern about the pupil?
9. What is teaching?
10. What is attention? Voluntary? Involuntary?
11. State four principles underlying the child's interest.
12. Name the gateway to the soul.
Lesson 6
What an Educational Principle Is
#46. Laws of the Soul.#--Everything in this world behaves in a certain
way under certain conditions. All the things in God's great, good
world operate in harmony with some force or power that is always
present and that always does or causes to be done the same thing. When
once we have discovered this power and stated in a formula how it
behaves we have a law. The soul is no exception to this general
statement. It behaves, under similar conditions, in the same way. When
once we have discovered how the soul acts and formulate its methods of
action we have a law of the soul.
#47.# From these laws of the soul we may also learn how to make the
soul grow in a certain desired way. We can also discover the laws in
the materials which we use to cause growth in the soul. These laws
become the guide to all good teaching. They are here called
educational laws or principles.
#48. Educational Principles.#--Thus it will be seen that educational
principles rest upon the laws of the soul. They tell us in brief and
clear statements what should govern us in teaching a growing soul. If
one turns to any treatise on pedagogy he will find there a statement
of these laws. Of course, these will be found to vary somewhat because
no one is quite certain that the last facts concerning the soul are
known.
#49.# But the important thing is not, after all, what one finds in the
books, but what one is finally led to accept as his own guiding
principles. It is of the utmost importance that one should have
certain general principles of education as standards by which to test
his own teaching. A ship without a compass sails a no less aimless or
dangerous course than does a teacher without pedagogic guidance. What
the compass is to the ship, educational principles are to the teacher.
Thus educational principles aid in achieving the end or purpose of the
educational process; which end is, according to Spencer, "to live
completely," or, as we usually say, to fit each one to live in the
exercise of all the power God made it possible for him to enjoy. To
realize this end teaching must proceed according to law.
#50.# The first law to be noted is that #the subject matter presented
to a growing soul must be adapted to the capacity of the learner#.
This law is so self-evident that we unconsciously observe it. We do
not give the same kind of lessons to a child in the primary grade that
we should and do give to the pupil in the adult Bible class. The whole
significance of graded exercises is based upon this fundamental
principle. This law rests upon the generally accepted fact that the
different powers of the soul change their relative activity during the
years of growth.
#51.# The second principle is equally important: #There is a natural
order in which the powers of the soul should be exercised.# This order
is the order of their activity. The earliest power to become
educationally active is sensation, the last is reason, and hence we
can phrase this law in the maxim "from sense to reason." Different
writers state the same thing in the following way: observation before
reasoning; the concrete before the abstract; sense knowledge before
thought knowledge; facts before definitions; processes before rules;
the particular before the general; the simple before the complex; from
the known to the next related unknown. All these maxims may be traced
to the same law of the soul, and they may all be summed up in the
maxim, _teaching must proceed from things to symbols_, since the
senses deal with things and reason deals with symbols. No wise teacher
will pass this law by until its full significance is understood. Jesus
was a masterful teacher. He observed this law frequently. Note the
examples in the Gospels, using the incident at Jacob's well as an
example. AEsop's fables are all built upon the principle here laid
down, as are the numerous fairy tales by the Grimms, Andersen, and
others.
#52.# Since the soul grows only by its own activity a third law
arises: #Knowledge can be acquired only by occasioning the proper
activity in the soul of the pupil.# It is always important to keep in
mind that it is not what the teacher thinks and does, but what he
causes the pupil to think and do, that makes for knowledge. The best
teaching secures the best mental activity on the part of the pupil.
#53.# Just what the proper activity is may be seen by a consideration
of a fourth principle: #First presentations of new knowledge must be
made objectively in all grades of the school.# Ideas cannot be taught
through words. They can be taught through objects, and the ideas can
then be named. The name is the word. This law may be stated as "ideas
before words." It stands as a protest against abstract and formal
teaching. It demands that knowledge shall be fitted to the nature of
the soul's growth. The child that for the first time was shown a
growing fern in a vase and called it "a pot of green feathers" was on
the right track. He will in due time acquire the right word. His idea
is clear. It follows also that _the only words in which knowledge can
be presented to the soul are words that name known things_.
#54.# These and many other principles are the basis of the whole
teaching process. Happy that child whose teacher has thought his way
through these essential laws and observes them in all the activities
of the recitation. No teacher can grow in power or skill without
mastering the meaning of these laws, which may be called the alphabet
of the teacher's preparation. These laws the teacher should always
have in mind as guidance. They are not to be announced to the pupil.
Jesus always followed great educational principles, but he never
announced these to his disciples. When you say "That is a good
lesson," you mean that the lesson is in harmony with laws of teaching
you know to be good. There is no other basis of judging the worth of a
teacher.
Test Questions
1. What is meant by a law of the soul?
2. Why are educational principles needed?
3. What is the first law as to the subject matter of teaching? The
second?
4. What is the earliest power that becomes educationally active?
5. What maxim sums up the order in which the soul-powers should be
exercised?
6. State the third law of the soul. The fourth. Illustrate.
Lesson 7
What an Educational Method Is
#55. Applying Principles.#--When the teacher puts an educational
principle to work in the act of teaching he uses a method. A method is
a principle applied, put into operation. Principles make up one's
educational theory; methods make up one's educational practise. It is
as important to have a good method as it is to have a good law. The
way a law is applied is a method. When we agreed that it would be a
good thing to teach scientific temperance to our children we announced
a principle. To apply this led to the use of the school. Teaching in
the school the subject of scientific temperance became a method. We
might have chosen the home, the church, or any other agency.
#56.# One's method is often the test of one's principle. If I say that
repetition makes for clear knowledge I announce a law or principle.
The test of the law is the way the soul acts under repetition. Does
the learner gain in clearness of knowledge by repetition? If so, the
law is true. If not, the law is not true.