In the School-Room Part 1

In the School-Room.

by John S. Hart.

PREFACE.

The views contained in this volume are the result of a prolonged and somewhat varied professional experience. This experience includes the training of more than five thousand young men and of nearly one thousand young women, a large portion of them for the office of teachers; and it has been gained in College, in Boarding School, in a city High School, and in a State Normal School. In all this prolonged and varied experience, I have constantly put myself in the att.i.tude of a learner, and my aim in the present volume is to place before the younger members of the profession, in the briefest and clearest terms possible, the lessons I have myself learned. Beginning with the question, What is Teaching? and ending with the wider question, What is Education? the book will be found to take a pretty free range over the whole field of practical inquiry among professional teachers. The thoughts presented are such as have been suggested to the writer in the school-room itself, while actively engaged either in teaching, or in superintending and directing the instruction given by others. These thoughts are for the most part purposely given in short, detached chapters, each complete in itself. Such a method of presentation, though less imposing, seemed to have practical advantages for the reader too great to be neglected for the mere vanity of authorship. Often one can find leisure to read a chapter of five or six pages on some point complete in itself, when he might not feel like reaching it through an intervening network of connected and dependent propositions. At the same time, it should be observed, the topics though detached are not isolated. There is everywhere an underlying thread of connection, the whole being based upon, if not const.i.tuting, a philosophy of education.

IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

I.

WHAT IS TEACHING?

In the first place, teaching is not simply telling. A cla.s.s may be told a thing twenty times over, and yet not know it. Talking to a cla.s.s is not necessarily teaching. I have known many teachers who were brimful of information, and were good talkers, and who discoursed to their cla.s.ses with ready utterance a large part of the time allotted to instruction; yet an examination of their cla.s.ses showed little advancement in knowledge.

There are several time-honored metaphors on this subject, which need to be received with some grains of allowance, if we would get at an exact idea of what teaching is. Chiselling the rude marble into the finished statue; giving the impression of the seal upon the soft wax; pouring water into an empty vessel;--all these comparisons lack one essential element of likeness. The mind is, indeed, in one sense, empty, and needs to be filled. It is yielding, and needs to be impressed. It is rude, and needs polishing. But it is not, like the marble, the wax, or the vessel, a pa.s.sive recipient of external influences. It is itself a living power. It is acted upon only by stirring up its own activities. The operative upon mind, unlike the operative upon matter, must have the active, voluntary co-operation of that upon which he works. The teacher is doing his work, only so far as he gets work from the scholar. The very essence and root of the work are in the scholar, not in the teacher. No one, in fact, in an important sense, is taught at all, except so far as he is self-taught. The teacher may be useful, as an auxiliary, in causing this action on the part of the scholar. But the one, indispensable, vital thing in all learning, is in the scholar himself. The old Romans, in their word education (_educere_, to draw out), seem to have come nearer to the true idea than any other people have done. The teacher is to draw out the resources of the pupil. Yet even this word comes short of the exact truth. The teacher must put in, as well as draw out. No process of mere pumping will draw out from a child's mind knowledge which is not there. All the power of the Socratic method, could it be applied by Socrates himself, would be unavailing to draw from a child's mind, by mere questioning, a knowledge, for instance, of chemical affinity, of the solar system, of the temperature of the Gulf Stream, of the doctrine of the resurrection.

What, then, is teaching?

Teaching is causing any one to know. Now no one can be made to know a thing but by the act of his own powers. His own senses, his own memory, his own powers of reason, perception, and judgment, must be exercised.

The function of the teacher is to bring about this exercise of the pupil's faculties. The means to do this are infinite in variety. They should be varied according to the wants and the character of the individual to be taught. One needs to be told a thing; he learns most readily by the ear. Another needs to use his eyes; he must see a thing, either in the book, or in nature. But neither eye nor ear, nor any other sense or faculty, will avail to the acquisition of knowledge, unless the power of attention is cultivated. Attention, then, is the first act or power of the mind that must be roused. It is the very foundation of all progress in knowledge, and the means of awakening it const.i.tute the first step in the educational art.

When by any means, positive knowledge, facts, are once in possession of the mind, something must next be done to prevent their slipping away.

You may tell a cla.s.s the history of a certain event; or you may give them a description of a certain place or person; or you may let them read it; and you may secure such a degree of attention, that, at the time of the reading or the description, they shall have a fair, intelligible comprehension of what has been described or read. The facts are for the time actually in the possession of the mind. Now, if the mind was, according to the old notion, merely a vessel to be filled, the process would be complete. But mind is not an empty vessel. It is a living essence, with powers and processes of its own. And experience shows us, that in the case of a cla.s.s of undisciplined pupils, facts, even when fairly placed in the possession of the mind, often remain there about as long as the shadow of a pa.s.sing cloud remains upon the landscape, and make about as much impression.

The teacher must seek, then, not only to get knowledge into the mind, but to fix it there. In other words, the power of the memory must be strengthened. Teaching, then, most truly, and in every stage of it, is a strictly co-operative process. You cannot cause any one to know, by merely pouring out stores of knowledge in his hearing, any more than you can make his body grow by spreading the contents of your market-basket at his feet. You must rouse his power of attention, that he may lay hold of, and receive, and make his own, the knowledge you offer him. You must awaken and strengthen the power of memory within him, that he may retain what he receives, and thus grow in knowledge, as the body by a like process grows in strength and muscle. In other words, learning, so far as the mind of the learner is concerned, is a growth; and teaching, so far as the teacher is concerned, is doing whatever is necessary to cause that growth.

Let us proceed a step farther in this matter.

One of the ancients observes that a lamp loses none of its own light by allowing another lamp to be lit from it. He uses the ill.u.s.tration to enforce the duty of liberality in imparting our knowledge to others.

Knowledge, he says, unlike other treasures, is not diminished by giving.

The ill.u.s.tration fails to express the whole truth. This imparting of knowledge to others, not only does not impoverish the donor, but it actually increases his riches. _Docendo discimus._ By teaching we learn.

A man grows in knowledge by the very act of communicating it. The reason for this is obvious. In order to communicate to the mind of another a thought which is in our own mind, we must give to the thought definite shape and form. We must handle it, and pack it up for safe conveyance.

Thus the mere act of giving a thought expression in words, fixes it more deeply in our own minds. Not only so; we can, in fact, very rarely be said to be in full possession of a thought ourselves, until by the tongue or the pen we have communicated it to somebody else. The expression of it, in some form, seems necessary to give it, even in our own minds, a definite shape and a lasting impression. A man who devotes himself to solitary reading and study, but never tries in any way to communicate his acquisitions to the world, or to enforce his opinions upon others, rarely becomes a learned man. A great many confused, dreamy ideas, no doubt, float through the brain of such a man; but he has little exact and reliable knowledge. The truth is, there is a sort of indolent, listless absorption of intellectual food, that tends to idiocy. I knew a person once, a gentleman of wealth and leisure, who having no taste for social intercourse, and no material wants to be supplied, which might have required the active exercise of his powers, gave himself up entirely to solitary reading, as a sort of luxurious self-indulgence. He shut himself up in his room, all day long, day after day, devouring one book after another, until he became almost idiotic by the process, and he finally died of softening of the brain. Had he been compelled to use his mental acquisitions in earning his bread, or had the love of Christ constrained him to use them in the instruction of the poor and the ignorant, he might have become not only a useful, but a learned man.

We see a beautiful ill.u.s.tration of this doctrine in the case of Sabbath-school teachers, and one reason why persons so engaged usually love their work, is the benefit which they find in it for themselves. I speak here, not of the spiritual, but of the intellectual benefit. By the process of teaching others, they are all the while learning. This advantage in their case is all the greater, because it advances them in a kind of knowledge in which, more than in any other kind of knowledge, men are wont to become pa.s.sive and stationary. In ordinary worldly knowledge, our necessities make us active. The intercourse of business, and of pleasure even, makes men keen. On these subjects we are all the while bandying thoughts to and fro; we are accustomed to give as well as take; and so we keep our intellectual armor bright, and our thoughts well defined. But in regard to growth in religious knowledge, we have a tendency to be mere pa.s.sive recipients, like the young man just referred to. Sabbath after Sabbath we hear good, instructive, orthodox discourses, but there is no active putting forth of our own powers in giving out what we thus take in, and so we never make it effectually our own. The absorbing process goes on, and yet we make no growth. The quiescent audience is a sort of exhausted receiver, into which the stream from the pulpit is perennially playing, but never making it full.

Let a man go back and ask himself, What actual scriptural knowledge have I gained by the sermons of the last six months? What in fact do I retain in my mind, at this moment, of the sermons I heard only a month ago? So far as the hearing of sermons is concerned, the Sabbath-school teacher may perhaps be no better off than other hearers. But in regard to general growth in religious knowledge, he advances more rapidly than his fellow-worshippers, because the exigencies of his cla.s.s compel him to a state of mind the very opposite of this pa.s.sive recipiency. He is obliged to be all the while, not only learning, but putting his acquisitions into definite shape for use, and the very act of using these acquisitions in teaching a cla.s.s, fixes them in his own mind, and makes them more surely his own.

I have used this instance of the Sabbath-school teacher because it enforces an important hint already given, as to the mode of teaching.

Some teachers, especially in Sabbath-schools, seem to be ambitious to do a great deal of talking. The measure of their success, in their own eyes, is their ability to keep up a continued stream of talk for the greater part of the hour. This is of course better than the embarra.s.sing silence sometimes seen, where neither teacher nor scholar has anything to say. But at the best, it is only the pouring into the exhausted receiver enacted over again. We can never be reminded too often, that there is no teaching except so far as there is active cooperation on the part of the learner. The mind receiving must reproduce and give back what it gets. This is the indispensable condition of making any knowledge really our own. The very best teaching I have ever seen, has been where the teacher said comparatively little. The teacher was of course brimful of the subject. He could give the needed information at exactly the right point, and in the right quant.i.ty. But for every word given by the teacher, there were many words of answering reproduction on the part of the scholars. Youthful minds under such tutelage grow apace.

It is indeed a high and difficult achievement in the educational art, to get young persons thus to bring forth their thoughts freely for examination and correction. A pleasant countenance and a gentle manner, inviting and inspiring confidence, have something to do with the matter.

But, whatever the means for accomplishing this end, the end itself is indispensable. The scholar's tongue must be unloosed, as well as the teacher's. The scholar's thoughts must be broached, as well as the teacher's. Indeed, the statement needs very little qualification or abatement, that a scholar has learned nothing from us except what he has expressed to us again in words. The teacher who is accustomed to harangue his scholars with a continuous stream of words, no matter how full of weighty meaning his words may be, is yet deceiving himself, if he thinks that his scholars are materially benefited by his intellectual activity, unless it is so guided as to awaken and exercise theirs. If, after a suitable period, he will honestly examine his scholars on the subjects, on which he has himself been so productive, he will find that he has been only pouring water into a sieve. Teaching can never be this one-sided process. Of all the things we attempt, it is the one most essentially and necessarily a cooperative process. There must be the joint action of the teacher's mind and the scholar's mind. A teacher teaches at all, only so far as he causes this coactive energy of the pupil's mind.

II.

THE ART OF QUESTIONING.

The measure of a teacher's success is not what he himself does, but what he gets his scholars to do. In nothing is this more noticeable, than in the different modes of putting a question to a scholar. One teacher will put a question in such a manner as to find out exactly how much or how little of the subject the child knows, and thereby encourage careful preparation; to give the pupil an open door, if he really knows the subject, to express his knowledge in a way that will be a satisfaction and pleasure to him; to improve his power of expression, to cultivate his memory, to increase his knowledge, and to make it more thorough and definite. Another teacher will put his questions so as to secure none of these ends, but on the contrary so as to induce a most lamentable degree of carelessness and inaccuracy.

Let me ill.u.s.trate this point, taking an example for greater convenience from a scriptural subject. Suppose it to be a lesson upon Christ's temptation, as recorded in the 4th chapter of Matthew. The dialogue between teacher and scholar may be supposed to proceed somewhat in this wise:

_Teacher._ Who was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil?

_Pupil._ Jesus.

_T._ Yes. Now, when Jesus had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward a---- what? How did he feel after that?

_P._ Hungry.

_T._ Yes, that is right. He was afterward "a hungered." Now, then, the next scholar. Who then came to Jesus and said, If thou be the Son of G.o.d, command that these stones be made bread?

(Scholar hesitates.)

_T._ The t----?

_P._ The tempter.

_T._ Yes, you are right. It was the tempter. Who do you think is meant by the tempter?--the devil?

_P._ Yes.

_T._ When a man has fasted, that is, has eaten nothing, for forty days and forty nights, and feels very hungry, would the suggestion of an easy mode of getting food be likely to be a strong temptation to him, or would it not?

_P._ It would.

_T._ Yes, you are right again. It would be a strong temptation to him.

I need not pursue this dialogue further. The reader will see at once how there may thus be the appearance of quite a brisk and fluent recitation, to which however the pupil contributes absolutely nothing. It requires nothing of him in the way of preparation, and only the most indolent and profitless use of his faculties while reciting. He could hardly answer amiss, unless he were an idiot, and yet he has the appearance, and he is often flattered into the belief, of having given some evidence of knowledge and proficiency.

The opposite extreme from the method just exhibited, is that known as the topical method. It is the method pursued in the higher cla.s.ses of schools, and among more advanced students. In the topical method, the teacher propounds a topic or subject, sometimes in the form of a question, but more commonly only by a t.i.tle, a mere word or two, and then calls upon the pupil to give, in his own words, a full and connected narration or explanation of the subject, such as the teacher himself would give, if called upon to narrate or explain it. The subject already suggested, if profound topically, would be somewhat in this wise:

The first temptation of Jesus.

Or, more fully: Narrate the circ.u.mstances of the first temptation of Jesus, and show wherein his virtue was particularly tried in that transaction.