These two processes practically run into each other a good deal, but
they ought not to be confounded. Training implies more or less of
practical application of what one has been taught. One may be taught,
for instance, the exact forms of the letters used in writing, so as to
know at once by the eye whether the letters are formed correctly or not.
But only training and practice will make him a penman. Training refers
more to the formation of habits. A child may by reasoning be taught the
importance of punctuality in coming to school; but he is trained to the
habit of punctuality only by actually coming to school in good time, day
after day.
The human machine on which the teacher acts, is in its essential nature
different from the material agencies operated on by other engineers. It
is, as I have once and again said, a living power, with laws and
processes of its own. Constant care, therefore, must be exercised, in
the business of education, not to be misled by analogies drawn from the
material world. The steam-engine may go over its appointed task, day
after day, the whole year round, and yet, at the end of the year, it
will have no more tendency to go than before its first trip. Not so the
boy. Going begets going. By doing a thing often, he acquires a
facility, an inclination, a tendency, a habit of doing it. If a teacher
or a parent succeeds in getting a child to do a thing once, it will be
easier to get him to do it a second time, and still easier a third time.
A teacher who is wise, when he seeks to bring about any given change in
a child, whether it be intellectual or moral, will not ordinarily
attempt to produce the change all at once, and by main force. He will
not rely upon extravagant promises on the one side, nor upon scolding,
threats, and violence on the other. Solomon hits the idea exactly, when
he speaks of "leading in the way of righteousness." We must take the
young by the hand and lead them. When we have led them over the ground
once, let us do it a second time, and then a third time, and so keep on,
until we shall have established with them a routine, which they will
continue to follow of their own accord, when the guiding hand which
first led them is withdrawn. _This is training._
The theory of it is true, not only in regard to things to be done, which
is generally admitted, but also in regard to things to be known, which
is often ignored if not denied. A boy, we will say, has a repugnance to
the study of arithmetic. Perhaps he is particularly dull of
comprehension on that subject. We shall not remove that repugnance by
railing at him. We shall never make him admire it by expatiating on its
beauties. It will not become clear to his comprehension by our pouring
upon it all at once a sudden and overpowering blaze of light in the way
of explanation. Such a process rather confounds him. Here again let us
fall back upon the method of the great Teacher, "Line upon line, precept
upon precept." We will first patiently conduct our boy through one of
the simplest operations of arithmetic, say, a sum in addition. The next
day we will conduct him again through the same process, or through
another of the same sort. The steps will gradually become familiar to
his mind, then easy, then clear. He learns first the practice of
arithmetic, then the rules, then the relations of numbers, then the
theory on which the rules and the practice are based, and finally, he
hardly knows how, he becomes an arithmetician. He has been trained into
a knowledge of the subject.
You wish to teach a young child how to find a word in a dictionary. You
give at first, perhaps, a verbal description of the mystery of a
dictionary. You will tell him that, in such a book, all the words are
arranged according to the letters with which they begin; that all the
words beginning with the letter A are in the first part of the book;
then those beginning with the letter B, then those beginning with C, and
so on; you tell him that all the words beginning with one letter,
covering some one or two hundred pages, are again re-arranged among
themselves according to the second letter of each word, and then again
still further re-arranged according to the third letter in each, and so
on to the end. Arouse his utmost attention, and explain the process with
the greatest clearness that words can give, and then set him to find a
word. See how awkward will be his first attempt, how confused his ideas,
how little he has really understood what you have told him. You must
repeat your directions patiently, over and over, "line upon line;" you
must take him by the hand day after day, and train him into a knowledge
of even so apparently simple a thing as finding a word in a dictionary.
While teaching and training are thus distinguishable in theory, in
practice they are well nigh inseparable. At least, they never should be
separated. Teaching has never done its perfect work, until, by training,
the mind has learned to run in accustomed channels, until it sees what
is true, and feels what is right, with the clearness, force, and
promptitude, which come only from long-continued habit.