Training the Teacher Part 36

#73. Teaching#, the work of the teacher, includes three distinct elements or parts: _instruction_, _drill_, _examination_. These may at times be supplemented by a fourth teaching process of considerable importance, _review_. Every good cla.s.s exercise is made up of these elements. In certain cases the amount of time devoted to one or to the other of these varies greatly. No fixed law can be set. The judgment of the teacher, the condition of the cla.s.s, the immediate purpose of the particular lesson, combine to make the relative value of these elements vary from one recitation to another. We can, however, study the purpose or function of each and arrive at some fairly adequate guidance.

#74. Instruction# is the process through which the teacher aims to a.s.sist the pupil in the acquisition of knowledge or power, or both. It may take the form of written or of oral instruction. Written instruction has to do with the mastery of the printed page. To know how to obtain knowledge from the printed page is an important end of instruction. "Understandest thou what thou readest?" is a question that goes to the heart of good written instruction. Oral instruction is the act of the living teacher in stimulating the pupil to know. It has three phases--_objective_, _indirect_, and _direct_.

#75.# _Objective instruction_ is the presentation to the eye or other sense of the pupil, by means of objects or pictures, some concrete thing which will aid the pupil to gain clear knowledge. We have already considered the value of this form of concrete instruction.

#76.# _Indirect instruction_ is the process of recalling, through memory, past objective experiences and causing the mind to discern their likeness or unlikeness, their relations one to another, and to express a conclusion that the teacher does not first announce. In indirect instruction the learner is led to express his own past knowledge and, by comparing one fact with another, to arrive for himself at new knowledge. This is a most difficult but a most valuable type of instruction. It makes the pupil an explorer after truth and it should result in making him a discoverer of truth. The joy of original discovery possesses the soul of the successful pupil, who is taught by this indirect or suggestion method of instruction.

#77.# _Direct instruction_ is the communication of facts by the teacher through oral language to the pupil. The pupil in this type of learning follows the statements of the teacher and sees for himself the truth of the facts presented and the conclusion reached. The danger of direct teaching lies in the fact that the teacher may fail to arouse in the pupil a current of thought corresponding to his own.

In this case there is no resulting knowledge in the soul of the learner; and, instead, there is likely to be confusion or disorder in the cla.s.s. This is a common phenomenon in cla.s.ses that are so unfortunate as to have poor teachers. The law underlying all oral teaching is as follows: _Do not tell the pupil directly what he may be reasonably expected to observe or discern for himself._

#78. Drill# is the process through which the teacher aims to a.s.sist the pupil in the acquisition of power and skill. The new truth, when first apprehended by the pupil, must be made so familiar to the learner that he can promptly and easily recall the new truth or knowledge. Drill is the agency that accomplishes this result. Note how often a boy or girl repeats some new sentence or word or game in order to fix its easy recall. Many teachers think repet.i.tion deadens interest. But without repet.i.tion Comenius rightly declares we do not know solidly. Repet.i.tion is nature's way of developing strength. It is of prime importance that every new truth be drilled until it is as familiar to the learner as old knowledge. Then it becomes easy of recall and ready for use. The wise teacher will avoid the abuse of the drill by so varying the exercise as to secure a maximum of interest, for interest is the basis of pleasure, and the soul does not easily retain knowledge that is not pleasurable.

#79. Examination# is the process through which the teacher aims to test the result of instruction and learning. Its value is twofold: it adds to the learner's knowledge by the preparation he makes for the examination, and it gives the teacher a means of measuring the results obtained through instruction and drill. If the examination tests only knowledge gained by direct teaching, it is of little value. If, on the contrary, the questions are so phrased as to cause the pupil to think his way out of things known into some newer and higher order of knowledge, it is a valuable exercise. Usually before examinations are given the teacher and pupils join in a _review_.

#80.# The #review# is an invaluable teaching agency when it results in such a reorganization of unrelated or partly related facts of knowledge as to give the pupil a clearer and surer grasp upon the relative value of the facts previously acquired. A drill fixes a given fact more securely or solidly in the soul; a review organizes these drilled facts into new systems and wider cla.s.sifications. It is seeing the old once more, but seeing it from a new point of vantage; just as a man climbing a tower with windows at stated points sees in each case all that he saw before, but sees it in a new setting, sees it as part of a larger scene, and sees it finally as a part of a mighty whole.

Wisely conducted, the review establishes proportion in the knowledge set in the soul and leads finally and directly to the fact that all truth is at last one truth; all life at last one life; all parts at last one great infinite unity, whose name is G.o.d.

Test Questions

1. What two processes are at work in every good recitation?

2. What four elements does teaching include?

3. What are the three phases of oral instruction?

4. Define each of these three phases.

5. What law underlies all oral teaching?

6. What is meant by drill?

7. Define examination. What is its twofold value?

8. When is a review valuable?

Lesson 10

What Will-training Leads To

#81.# The soul by #thinking, feeling, and willing# completes its round of activities. It is not a three-parted power, each part doing one and only one of these things; but it is a single power, capable of doing in turn all these things. The soul _thinking_ is at work in an intellectual process. The soul _feeling_ is at work in an emotional process. The soul _willing_ is at work in a volitional process. These three processes are so inter-related that it is not easy to separate them at any given time, and yet a bit of reflection upon how the soul does operate will make fairly clear these distinct processes. A child that has not been made unnatural by arbitrary training always follows its emotions and its thoughts by action. The inference from this is significant. The soul untrammeled always translates thought and feeling into action. This is only another way of saying that all intellectual and emotional products are under the direction of the will. _The will is the power of the soul that resolves to do, that causes us to act._ The will uses thought and feeling in much the same way that a sailor uses compa.s.s and rudder to guide a vessel in the right course.

#82. The First Step, Obedience.#--At the beginning the feeling and thought elements are so numerous and so complex that the will is unable rightly to organize all this data into guidance. Hence the child must be guided by a will that has, through experience, acquired this power. The will of the parent and of the teacher is at the outset the effective guide, and the one necessity for the welfare of the child is obedience. Gradually the child finds his way through the maze of things his intellect and his sensibilities have retained, and then he becomes self-directive. His own will has a.s.serted itself. He is now able and should be free to direct his own actions. When he does this his difficulties will not disappear. At times, he will find his will at a loss to give the guidance he knows he should have. Then, by all means, it is important that he should willingly surrender his finite will to the infinite will, his imperfect guidance to the perfect guidance; and he shall thus find his complete freedom of action in full surrender to the will of Almighty G.o.d.

#83.# In this first stage, when parent and teacher are motive and will to him, the child needs to be guided with the utmost care. _There must be reasonableness in the guidance._ Caprice, anger, impatience, arbitrariness, and severity are the methods of weaklings and cowards.

From all such the child should be freed. Consistency, kindness, patience, reasonableness, and moderation are the methods of strong, successful teachers. If you utter a command, see to it that the child obeys. Nothing is quite so deadly in the realm of the will as the fact that the pupil knows that his teacher threatens, commands, talks--but never acts. If you really do not intend to enforce obedience, do not utter the command. If you do not intend to compel obedience, do not a.s.sume the role of guide and teacher. How many children come into caprice instead of regulated conduct because they have from infancy lived in a realm of caprice, of confusion, and of disorder; a realm that moved by no law and hence set no law of guidance in the soul of the child.

#84. The Aim of Teaching is Right Living.#--We err when we a.s.sume that intellectual endeavor will inevitably lead to right conduct. Nothing is more obvious than the fact that our conduct is far below the plane of our thought. We _know_ vastly better than we _do_ the things that are right and true. Nor do we quite understand the function of good teaching if we neglect to cultivate the feeling powers of the soul. It is my conviction that we act more nearly in harmony with our feelings than our thoughts. If, then, conduct, right action, or character is the end of all true teaching; if, as Jesus taught, it is not what we know, nor yet what we feel, but what we do, that makes life worth while, it is of the utmost importance that we should so train the feeling life as well as the thought life as to prepossess the soul to right conduct. But the feelings are intensely concrete. Whence arises again the value of concrete teaching as a method in will training.

#85. Self-control.#--Aim to bring the pupil speedily into the exercise of his own will, into self-regulated conduct. Nothing will so surely negative good instruction as to deny to the pupil the freedom to exercise his own will as soon as that will has become sufficiently powerful and reasonable to be an adequate agency to direct the pupil's conduct. Many teachers and parents insist upon guiding the pupil long after he is capable of self-direction. Here, of course, is the critical moment in the pupil's life, and only the most careful study of the pupil and constant prayer for Divine a.s.sistance will insure the wisest procedure. When a boy has acquired self-control it is always a mistake to treat him as you would a small child. His self-respect is involved in his desire to do things in the way his own will determines. To ignore this fact is to predispose the boy to rebellion against his teacher; and perhaps against all const.i.tuted authority--human and divine.

#86. Teach What to do, Rather than What not to do.#--Above all, do not build a negative code in the soul of a child. It is not what he is restrained from doing, but what he is constantly encouraged to do that makes for right will training. The great power of Jesus as a teacher lies in his steadfast ability to teach the world what to do, how to act, right conduct in the midst of complex conditions. A negative code stops all endeavor, a positive code sets the soul aglow with the consciousness of things done, of processes initiated and completed, of struggles with wrong successfully ended, of progress from weakness to strength, from human error to Divine truth.

#87.# The end of all endeavor is to do the will of G.o.d, and the goal of all teaching is to equip a human soul to live in joyous accord with the infinite wisdom. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Test Questions

1. In what three ways does the soul round out its activities?

2. What is meant by the will?

3. What should be the effective guide for the child at first?

4. Name five elements that characterize the methods of strong teachers.

5. Why are some children capricious rather than obedient?

6. What is the aim of teaching?

7. What mistake will most surely negative good instruction?

8. What is Jesus' great power as a teacher?

9. What is the goal of all teaching?

Text Questions for Review

Lessons 6 to 10

1. What is meant by a law of the soul?

2. What is the first law as to the subject matter of teaching?

3. What is the earliest power that becomes educationally active?

4. What is meant by the inductive method?

5. Why is mere telling not teaching?

6. What is the gain, and what the danger, in using ill.u.s.trations?

7. Ill.u.s.trate what is meant by a concrete notion.