Pharaoh's never full; and many poor souls, God knows too, too like Pharaoh's lean kine, much the leaner for lean kine. their full feed." And of the teaching, or training, process aimed at in the church, he adds: "To expect that this should be done by preaching or force of lungs, is much as if a smith or artist, who school works in metal, should expect to form and shape out his work only with his bellows." Yet, how large a place the bellows fills at the modern Sunday-school forge! The Sunday bellows. A poor preaching service. A vast deal of what is called "Bible-class teaching' is talking, but not teaching. It might pass for fourthrate, or third-rate, or second-rate, or-at the very best and rarest-as first-rate preaching, or lecturing; but it never ought to be called teaching. The teacher talks; the scholars listen. The teacher is, doubtless, a gainer in his mind and heart by what he says; but not so his silent scholars. They hear, but do not learn. The " exercise" is an exercise only to the exerciser. The whole thing is a pocket edition, in poor type, of a pulpit-led service, with many of the disadvantages and few of the benefits of the largepage edition. And not a little of the ordinary classteaching in the Sunday-school is of the same character. The teacher talks; the scholars listen. There is a "teacher," but no teaching, There are "learners,” but no learning. It is not a pleasant thing to face such a fact as this; but since it is a fact, it ought to be faced by those interested. What telling may do. Telling has its Place. 15 A Telling a thing may be an important part of the process of teaching a thing. The telling may in itself interest or impress even where it fails to instruct. teacher may teach in other ways than by his telling truths that are worthy of his scholars' hearing and learning. However this may be, it is important that every teacher should understand, at the first and at the last, that telling a thing is not in itself teaching a thing; and that, if he is a teacher at all, it will be through the use of some other method than mere talking. III. HEARING A RECITATION IS NOT TEACHING. Hearing is not Teaching; Reciting is not Learning; Rote-questions bring Rote-answers; Buying Books does not Bring Knowledge; Blind Alec of Stirling; Parrot Mathematicians; What Memorizing cannot do. Another common mistake of the Sunday-school teacher is in supposing that hearing a recitation is teaching; nor is that error, by any means, confined to the Sunday-school. Recitation may, it is true, have an important part in the process of teaching. It may in itself advantage the scholar, and the teacher may have a duty of listening to it; but the hearing of a recitation is not in itself teaching; nor is it always an essential in the teaching process. As Professor Hart states it: "A child recites lessons when it repeats something previously learned. A child is taught when it learns something from the teacher not known. before. The two things often, indeed, go together, but they are in themselves essentially distinct." A clear distinction. If merely hearing scholars recite were in itself teaching, then all who are in the neighborhood of an Oriental school would be teachers; for the scholars in the East Hearing is Parrot Recitations. 17 study aloud, and all recite together, and their recitations can be heard by the passers-by, and sometimes by all the dwellers within half a street's length. Not even the Orientals, however, would claim that their hearing the clatter of these recitations made teachers of not teaching. them. Nor would it be teaching, if one, hearing the recitation, should hold the book of the learner in his hand, observing the correspondence of the words recited with those recorded. A fellow-pupil could do that, without becoming thereby a teacher. There is an immense deal of mere rote recitation by scholars, younger and older. Scholars fasten in their Rote recita- memory words to which they attach no meantions. ing-or a wrong meaning; and these memorized words, or sounds of words, they rattle off upon call, without having any correct or well-defined idea of their signification. Under these circumstances, who would claim that these scholars are taught anything, or that their knowledge is tested, by reciting what they have memorized-even to an exceptionally skilled and intelligent teacher? A lady told me, that for years, while a child, she recited the first answer in the Westminster Catechism as Manschefand is to glorify God and to joy him forever." What that word "manschefand" meant, she did not understand, nor was she taught either the word or its meaning by reciting it to a "teacher." She had memorized the answer by having it told to her before she could read, and its repeated recitation gave no help to its under What is fand"? standing. Similar failures to understand words in the catechism, or the question-book, or to get any help in their understanding through their mere recitation, could be instanced by parents and teachers on every side. Even where the scholar understands the meaning of the words memorized by him, it may be only a roterecitation that he gives to a teacher. An English educationalist has cited, in illustration of the frequent Lord Byron's beginning. senselessness of rote-recitations, an incident from the life of Lord Byron. Referring to a school where he was a pupil at five years of age, Byron said: “I learned little there except to repeat by rote the first lesson of monosyllables, 'God made man, let us love him,' etc., by hearing it often repeated, without [my] acquiring a letter. Whenever proof was made [or was asked] of my progress, at home, I repeated these words, with the most rapid fluency; but, on turning over a new leaf, I continued to repeat them, so that the narrow boundaries of my first year's accomplishments were detected, my ears boxed (which they did not deserve, seeing that it was by ear only that I had acquired my letters), and my intellects consigned to a new preceptor." And a similar shortcoming might be found in the work of a scholar who could read intelligently, and who had memorized faithfully, but whose teacher had mistaken the hearing of a recitation for teaching. His answer may have no proper relation to the question asked of him. Another question would have brought the same answer, and |