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PART I.
The
Teacher's

Teaching
Work.

CHAPTER 3.
Elements
of the
Teaching
Process.

No learning without an effort.

III.

SECURING YOUR SCHOLARS' CO-WORK.

Need of the Scholar's Help; The Learner must Give, to Keep; Telling, a Part of Learning; The Difference between Teaching and Preaching; Influence and Instruction; Cleansing a Mind, not Furnishing it; Teaching, Not the Teacher's only Work; Philosophy of the Teaching-process.

WHEN attention is secured from the scholar, and when the teacher has made clear that which he would teach, there yet remains the common work of teacher and scholar-their co-work, to complete the teaching-process. Unless teacher and scholar cooperate, to make that which the teacher proffers an actual possession of the scholar, the attempt at teaching is only an attempt-an unsuccessful attempt. Without the scholar's co-work, the best "teacher" on earth can never be a teacher.

Mental philosophers are agreed that the human mind cannot make knowledge its own without an effort; cannot add to its permanent treasures by mere passive hearing, or by unobservant sight. It is even claimed by many, that one never really knows a thing until he has in some way reproduced or re

How Much we Forget.

93

PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work.

CHAPTER 3.

of the Teaching

Process.

shaped it by speaking, or writing, or at least by a conscious act of the will. We certainly hear a great many sounds without learning their character or meaning; and we certainly have a great many sights Elements pass before our eyes without our learning their features or their substance. Who of us have learned the tone of every voice we have heard as we passed along a crowded city street, or the peculiar sound of every clang and rattle of machinery which may have dinned our ears? Who of us have learned the general appearance of every person whom we have seen Heedless in places of public resort, or of all the rocks or trees or buildings on which our eyes may have rested as we journeyed from place to place? Who of us have learned all the truths declared in our hearing, or all the facts we have read in books or papers? Who of us can say that we ever learned anything, so that it became our actual mental possession, without some conscious effort on our part; without our expressly opening our mind to take it in; without our reaching after it, in order that it might become our own?

We hear a sermon; we are attentive to it; we understand it; but are its truths all made our own? Can we always so know its text, or its plan, or its main subject, that we can tell them to another, the next week, or the next day? One thing is sure: if we go directly home, while that sermon is fresh in our mind, and repeat its substance, or its maiu points, to some one else; or if we make a written

seeing.

Remembr

ing what we

have said.

PART I.
The
Teacher's
Teaching
Work.

CHAPTER 3.
Elements
of the
Teaching
Process.

Gaining by giving.

By teaching we learn.

note of its text and its teachings,-we are far more likely to have thus much of it as our own for years to come. If we hear a good story and laugh over it heartily, it does not follow that we shall be able to recall its details as long as we remember our laugh at it; but if we have ourselves told the story over, two or three times, it is one of our own stock of stories, as it never was before. To tell another any truth we have read or heard; to try to explain it to some one who did not understand it; or to attempt to put that truth to some practical purpose,-renders the truth clearer in our mind, and gives us a hold upon it, as no passive appreciation of that truth could have done. So of our experience in a Bible class; we may not recall what the teacher said to us; but we always remember what we said to him, even though it were an utterly fresh thought, to which we then gave expression. In opening our mind from within, in order to give out our view of this truth, we made a way for the truth's entrance into depths which could be disclosed only from within.

It is no mere modern suggestion, that there is no mental getting and holding except through, or in conjunction with, some mental giving or doing. This was the idea of Socrates, who, when he would teach, always began his work by asking questions of his scholars, in order to open their minds, and to secure their co-work with him in the teachingprocess; and who insisted that he who would be a

Taking in by Giving out.

95

PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work.

CHAPTER 3.

of the

Process.

learner must not merely be a listener and a reciter, but must also be "one who searches out for himself” (zêtêtikos). Cicero emphasized the same idea, in another way, when he said, Docendo discimus-" By teaching we learn; " by giving out we take in. Roger Teaching Ascham gave the chief place to that which the scholar did for himself in the learning-process, and so in language-learning he counted the scholar's independent translations as the "most commendable of all other exercises for youth." Montaigne said: "I am sure a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom; " and he adds, that "Socrates, and since him, Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, and then spoke to them." Marcel's conspectus of the systems of the educational reformers whose work followed the religious reformation of the sixteenth century, shows Teaching that they were agreed in requiring "the student to teach himself, under the superintendence of the master [the teacher], rather than be taught by the master," on the ground that "what the learner discovers by mental exertion is better than what is told to him." John Locke, in his famous Essay on Education, declares, "It is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment." And President Porter says, of the simple matter of reading-which might be supposed to give, in itself, sufficient mental activity to secure instruction: "To remember what we read,

one's self.

PART I.
The

Teacher's
Teaching
Work.

CHAPTER 3.
Elements
of the
Teaching
Process.

Worth of a learner's effort.

Keeping by yielding.

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we must make it our own: we must think with the author, re-thinking his thoughts, following his facts, assenting to or rejecting his reasonings, and entering into the very spirit of his emotions and purposes. Indeed, in no branch of learning, can any attainment be made without the intelligent and active cowork of the learner.

Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, said, of the comparative worth of a scholar's co-work in the teaching-process, that "the effort a boy makes is a hundred times more valuable to him than the knowledge acquired as the result of the effort." In the same line, Herbert Spencer adds: "The child should be taught as little as possible, and induced to discover as much as possible." As to the absolute necessity of the scholars' co-work to complete the teaching-process, Professor Hart says: "The knowledge [you have laid before them] is really not theirs until they have reproduced it and given it expression. . . . They do not grasp it with a clear and lasting apprehension until they have expressed it in language. This is one of the laws of mental action. We fix a thing in our minds by communicating it to another; we make it plain to ourselves by the very effort to give it expla nation. Or, to state the matter still more paradoxically, we learn a thing by telling it to somebody; we keep it by giving it away." Dr. Bushnell phrased this same truth bluntly, in the words: "We never know a thing until we have said it." And Professor

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