Parrot Recitations. 17 PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 1. Teaching of an Oriental school would be teachers; for the scholars in the East study aloud, and all recite together, and their recitations can be heard by the passers-by, and sometimes by all the dwellers within Nature of the half a street's length. Not even the Orientals, however, would claim that their hearing the clatter of these recitations made teachers of 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 memory words to which they attach no meaning-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 Hearing is not teaching. Rote recitations. What is "Mansche and "? PART I. The Teacher's Teaching memorized the answer by having it told to her before she could read, and its repeated recitation gave no help to its understanding. Similar failures Nature of the to understand words in the catechism, or the ques Work. CHAPTER 1. Teaching Process. beginning. tion-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 rote-recitation that he gives to a teacher. An English educationalist has cited, in illustration of the frequent senselessness of rote-recitations, an incident Lord Byron's 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 mis An Unlooked-for Journey. 19 PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 1. taken 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 the same question given a Nature of the second time would bring another answer. His memorizing has been of the words of the answer, without any thought of the words of the question to which they were designed as an answer. T. aching taught. This truth was forced on my mind in my earliest teaching experience. While yet but seventeen, I had a class in the Sunday-school, of wide-awake boys, keen enough in matters of thought and action, but The teacher naturally conforming to the methods of study which met their teacher's idea of teaching. The book used in that class was one in which every answer was printed out in full, just below its question. The ordinary practice of the scholar was to fasten the answers in memory; and the ordinary practice of the teacher was to ask the questions in the words of the book, and hear the scholars recite the answer. Now for the working of that plan! One Sunday, the lesson for the day was The Walk to Emmaus. The first question on the page was "Where is Em- The scholar maus?" As I took my book in hand for the "teaching exercise," I recalled that the scholar at my right hand was a boy who had been absent the previous Sunday. Accordingly I asked in kindly interest, "Where were you last Sunday, Joseph?" Quick as a fiash the answer came back, "Seven and a half at Emmaus. PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 1. Teaching miles north-west of Jerusalem.” "Well, you are certainly excusable for not being here," was my mortified response; for then, for the first time, I realized Nature of the that that scholar might as well have been north-west of Jerusalem or south-east of Timbuctoo, for all the good he gained from a class where hearing a recitation had been looked at as teaching. That was a long while ago it would be pleasant to believe that no illustration of this error in the teacher's work could be found in these days of improved Sundayschool methods and normal-class instructions. but no knowledge. The memorizing of words is in itself no more the securing of ideas, than is the buying of books the securing of knowledge. A man may have his liMany books, brary shelves stored with the most choice and valuable works in every department of literature, science, and the arts, and yet be ignorant, not only of the knowledge covered by any one of those volumes, but also of the advantage which would come from the possession of such knowledge. Nor would his knowledge be increased in the slightest degree, if he had ten such libraries instead of one. So, also, a child may have fully memorized all the answers in his catechism, or his question book, including the choicer words of Scripture, without having received a single idea covered by those words; nor would any multiplication of similar words in his memory necessarily convey an added idea to his mental possessions. This is obviously true where the words are The Blind Led Blindly. 21 PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 1. in another language than the pupil's own. It is equally true where the words are in the pupil's language, but utterly beyond his comprehension. It is none the less a truth in any case; for the receiving Nature of the of ideas is quite another matter from the fastening of mere words in the memory: the two processes may go on at the same time, and again they may not; but in no case are they identical. Teaching blind That this truth is as true practically as it is philosophically, has been shown by experiment many times over; and its truth finds fresh illustration. under the eye of every intelligent and observing parent or teacher. A notable and well-authenticated case of its testing, is that of "Blind Alec" of Stirling, in Scotland, as recorded in all its details in Mr. James Gall's "Nature's Normal School." This was more than fifty years ago. Alexander Lyons, or Blind Alec's "Blind Alec" as he was called, was a man of mature memorizing. years and of average intelligence. He had actually committed to memory the words of the entire Bible. "Any sentence, or clause of a sentence, from Scripture, which another began, he could not only finish, but tell the particular verse in the Bible where it was to be found; and, what was still more remarkable, the number of any verse in any chapter and book being given, he was able immediately to repeat" the verse. Moreover, he had for years been in the daily habit of recalling and reciting passages of Scripture thus memorized. This man, thus sup |