Examining the Patient. 57 PART I. The Teaching Work. CHAPTER 2. Essentials of the Process. If telling a thing were teaching that thing, the necessary preparation of a teacher for his teaching Teacher's work would be greatly diminished. He would only have to fill his mind with such things as he deemed worth knowing, or worth telling, and then pour Teaching them out to his class in a stream of resistless eloquence. He might then talk to his class about Bible geography, or Bible chronology, or the manners and customs of Bible lands, or the facts of the day's lesson, or the chief doctrines involved, or the applications of both facts and doctrines, just as he happened to think of these things, or as his class seemed to be interested in what he was saying. But all this could be done without any teaching whatsoever. There can be no teaching where nothing is learned. Until some one has been caused to what goes to [complete know, the teaching attempted has not been a suc- teaching. cess is not a completed fact. Hence a teacher cannot know what he is to teach until he knows what he can teach-at that time, to the scholar, or to the scholars, before him. He must not only know what he would tell to his class, but he must know what he can cause the members of his class to know with the help of his teaching. Because the sick soul needs not a lecture on medicine but a prescription, therefore it is essential, that he who would prescribe for a sick soul should not only know the peculiar capabilities and needs of his patient, but be familiar also with the nature and PART I. CHAPTER 2. molasses for all. strength of the medicine to be prescribed for the particular case under treatment. It might answer in Dotheboys Hall, before Mr. Dickens laid bare the methods of that Yorkshire institution, to prescribe a dose of sulphur and molasses for all the schoolboys alike, on a winter's morning, whatever was the state of their appetites and digestive organs; but that Sulphur and would hardly be called a wise medical treatment of the young in any first-class boarding-school at the present day. Nor does the fact that a similar mode of supplying all the scholars in a class or school with the same mental dose-and that according to the teacher's fancy rather than the scholar's need-still prevails in many a Sunday-school of our land, prove that there can be such a thing as intelligent teaching, where the teacher does not know that what he would like to teach can be put within the comprehension, or is at all suited to the peculiar needs, of the scholars he essays to teach. The medicine itself must be known, and the size of a safe dose for the patient in hand must be duly considered by the physician, before there can be any wise prescribing for any patient, young or old. You must know what you can teach in this particular case, before it can fairly be said that you know what you are to teach. To know what you are to teach, necessitates an intelligent study of your lesson, while the scholars whom you are to teach are before your mind's eye as you are studying. You must consider well What it is necessary to know. Your Scholars' Limits. the capabilities and needs of your class as a whole, and of your scholars individually. You must know what there is in the day's lesson, which it would be well for your scholars to know. You must know also whether or not your scholars can be made to know just that. If it is within the possibilities of their comprehension, then it is for you to get it fully and fairly into your mind, in order that it may be transferred to their minds. Until you know the lesson in this way, you do not know what you are to teach-and surely you are not prepared for teaching until you know thus much! 59 PART I. CHAPTER 2. PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 2. III. YOU MUST KNOW HOW YOU ARE Knowing how is Essential to Well-doing; A Doctor with all Kinds of Essentials ing process, of the Teaching Process. No doing & thing without knowing how. EVEN when you know accurately whom you are to teach, and what you are to teach, you still are unprepared to bear your part in the twofold teaching process, unless you know how you are to teach. The scholar being before you, and being well understood by you; the truth which you would teach him, which you would aid him to learn, being well in your mind, the question is still unanswered, How are you to teach him? How are you to make him the mental possessor of that which is now your mindtreasure, and which you desire to have him possess? In everything which needs doing, a knowledge of the method of doing is of prime importance. A man cannot milk a cow, or whitewash a garret, or make a shoe, or paint a picture, or write a book, or keep a hotel, or do anything else in this world,— unless, perhaps, it is to fill a government office,— without knowing how. The fact that the work The Young Doctor. 61 PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 2. Essentials of the attempted is a religious one, does not make it any the less important that the doer should know how to do it. He who would preach, must know how to preach; and he who would teach, must know how to teach. No man can call himself ready to teach, Teaching until he knows how he is to teach; until he is not only acquainted with wise methods of teaching, but has decided upon his plan, in accordance with those methods, for the work immediately before him. Process. diploma cannot do. It is one thing to have knowledge on any subject; it is quite another thing to be able to make that What a knowledge practically available to others. A young man goes through a course of study in medicine. He reads treatises in one branch and another of medical science, and medical practice; and he attends lecture after lecture from eminent professors in every branch. All this is very well in its way; but it does not, in and of itself, make the young man a good physician. When the student is finally under examination for a medical diploma, it will not be deemed sufficient that he has attended the lectures regularly, and has studied the books faithfully; nor yet, that his mind is stored with the great facts concerning the constitution and the disorders of the human body to which he is preparing to minister, and the nature and force of the remedies from which he is to select for each case under treatment; he must also be able to say what he would do in a given |