Teaching

“ Shall we wait for ten or fifteen generations of teachers to blunder out the most effective means of teaching it, or shall we avail ourselves of these simple principles which will enable us to concentrate this experience within one or two generations? ”

“ Teaching Principles.—When the laws of soul growth are fairly well understood, it is time to investigate the principles of pedagogy, the laws that govern the teacher in the act of using knowledge to occasion activity in the soul of a learner. For the laws of teaching rest upon the laws of the soul. We cannot know how to proceed in the teaching process until we know how the soul acts under given conditions. ”

“ From whatever point of view we approach the problem of teaching our subjects, the answer is the same: meet present situations, solve present real, vital problems, make subject matter meet the needs of the children you are teaching. This analysis of the curriculum makes apparent the important part to be played by the teacher in making available the experiences which the school subjects are organized to present. ”

“ But here I am doing just what we were talking of just now,—laying out a pretty-looking field of duty, in which there would probably be as many thorns as in any other. Teaching has its pleasures,—its great occasional, and small daily pleasures, though they are not to be compared to the sublime delights of education. ”

“ I am met, however, at the outset, in my effort to show why it is that teaching is ever a pleasant work, by the want of a name for a certain faculty or capacity of the human mind, through which most of the enjoyment of teaching finds its avenue. ”

“ There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. ”

“ Lead learners to find out, to tell, and to do for themselves. 7. Train learners to assimilate into unity their acquisitions. 8. Train pupils to habitually do their best, in the best ways. 9. Lead the pupil through right ideas to right conduct." He then proceeds to define the fundamental teaching processes, and to state which are to be most largely employed in the several periods of education. ”

“ Looking back, forty years afterwards, on this episode, one asked oneself painfully what sort of a lesson a young man should have drawn for the purposes of his education, from this world-famous teaching of a very great master. ”

“ Our course of study contains much which should result in increased appreciation and sympathy in the activities which characterize our modern society. Geography, history, nature study, literature, all deal with men in their [152] relationship with one another in a common environment. If teaching means anything more than gaining knowledge, the method employed in school subjects cannot be without moral significance. ”

“ I wish to discuss with you some phases of the problem that is perhaps foremost in the minds of the teaching public to-day: the problem, namely, of making education bear more directly and more effectively upon the work of practical, everyday life. ”

“ We must become more tolerant of the thoughtful student who makes honest inquiry as to the value of any of the presented courses. We must learn to regard such questions as signs of growing seriousness and increasing maturity and not as signs of impertinence. We constantly ask ourselves questions about the round of our daily task; we seek to know thoroughly their uses, their values, their meaning in our lives. Clear conception of use or value in teaching is as vital as it is in life—for what is teaching if not the process of repeating life's experiences? ”

“ To attempt to give a concrete illustration of the method in which any teaching is to be carried on is in a way to try for the impossible. Every class and every pupil must be treated according to the especial nature of the case and the personal equation of the teacher. ”

“ Teaching, however is found to be increasingly necessary, especially to examination, and for this the main field left open is in our last column, that of People. Their lore of the past, whether of sacred or classical learning, their history, literature, and criticism, are already actively promoted, or at any rate adequately endowed at older seats of learning ”

“ By a peculiar superstition, education which has to do chiefly with preparation for the pursuit of conspicuous idleness, for teaching, and for literary callings, and for leadership, has been regarded as non-vocational and even as peculiarly cultural. ”

“ After all, how are we to impress pupils with this ideal of persistence and with these ideals of getting and applying information, and with this ideal of investigation? I maintain that these important useful ideals may be effectively impressed almost from the very outset of school life. The teaching of every subject affords innumerable opportunities to force home their lessons. In fact, it must be a very gradual process—a process in which the concrete instances are numerous and rich and impressive. ”

“ Let us consider, first of all, how you may be of direct service by work in which the chief factor is personal influence and by work in which the chief factor is directing intelligence.
Teaching is an art inseparable from the personality of the teacher,—an art in which a mature person seeks by personal influence to help immature persons build their characters soundly. ”

“ Make the application to heart and life. 8. Review of the whole; and then, if desired, two more exercises can be added by turning the lesson into prayer, and next to a paraphrase formed of the verses.
There are three kinds of teaching. 1. Catechising or questioning. 2. Conversational. 3. Lecturing. Which is [183] yours? We might add a fourth; but that is not teaching at all, only it is sometimes called so—viz., Reading questions from a question-book, and reading the answers. Good teaching is earnest, hearty work.
IV. The fourth and last example is of the social form of teachers' meeting. ”

“ To the one who is learned, subject matter is extensive, accurately defined, and logically interrelated. To the one who is learning, it is fluid, partial, and connected through his personal occupations. 1 The problem of teaching is to keep the experience of the student moving in the direction of what the expert already knows. Hence the need that the teacher know both subject matter and the characteristic needs and capacities of the student. ”

“ The courses of study may present much that is helpful in the organization of material, the suggestions for teaching may be gathered from the experience of many teachers, and still the great problem of making these subjects vital to children remains as the work of every teacher. Motives which grow out of the experience which children have already had must be sought. ”

“ Among the natural gifts, we may instance these: teaching—healing—the power of government. Teaching is a gift, natural or acquired. To know, is one thing; to have the capacity of imparting knowledge, is another. ”

“ Education is not a thing apart from life—not a "system," nor a philosophy; it is direct teaching how to live and how to work. ”

“ When we would build some structure we first get plan and purpose in mind; then we select the material that shall go into it. It is so with education. Once we have set before us the aim we would reach, our next question is, What shall be the means of its attainment? When we have fixed upon the fruitful knowledge, the right attitudes, and the lines of conduct and action which must result from our teaching, we must then ask, What means shall we select to achieve these ends? ”

“ What sort of results do teachers secure who compel children to learn their lessons through fear of being ridiculed or otherwise punished? If these children know as much as other children whose teacher has them at work satisfying their idea of pleasure,—which will result in being able to read well to the class, prepare their part of the class drama, or investigate in fields in which they are much interested,—would you, then, consider the first sort of teaching as satisfactory as the second? ”

“ No lesson, so far as our experience in teaching goes, interests and stimulates pupils more than this; and our experience of debating societies, in the higher forms of schools, forces upon us the conviction that such lessons are not more interesting than necessary. ”

“ The significant conclusion for teaching is that one or more of these aims must be consciously chosen and that content and method must be determined by them absolutely. Teaching for the sake of teaching consumes time and makes drafts on energy, but it leaves the student no richer in power and with no truer understanding. ”

“ Indeed, the only way in which we can secure the larger ends is by successfully achieving the lesser tasks. The teacher who knows that she has fixed this desirable habit of thought, feeling, or action, that this bit of knowledge has taken its place in a usable system, that this ideal or purpose has been awakened, that certain methods of work are available for the group of children whom she is teaching,—that teacher can be sure that she is fulfilling her mission. ”

“ In imparting instruction, also, examples are of no slight assistance, for they serve to elucidate the teaching, to render the lesson interesting and attractive, and keep the attention of the scholar from wandering. ”

“ A daily watching the methods of life of the class of society from which one’s pupils come.—If they are children or youth or adults, if from the lower, middle or higher walks of society, the teacher should know the influences which surround the life and the methods which govern it, in order to rightly fit the teaching to the life. ”

“ CHAPTER II. GENERAL ARRANGEMENTS.
he distraction and perplexity of the teacher's life are, as was explained in the last chapter, almost proverbial. There are other pressing and exhausting pursuits, which wear away the spirit by the ceaseless care which they impose, or perplex and bewilder the intellect by the multiplicity and intricacy of their details; but the business of teaching, by a pre-eminence not very enviable, stands, almost by common consent, at the head of the catalogue. ”

“ There is no method of teaching which can take the place of a thoroughgoing knowledge of the material which bears upon the topic to be treated. The teacher who finds in the life of the children outside of school, in school activities, in books, pictures, magazines, in study and travel, material for her daily class work, will make any course of study vital and interesting to children. In such an atmosphere pupils will grow not only in knowledge, but also in the desire to inquire and investigate and in power to satisfy their intellectual craving. ”

“ This book is the direct outcome of experience in trying to help teachers grow in skill in the art of teaching and in power to appreciate the work in which they are engaged. In the following pages have been treated as concretely as possible the problems which the teacher faces day after day in the classroom. Theories of education have not been discussed at any great length, but rather those processes through which these fundamental principles find their expression in actual teaching. ”

“ The lives of the great educational reformers of the world, the lives of a few of our own educators like Horace Mann, David Page, and others, should be of intense interest to you. Books on management, books on method, books on the science and art of instruction, books giving in detail77 the plans, methods and devices for teaching and handling a school, how can such things lack interest for you? ”

“ How sublime, then, are the qualifications, natural and acquired, which the true teacher should possess! How deep should be our reverence for him who, by his skill and knowledge, is capable, and by his moral qualities willing, to perform duties so onerous and so difficult. What station in life can be regarded as more exalted; whose utility can be compared with that of him who proves himself faithful to the duties he assumes, when he takes upon himself the office of a teacher of youth? ”

“ For these teachers there is little need for preparation. The course of study and the textbooks have solved the problems of teaching. Let us inquire just what the curriculum of our schools stands for before attempting to decide just what relation the teacher bears to it.
A course of study is not so much knowledge to be poured in. Rather it represents possible experiences for which children may have need, experiences which will aid them in the solution of their problems and make possible for them the realization of their purposes. ”

“ at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching — that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to. ”

“ In accordance with his edict, the curriculum of the schools includes the teaching of morality, and the moral virtues are explained and expatiated upon in lectures and discourses. The teachers introduce sayings and maxims of great men of all nations. ”

“ They will adapt their methods of teaching to the nature of the object to be taught and to the order in which the faculties of the human mind naturally unfold themselves, for true education is the natural unfolding of the intellectual germ. In order to obtain the knowledge necessary of the object to be taught, the true teacher turns to nature as his guide, for the voice of nature is the voice of God, and in reading her statutes we read that grand volume in which He has left an [Pg 11] impress of Himself. ”

“ We control or direct our ideas toward some end, toward the solution of some problem. One great purpose of teaching must be to provide the opportunity and the stimulus for this kind of thinking. We may not be able to lay down any fixed order of procedure, nor to devise any set of rules whereby children may be trained to be good reasoners; but we can consider what is involved in the process, point out the possibilities of interference, and suggest some of the means to be employed in encouraging this type of mental activity on the part of children. ”