Know your Material. 6 47 PART I. CHAPTER 2 should say, 'Here are various kinds of metais. Without unsealing them, put them at once into your furnace, run them into your mould, work them at your forge, treat them all alike, and produce for me a set of images, each the exact counterpart of the others. Would you not reply? The thing is impossible. Let me know what I am working on. Brass will not melt as readily as lead. Iron is not as malleable as copper. Steel is not as ductile as gold. One process for one, another for another, is the rule of my trade.' 'But,' he urges, 'metal is metal, heat is heat, a forge is a forge, a mould is a mouid. Is not that enough?' Your answer is, 'Metals Metals differ differ. The heat that melts one would sublime another. The mould that is strong enough for one is too weak for another. The blow that would crush the one would rebound from the other."" And that wise teacher's enforcement of this telling iliustration is worthy of the attention of every teacher: "My brother teachers, are we not too apt to think that the iron will, the leaden insensibility, the brazen defiance, and the golden sincerity, which exist in our classes, will, if put into the same furnace of appeai, shaped in the same mould of instruction, and hammered at the same forge of argument, all conform to the same image? Do we take pains enough to learn the nature of the peculiar metal on which we are working? and to adopt wisely the means to the end, the process to the result?" PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. Dean Stanley says of the teaching-method of Dr. Thomas Arnold, "His whole method was founded on the principle of awakening the intellect of every Essentials individual boy." And that ought to be the basis of every good teacher's method. CHAPTER 2. of the Teaching Process. A different teacher to every scholar. The distinguished principal of one of the New York state normal schools has said, that if he had a class of fifty scholars, he would try to be fifty different teachers, as he turned from one to another of those scholars to instruct them severally. In doing this, that principal would simply be doing a teacher's duty; but it is a duty which can never be done intelligently until the teacher knows the differences which distinguish his scholars one from another. No wise adaptation of instruction is possible, unless the teacher understands the peculiarities of each scholar whom he is to instruct. If the scholar is already a consistent church-member, he certainly requires very different teaching from that suited to a young reprobate. If he is of a tender, loving heart, and of a mercurial temperament, his share of instruction should be another than that for a lad of a cool and calculating disposition. One scholar is to be reached through his feelings; another through his reason. One likes pictures and stories; another prefers to follow a thread of new thought. Each scholar has his individuality; it is for the teacher to know what that is, as preliminary to any hopeful effort at teaching the scholar. Inspired Methods. 49 PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 2. Essentials of the Process. The model method. teacher's Jesus Christ, the Model Teacher, distinctly af firmed his recognition of different classes of hearers, when he discoursed to the multitudes; and he told his disciples plainly, that his manner of presenting truth was chosen in view of the fact that Teaching they were privileged to understand what his other hearers did not. His telling the truth in the form of parables, did not in itself teach his hearers; but afterwards he taught to his disciples, that which not even they had learned from its mere telling. "There were gathered unto him great multitudes; . . . and he spake to them many things in parables. And [afterward] the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? And he answered and said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. . . . Therefore speak I to them in parables. . . . Hear you [now] therefore [the explanation of] the parable." Paul, also, had regard to the individual peculiarities of those whom he would teach, and adapted himself to them accordingly. "To the Jews, I became as a All things Jew, that I might gain Jews," he says. "To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak: I am become all things [by turns] to all [the different sorts of] men, that I may by all [these different] means save some." Paul would never have attempted to teach all the scholars in one class after the same pattern. .. to all. PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 2. of the Teaching Process. scription. If A teacher's study of his every scholar is quite as important as his study of his every lesson; and the former study ought, in fact, to precede the latter Essentials study; for until you know whom you are to teach, how can you judge what is to be taught to him? It has been wisely said on this subject, that "a sick soul needs not a lecture on medicine, but a prescription." you are to prescribe for a moral patient, you need to get down alongside of that patient, and to feel his pulse, and to look at his tongue, in order to know Giving a pre- what is his precise condition, and what are his present requirements. With the highest attainable medical skill, and with a well-supplied apothecary's shop at his service, no physician could administer a prescription intelligently unless he knew who was his patient, and what were the nature and the stage of his disorder. Nor is a teacher more potent in his sphere, than is a physician in his. The best teacher in the world is not prepared to teach a Sundayschool class, until he knows the members of that class. He must know whom he is to cause to know a truth, before he can fairly begin to cause that truth to be known. Solomon's idea of wise training. an Solomon was wise enough, and even under Divine inspiration he was not too wise, to perceive and to point out the duty of treating each child as individual personality, in all attempts at his training. "Train up [or, from the start, teach] a child [any child, every child] in the way he should go [not A Child's Own Way. necessarily in the way of the other children; not in 51 PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 2, Essentials of the Teaching Process. One way for each. |