Page images
PDF
EPUB

Knowing What You Are to Test.

207

PART I. The Teacher's

Work. CHAPTER 4. Methods of the

Process.

son's first

A few testing-questions might well be asked at the close of every lesson, and again at the beginning Teaching of every subsequent one. In shaping these questions, a teacher ought to have clearly in his mind just that portion of the truth he has endeavored to teach, Teaching which he deems it most important for his scholar to know and remember. The absence of this knowledge in the teacher's mind is the chief difficulty in the way of review-questions for testing purposes by the average Sunday-school teacher. Good "Father Father PaxPaxson," the veteran Sunday-school missionary of teaching. the West, used to tell of his first day in Sundayschool, when he was set to teach a class, while yet he had no experience as either scholar or teacher. He heard the scholars recite their memorized Bible verses faithfully; and he had the idea―as so many still have it—that that was teaching a class. Then the scholars asked him if he would question them on their lesson; if he would ask them testing-questions. But that was quite out of his range of thinking. "I told them," he afterwards said, "that there was nothing in particular in that lesson that I wanted Nothing to to inquire about." And many a teacher since his about. day has failed of asking testing-questions of his scholars for the same reason as Father Paxson'sthere is nothing in particular in the lesson, which the teacher has tried to teach, or concerning which he wants to test the knowledge of his scholars. But when a teacher has tried to teach anything in par

inquire

PART I.
The
Teacher's
Teaching
Work.

CHAPTER 4.
Methods
of the
Teaching
Process.

tion about.

ticular he has no trouble in testing the success of his endeavor.

The same standard of questioning for a series of lessons, during a month, or a quarter, or a year, should be recognized by a teacher in the testing of his scholars, as for a single lesson. What did you seek to cause your scholars to know during that What to ques- period? Question about that. If, indeed, you count the titles and topics and golden texts of the lessons the chief matters of concern in the quarter's lessons, by all means confine your test-questions to them. If, however, you have tried to fasten the main facts of the lessons severally in your scholars' minds, let your test questions be directed to them. If, again, you have given a chief place to the teachings and applications of the lessons as they came before your class, your questions should be shaped accordingly, in the testing of your work in its review. Whether it be bones, or solid meat, or nutritious juice, that you would have the scholars lay hold of for their nourishment, see to it that your scholars understand your desire, and that your testing-questions be all conformed to your deliberate and carefully matured plan.

The test in testing.

And bear ever in mind this truth, as both an incentive and a guide in your test-questioning: The true measure of your scholar's knowledge on any subject of study, is not what you have declared to him, not what he seemed to understand of your

A Test of the Teacher's Success.

209

PART I.
The
Teacher's
Teaching
Work.

CHAPTER 4.
Methods
of the
Teaching
Process.

teaching, but what he can re-state to you in his own language as you and he go over it again together. It is a very common thing for us to say, when we are asked about one thing or another-about something that we have often had in our minds-that we know all about it, but cannot express our knowledge in words. As a rule, this is not a true statement of the case. If we have definite knowledge on a given subject of inquiry, we can express that knowledge in If you know, words; and just to the extent of our inability to so express ourselves, are we lacking in definiteness of knowledge. The truth is, that we have a good many vague ideas on many a subject, which we confound with real knowledge of that subject. And so it is with our scholars.

Test-questioning, therefore, is a test of the teacher's success quite as fully as it is of the scholar's attainment. It is alike important and valuable to both teacher and scholar.

say so.

PART I.
The

Teaching
Work.

CHAPTER 4.
Methods
of the

Teaching
Process.

II.

FASTENING THE TRUTH TAUGHT.

Over and Over Again; A Lesson from the Jesuits; How Much
Reviewing is in Order; Our Liability to Forget; The Method of
Jesus: Paul's Method; Repetition as a Pulpit Power; Repetition
in Literature; Class Methods of Repetition.

It is not alone in testing the measure of knowledge Teacher's already imparted to the scholar, that the work of reviewing has its importance and value, in connection with the teaching-process. Reviewing has also much to do with deciding the measure of knowledge secured by the scholar. Reviewing, not only shows how much the scholar has been caused to know of the truth which his teacher has brought before him; it also causes the scholar to know much that otherwise he would not know; and, again, it enables him to continue to know much that he was caused to know, for the time being, but which he would again cease to know, if he were never reviewed in his attainments of knowledge.

A threefold gain.

We rarely learn a truth, or a thing, by a single hearing or a single effort at doing. A little child has, commonly, to have a word said over to him

Over and Over Again.

211

PART I. The Teacher's Teaching

Work. CHAPTER 4. Methods of the Teaching Process.

many times before he can say it plainly himself. As he grows older, he has to practice his lessons repeatedly, in order to their learning. So simple a thing as the drawing of a straight line, or the making of the letters of the alphabet, is not to be done off-hand at the first showing how. Seldom can even a sincere lover of music catch a new tune which fastens his attention and delights his ear, if he hears it no more than once. And there are not many who, in the full maturity of their powers, can make their own, by a single reading, an attractive poem, which they understand at the fullest, and which takes a hold of their innermost being in its thought and phrasing. Men of the strongest mental powers want to read over and over again those books which they value most; and their feeling is, that they could not learn all that those books can teach them without these repeated Reviewing readings. And so it is, all the way along from child-keeping. hood to maturity: reviewing a truth once learned is essential to fastening that truth firmly in the mind that has received it.

essential to

of the Jesuits.

The schools of the Jesuits, as perfected under Aquaviva, three centuries ago, were quite in advance of anything the world had yet known in the educational line; and their power and effectiveness were The schools such as to stay, in large measure, the progress of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. The methods of those schools are still worthy of imitation at many points. In their system of teaching, reviewing, as a

« PreviousContinue »