Training the Teacher Part 34

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 G.o.d'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 compa.s.s sails a no less aimless or dangerous course than does a teacher without pedagogic guidance. What the compa.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.s. 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 pa.s.s 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. Ill.u.s.trate.

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 repet.i.tion makes for clear knowledge I announce a law or principle.