Part 1 (1/2)

In the School-Room

by John S Hart

PREFACE

The views contained in this volued and somewhat varied professional experience This experience includes the training ofe portion of thee, in Boarding School, in a city High School, and in a State Nored and varied experience, I have constantly put myself in the attitude of a learner, and er members of the profession, in the briefest and clearest ter 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 ahts presented are such as have been suggested to the writer in the school-roo, or in superintending and directing the instruction given by others These thoughts are for the iven in short, detached chapters, each coh less ies for the reader too great to be neglected for the mere vanity of authorshi+p Often one can find leisure to read a chapter of five or six pages on soht not feel like reaching it through an intervening network of connected and dependent propositions At the sah detached are not isolated There is everywhere an underlying thread of connection, the whole being based upon, if not constituting, a philosophy of education

IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM

I

WHAT IS TEACHING?

In the first place, teaching is not si twenty ti to a class is not necessarily teaching I have known ood talkers, and who discoursed to their classes with ready utterance a large part of the time allotted to instruction; yet an examination of their classes showed little advancee

There are several time-honored metaphors on this subject, which need to be received with soet at an exact idea of what teaching is Chiselling the rudethe i water into an empty vessel;--all these comparisons lack one essential element of likeness The mind is, indeed, in one sense, e, and needs to be i But it is not, like the marble, the wax, or the vessel, a passive 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 iht at all, except so far as he is self-taught The teacherthis 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 teacherwill draw out froe which is not there All the power of the Socratic method, could it be applied by Socrates hi to draw froe, 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 kno no one can bebut by the act of his oers His own senses, his own ment, 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 , 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 ress in knowledge, and theit constitute the first step in the educational art

When by any e, facts, are once in possession of theaway

You may tell a class the history of a certain event; or you ive them a description of a certain place or person; or you ree of attention, that, at the ti 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 theto the old notion, merely a vessel to be filled, the process would be co essence, with powers and processes of its own And experience shows us, that in the case of a class of undisciplined pupils, facts, even when fairly placed in the possession of theas the shadow of a passing cloud remains upon the landscape, and make about as much iet knowledge into the mind, but to fix it there In other words, the power of the , then, e of it, is a strictly co-operative process You cannot cause any one to know, by , anythe contents of your market-basket at his feet You must rouse his power of attention, that he e you offer hithen the power of memory within hirow in knowledge, as the body by a like process grows in strength and , so far as the , 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 la another lamp to be lit from it He uses the illustration to enforce the duty of liberality in ie, he says, unlike other treasures, is not di

The illustration fails to express the whole truth This ie to others, not only does not impoverish the donor, but it actually increases his riches _Docendo discie by the very act of co it The reason for this is obvious In order to coht which is in our own ht definite shape and form We must handle it, and pack it up for safe conveyance

Thus the ht 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 soive it, even in our owni and study, but never tries in any way to communicate his acquisitions to the world, or to enforce his opinions upon others, rarely becoreat h the brain of such a e The truth is, there is a sort of indolent, listless absorption of intellectual food, that tends to idiocy I knew a person once, a gentle no taste for social intercourse, and no ht have required the active exercise of his powers, gave hi, as a sort of luxurious self-indulgence He shut hi one book after another, until he became al of the brain Had he been co his bread, or had the love of Christ constrained hinorant, he ht have become not only a useful, but a learned man

We see a beautiful illustration 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 thee in which, e, men are wont to becoe, our necessities make us active The intercourse of business, and of pleasure even, makesthoughts to and fro; we are accustoive as well as take; and so we keep our intellectual arrowth in religious knowledge, we have a tendency to beood, instructive, orthodox discourses, but there is no active putting forth of our oers in giving out e thus take in, and so we never oes on, and yet we rowth The quiescent audience is a sort of exhausted receiver, into which the strea it full

Let a e have I gained by the sermons of the last six months? What in fact do I retain in my o? So far as the hearing of sermons is concerned, the Sabbath-school teacher ard to general growth in religious knowledge, he advances encies of his class compel him to a state of mind the very opposite of this passive 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 class, 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 i