Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

INSTRUCTION AS DISCIPLINE

Mind . . . grows, not like a Vegetable . . . but like a Spirit, by
mysterious contact with Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of
living Thought.
—Teufelsdröckh in Sartor Resartus

There can be no rigid rules of procedure in instruction

The endeavour to lay down rigid rules of procedure in teaching is a serious error in education. It would have its analogue in medicine if the physician prescribed for his patients, without seeing them, by sending a printed formula of directions in reply to an inquiry by post. It is precisely in the diagnoses of different cases and in the variations of treatment required by different individuals that medical skill does its most characteristic work; for while any one can learn to repeat a general formula, the expert alone can safely apply it with modifications necessary in complicated individual circumstances. There is undoubtedly a constant type or formula in both education and medicine, for both minds and bodies have respectively a large common foundation; every mind and every body is more or less like every other mind and every other body. Yet for the teacher the important fact is diversity; the immense significance of which, while it is brought home over and over again to those who philosophise truly, is often wholly ignored by both rule-of-thumb men and cut-and-dried theorists, for these, in their different ways, philosophise badly by trying to fit every mind to the few types recognised by themselves.

Again, it is true that the materials which we bring to operate upon minds and bodies respectively are, within their respective limits, the same. The object of knowledge is a unity; it is ultimately the same for all, as the composition of food or medicine is pretty constant. But a physician administers a potion and a subcutaneous injection in vastly different ways.

True philosophy brings home to the teacher chiefly the diversities of both pupils and subjects

The teacher’s special work calls upon him to take more serious note of diversities than resemblances. The philosopher in his study, the psychologist or the logician, may lay down the general laws of the growth of mind or the conditions of valid inferences, but the reacher has to keep his wits alert to modify his treatment from time to time so that it may suit Tom, Dick, and Harry at different times, in different places, and with different subject-matter. In comparison with a practiced wit and sympathy, mere theorising is naught. Any intelligent impostor can write a book.

Diversities between pupils

The differences between Tom, Dick, and Harry as persons have to be considered first. For many a long year, as Professor Adams points out in his witty little book on Herbartianism, the pupil as a subject for consideration was systematically neglected. The sole preoccupation of the teacher was the subject-matter of instruction; as much of this was to be got under the pupil’s skin as the skin would hold, and we need not be surprised if it was by physical applications to his skin that the process was expedited. For, at the outset, the error arose from an analogy of purely physical and exceedingly material origin. The implied assumption was that there was somewhere a capacity—a room or space—which had only to be filled, into which stuff could be forced. Locke’s comparison of the child’s mind to a sheet of white paper on which anything could be written was merely one form of the persistent heresy.

Respect for childhood as having its own perfection

From this we have been rescued, at all events theoretically, by more modern conceptions of perfection—or one may say, rather, by giving up the outworn Pagan notion of a moderation or harmony in some fixed and settled state, and by recognising in its place, not inferior kinds of virtue or perfection in various stages, but virtue or perfection itself in a process.

The greater respect for childhood, for what we choose to call immaturity, which is the mark of the more modern rational treatment of children, is not to be set down solely to the influence of the doctrine of evolution. It is quite true that the more modern development and scientific application of this great generalisation, which teaches us that all things are in the condition of becoming something else that they are not now, gives to imperfect states of development a value of their own which was not before suspected, and warns us not to hurry them. But long before the world adopted the theory of evolution as a fashionable explanation of everything, Froebel, as Montaigne before him, had laid it down that “imperfect” childhood had really a perfection of its own; and that the child-stage of development had its own laws, and required a special treatment which was not the same as that properly applied to older persons.

We have come next to recognise not only that children generally must be treated as persons in process of development rather than as persons developed, but also that children differ among themselves, mentally and physically, as in antecedents and habitual environment. Progress is either slower or quicker, and more or less effectual, among different pupils.

Diversities of (a) age and (b) status

There is, first, the allowance to be made for differences of age. We do not teach, say, the history of the Armada in the same way to pupils of ten years, fifteen years, and nineteen years of age; to the first it is more properly a panorama; to the second it begins to have political meaning and more definite personal interest; to the third it is a study of evidences and intrigues, part of a great European system of politics. There are next to be considered the differences of status and antecedents, social and intellectual. The pupil who comes from more refined home surroundings may safely be left to fill up gaps in knowledge which for the less-favoured child the teacher must himself fill up. The teacher of the true secondary school can usually count on his pupils’ freer access to books; he can refer them, in their degree, to “authorities”; he can, with less scruple, make them do “home lessons”; they need far less predigestion and spoon-feeding. The misuse of the maxim nihil per saltum is bad enough in the primary school. It is worse in the secondary. We ought to leave blanks purposely, so that the pupil may himself supply the omissions. We can take more for granted in the secondary than in the primary grade, for the secondary pupil has usually a larger vocabulary and all that this implies.

On the other hand, the primary teacher can generally expect in his pupils a certain shrewd knowledge of the present needs of daily life which more delicately sheltered children will lack. Buying and selling, for instance, are much closer to the experience of the poor child; therefore problems connected with the provision-shop abound quite properly in the arithmetical puzzles propounded to little children in the primary schools; but they are not so suitable elsewhere. Again, we risk less in teaching a spoken language analytically in the secondary school than in the primary. The pupil of the secondary grade more generally lives amid surroundings in which the vernacular speech is conversation; and if it is a foreign tongue that is in question, he has more chance of hearing it used as a living method of communication at a later stage. But if the primary scholar gets more than a very moderate supply of analytical grammar and paradigms, we may be sure he will always remain in that state into which it has pleased a stupid pedagogy to call him.

Diversities in subject-matter, and influence on practice

Differences in subject-matter are equally important. For though pupils differ infinitely one from another, and though nature has been as lavish of opportunity to some as she has been curmudgeonly to others, yet skilful teaching can perform marvels when learners are willing. But the subject-matter used in teaching is very stubborn.

Subjects differ, first of all, in regard to the qualities of mind which they severally call into play and the aim to which we address ourselves by using them. The lesson in grammar is not easily made a lesson in literature. In teaching grammar we wish to cultivate mainly the power of logical analysis, the discrimination of words and phrases according to their various functions in relation to one another, without regard to the effect which they are meant to produce on the feelings. In literature, the emotional or impressive effect is just everything; it is taste, liking, admiration, that we wish to quicken and regulate. Even Reading we may teach, and indeed, we ought to teach, for different purposes, and therefore in different ways, at different times. To-day it may be designed to cultivate mainly distinctness of speech, to-morrow right emphasis, at another time the elements of oratory. We ought not, for similar reasons, to teach a modern spoken language as we affect to teach “classics,” nor English as we teach Latin or French. In English we start with a large basis of speech already acquired; we need not, then, teach declensions, conjugations, and such other analytical devices, seeing that our pupils know them. Our chief object in teaching English as a language is to make it copious and effective in our pupil’s mouths. The lists of words become less unreasonable in a living foreign tongue because under the best circumstances our pupils will lack a large supply of phrases; though even here we should follow the hint which is given us in the process by which we learn our mother speech. But in the teaching of Latin and Greek, the word and not the phrase must more often be made the unit.

It is the business of the good teacher, then, to vary his procedure according as his perspicacity and sympathy enlighten him abut his pupils’ condition and needs. Pupil differs from pupil, and the same boy will be a different person at various times; form differs from form, and the same form may have its corporate moods and fancies. The varying “stuff” of knowledge cannot in all cases be treated with the same details of procedure, but must vary according to the instruments which it uses, the qualities it quickens, the teacher’s aims.

There are no “methods” which we can apply rigidly to stated cases. The only infallible prescription is that the teacher should be infallible; for so we come back to the greatest of all teaching rules: to become good teachers we must teach well. The best we can do is to take the pupil by the hand and to feel the way with him, not merely for him.

For practical purposes we may lay it down that we teach either in order to extend our pupils’ knowledge or to cultivate their dexterity in execution. In an ultimate analysis the same process is followed in both cases, but we can here afford to consider instruction solely from the point of view suggested by the common phrase “imparting knowledge”.

Yet there is a standard type of teaching

In the midst of all diversity the true type of teaching is constant. The diversity arises inside the universal scheme which all good teachers follow; the differences are in details which are modified to suit individual cases, but in details only. The main process alters only in so far as its various stages are more explicit or less explicit. The formulation of this type is one of the great services rendered to rational education by the followers of Herbart, but all good teaching has, of course, approximated to it at all times; bad teaching, so far (being a procedure) as it was bad, has always fallen away from it. All of us, in our occasional triumphs, have duly (1) prepared the way properly, (2) presented our new matter acceptably, and (3) called upon the class to make its original contribution and draw its independent conclusion. But the possession of a standard by which we can measure our performances is of great service to us; it is at least a reminder of what is expected of us. This useful standard is put at our disposal on the five common “stages” or “steps” in instruction which, with insignificant variations, all the writers of this school approve. The faults of inefficient teachers can generally be expressed as breaches of Herbartian principles.

It is essential to remember as a preliminary, that knowledge is not a “kingdom” cut up into “provinces”; it is not a vessel composed of water-tight compartments; if, when a human mind deals with it, it is like light decomposed in a prism, we must remember that one colour fades by insensible gradations into all the rest. The minutest of our subdivisions, even those defined by examining bodies, are inseparable from the rest; just as the human mind itself in all its operations is the same mind. For the convenience of thought and business, more or less legitimate, we have split up the area of knowledge into little fields; but every branch or item of knowledge may illustrate, help out, complete, any other branch or item.

The formal stages in the imparting of knowledge

Let us examine the formal “stages,” and see whether we can generally apply a knowledge of them to practice, and with what cautions.

Statement of Aim

We naturally begin by letting our form know what our aim is. The more shortly and clearly this is done, the better. Some “trained” teachers in giving a set lesson think it necessary to beat about the bush, to get the class to guess what they are driving at, by a process recalling the “animal, vegetable, or mineral” game of our youth. In fact, the pupils begin by putting themselves into a thoroughly false attitude. They enter on a kind of guessing competition, striving to find out what is in the reacher’s mind, what he wants them to say. This implies bad teaching. Once upon a time, for instance, a master was about to give a lesson on marble to some small boys, and began, for some occult reason, by asking his class to tell him the names of various stones. He thus “elicited” hearthstone, blue-stone, granite, kerb-stone, sandstone—everything but marble. At last he tried another tack. “Do you ever,” he asked, “go for walks on Sunday—in the churchyard?” “Yes, sir,” said a little boy. “And what do you see there?” “The tombstones.” “Well, don’t those remind you of another kind of stone? Think, boys think!” “Please, sir, brimstone.”

Now this teacher should have told his boys without any preface that he was going to give them a lesson on marble; there was not the least reason for beginning his work by getting them to guess what was in his mind. This is one form of the misuse of what is called the “Socratic” method—to be discussed more fully later on. The Socrates of some of the Dialogues used to lead his victims by means of questions to some conclusion quite different from that which they expected; which anybody, philosopher, or barrister, or pedagogue, can do if he is allowed to have his own way in the arrangement and form of his questions. There was no judge present to moderate the questions put by Socrates, nor is there in the case of the catechising teacher, who may therefore make his pupils say what he wishes them to say and may think that he has thus scored a point. No doubt he has, but it is not a point of much importance; he has not necessarily taught anything at all.

The truth is that we rarely gain by concealing from our class the immediate object of our instruction. In the case of very young children, to be sure, we may be forgiven if, as a whet to appetite, we start with a little brief mystery before we produce (say) the apple which is to be the subject of the lesson; but we must not tire out their slender powers by setting them to guess-work before we come to real instruction. Later on in school-life, mystery is even more out of place. In dealing with a class averaging twelve or thirteen years of age we cannot, fortunately, conceal the equator under a duster and triumphantly elicit the sacred name before we tell our boys that that mysterious line is to be the subject of our lesson. We more properly begin by finding what various members of the class already know about it. Later on in a pupil’s life, the “statement of aim”—to use the technical name for this preliminary to all teaching—is generally implicit; it lies, in fact, in the time-table. We go on from where we left off—say, the hundred and fiftieth line of the first book of Paradise Lost; —unless, of course we are opening up a subject of investigation which stands out as something distinct—say, for instance, the laws of Miltonic versification.

The point to be remembered then is this: that we must go to work without circuitousness or unnecessary circumstance. The Apple need not suggest a series of questions recalling Man’s First Disobedience and the Garden of Eden generally, nor even “what we sometimes have in puddings”; the equator need not be approached by a dissertation on the cocoanuts that grow in tropical countries; and no teacher, I imagine, need begin a series of lessons on Milton’s verse-writing with remarks about the caesura in Latin pentameters.

Ultimately, of course, these pairs of ideas or topics are severally connected with each other, and their juxtaposition may be of great educational value; in the meantime, however, the forcible association of each pair by means of questions fired off at this stage by the teacher, would be work done mainly by himself, not mainly by the class; and that is bad teaching. The class should see before it an object of attainment; it should not be led by the nose. It is not however necessary, nor even often desirable, in teaching little children or girls and boys, to parade the name of the particular logical subdivision of science or knowledge with which we are going to deal. We need not write upon the black-board the words “Geography,” “History,” or “Botany” before setting out; to do so is to emphasise the logical differences between “subjects,” whereas our chief business, in accordance with sound psychology, is to cultivate a sense of the continuity of knowledge. But our immediate theme—the Basin of the Thames, the Corn Laws. or the Germination of a Bean—cannot be propounded too clearly.

Preparation awakens expectancy and appetite

We come now to the first so-called formal step in the process of teaching, the step technically known as Preparation. In stating our aim, we effected a rough kind of synthesis; we pulled our pupils’ ideas together, so to speak; concentrated their attention on one thing. The Preparation stage is analytical; and we shall find that in good teaching synthesis and analysis alternate regularly. We must first find out what the class already knows of the subject in hand; and we should begin boldly by asking Who can tell me anything about this apple. . . the equator. . . Milton’s versification? The pedantical or mis-trained teacher shrinks from such an “omnibus” question. He prefers to put a little question to Tom, another to Dick, another to Harry, with the intention, no doubt, of building up an edifice after his own plan. This was, as he understands it, the method of Socrates, and it has the result sometimes attributed to the work of that great philosopher: it stimulates a very, very small minority, if any of the class happen to see what he is driving at, but it completely silences the greater number, who either regard him and his teaching with indifference or would gladly offer him hemlock.

Our first duty, then, is to get all we can, in a form as full as possible, from anyone willing to speak. We thus set every pupil “rummaging” about in his stock of ideas to see what he can find that is pertinent; we cultivate the habit of looking for things that may have perhaps slipped out of consciousness; and we keep alive the self-respect that makes the pupil the teacher’s willing companion instead of his trailing captive.

We should let our pupils in this way build as much as possible for themselves. There are very few stages of pupilage, above of course the very lowest, in which some members of a class will not have a few details at least which the master has not. If the master tries to get his pupils to build exclusively from the supply of bricks carried in his own hod, he is a stupid, because a wasteful teacher. But when the class has produced all that the teacher judges can be contributed spontaneously, he will arrange this in the most profitable order by a few judicious summarising questions; placing two facts side by side and making the class recognise one as cause, the other as effect; adding something pertinent here, removing the irrelevant there; in short, preparing the ground for the formal step that naturally follows next.

Presentation

The stage of Preparation has been, in the main, a process of analysis. It is true that in setting our house in order we do synthesise; but the teacher’s most important aim, so far, has been to render available what his pupils have in stock; the setting in order was merely an introduction to the next step, Presentation of new matter, rather than the essential part of the Preparation. That is, the stage of Preparation was mainly analytical, whereas the stage of Presentation is to be mainly synthetical.

The attempt to “elicit” everything is a great snare

We may add to a boy’s stock of knowledge in three ways only. We can make him observe, we can make him infer, and we can tell him what we want him to know. What we cannot do is “elicit” from him by dexterous questions knowledge which he did not possess before we set to work. The word “elicit” is a kind of Mesopotamia for sanctity and potency with the over-formal teacher; and the procedure which it usually implies is no less wonderful, for whereas it was used by Socrates generally in order to show his victims that they knew nothing, it is used in our schools by the imitators of a degenerate Socrates to show their pupils that they really know everything. And the worst of the matter is that it may be made to do one thing or the other, as Socrates’ own practice showed, for instance, in the Meno dialogue; the essential and corrupting fact being that the teacher does all the work and the pupil speaks—nay thinks—only on invitation and on a line prescribed. He is, in other words, led by the nose. And this is the origin of endless aimless chattering.

We may, then, make (1) our boy observe for himself by showing him what to look for and how to look for is; or we may (2) lead him to see causal connexion between two facts or sets of facts; or we may (3) tell him. To tell him is often, not the shortest way only, but also the best way; but how much of one or another procedure is to be used must be determined by the teacher’s tact and perspicacity. The better we succeed in getting our boy to put forth effort, the better no doubt he will hold what he attains; but if we want him to arrive at the fact that a certain king died of a surfeit of peaches and new ale, we had better tell him and have done with it. No questions bearing on the diagnosis of indigestion and the weaknesses of kings will help either our boy or us.

The Preparation process will have stirred up expectation, quickened pertinent ideas, put out points of attraction for other similar ideas. The presentation now performed by the teacher lays the new ideas within reach of the old ones in one of the three ways enumerated; either by directing observation, or stimulating inference, or by straightforward telling.

Comparison

If we have been successful in our presentation of new matter, we have not just filled up a gap in knowledge, we have not merely finished off the old ideas existing in our pupils’ minds by attaching more ideas; we have also given the old ideas a new life, transformed and enlarged them; not satisfied them, but made them readier to appropriate and assimilate more of the same kind of food. The real process, then, is one of comparison. The regenerated and enlarged ideas begin to sort out from the mental débris of experience, from consciousness, other ideas that are like themselves, separating them from the unlike. They perform a kind of analysis, succeeded by an act of synthesis. Contrast or Comparison marks things out from one another, decomposes them, in order to recompose them. All analysis in a healthy mind is followed by synthesis. The formal step called Comparison therefore “sets up parallels”. The teacher of little children makes her pupils compare the apple with other common fruits; the schoolboy of twelve recalls other sovereigns who have died from famous indigestion; the scholar of eighteen who is reading the history of Roman land legislation compares the Hebrew year of Jubilee with the less regular efforts of the Roman plebs and others to readjust their burdens.

Generalisation

The step next laid down as usual and necessary is the formulation of a general fact or law; this is the stage of Generalisation, which follows naturally upon the process of Association, or Comparison, or setting up of parallels—seu quocunque alio nomine—that has already taken place. The pitfall that here commonly waits for the unwary teacher is the favourite fallacy of the illogical, generalisation on too few particulars. It happens most frequently in what are called “science” lessons. The “scientist” shows that a bar of iron expands under heat or that steam takes up more space than water; he then triumphantly requires his class to infer that all bodies expand under heat. It is clear that even if the law as stated were true, the one unanalysed illustration is not, taken alone, sufficient to establish it. Nevertheless, teachers, and especially teachers of experimental “science,” often seem to be doing their best in this operation to cultivate our natural depravity, our tendency to jump to conclusions on insufficient and unchecked evidence, the fount and origin of as many human woes as indulgence in strong drink; for indeed it is a kind of dissipation. If the teacher can so contrive his class procedure as to show his pupils how the laws of logic require that conclusions should be scrutinised and checked, his methods are sound and profitable. If he does not follow this course, his teaching may be thoroughly bad training, and can be expected to result neither in the strengthening of the reasoning powers nor in “scientific” discovery.

Obviously, the generalisations made by pupils of different ages will differ. Suppose for instance the Armada is a subject dealt with in three stages of school-life. The boy of eight or nine may be made to understand that a number of quick little sailing ships are handier in a fight than a number of lumbering galleons. The boy of twelve or thirteen may be led to recognise as a general fact that free institutions knit together against invasion people of all creeds and all classes. The older students will, with other things, see deeper into the political situation and the bearing of social and political institutions on the conflict. We must note, of course, that as we ascend in the scale, the power of generalisation necessarily becomes greater, and that we do not expect the small boy to group his parallels into laws as freely as the scholar of riper years; he has fewer facts and is less capable of seeing reason. Many lessons will stop with Presentation.

We must be on our guard, too, lest in the endeavour to secure a generalisation we make no distinction between the exacter sciences (such as mathematics in a high degree and grammar in a lower degree) and those sciences in which generalisations are less easily obtained because of the lower certainty of the subject-matter, as history, for instance, and geography, and even the experimental sciences, each in its proper degree.

In mathematics, which deals with types or abstractions throughout, generalisations may be irrefutable; in the experimental sciences and sciences which can by their nature determine opinion only without justifying conviction or certitude, we must be content with something less. Therefore not only will the kind of generalisation made by our pupils differ at different stages of school-life, but the generalising process will always be safer and more legitimate in some subjects than in others. We may allow generalisations to be made freely in mathematics; in the experimental sciences they must be tentative and hedged round with qualifications; while in history and geography it will often be best to be content with an orderly and clear apprehension of particulars.

Application of generalisation to new particulars

The philosophers lay it down next that we should apply our generalisations, gained as we have described, to some common or current matter. We are to make our pupils use their generalisation with a new fact or facts, as a premiss in deducing new results. If we recur to our Armada illustration, the small boy might fairly be allowed to suggest that a big modern battleship may be at the mercy of handier boats of smaller size—given of course additional conditions, which must be added to make the reasoning safe. The boy of twelve may make immediate application of his generalisation to the effect of the free institutions of his native land in cultivating a sober national self-reliance. And so forth. This step is in its turn must be taken with very great precaution in order to secure that the new particular can properly be brought under the generalisation which is used for its elucidation. A correct minor premiss is not less important than a correct major.

Let us see now to what extent there is justification for the criticisms directed against this formula.

Objections to the Herbartians’ type

First of all it is a formula, and therefore in the complexity of things must be liable to large discounting. Most good lessons will teach more, and many good lessons will teach less, than is implied in its strict use. The incidental teaching in a lesson is often of greater value than the generalisation in which it accomplishes itself, and “application” may have to stand over for a fit opportunity.

But this criticism is not more fatal to the general formula of teaching than it is to other useful formulas. For instance “Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to one another” is true only, so to speak, in vacuo; for no one thing can be conceivably equal to another thing. Still, the formula is very useful; things that tend to be equal to the same thing tend also to be equal to one another; and by believing this we get very valuable results.

We come near to the exact use of the Herbartian type in lessons to little children; and that is one of the reasons why the best training for teachers is training that begins with teaching the very young, for the mental operations of children are simpler, more primitive, less veiled by reserve, than those of older folk. “Object lessons” in particular lend themselves to the standard treatment, the several steps being clearer and the side issues fewer than in most other kinds of lesson.

It is objected next that some lessons scarcely approach the type; that the various processes already here enumerated cannot be applied in lessons which are, so to speak, carried forward over a long period—such as, for instance, the study of a Greek play. But remember, first of all, that it is already admitted that the steps may be merely implicit. We do not always State our Aim, Prepare, Present new Matter, and so forth, formally; we pick up the thread of our work where we dropped it. The class may know well what is our general aim without being told, and in the same way other steps may be merely implicit, or temporarily suppressed, or attenuated. But note, in the second place, that though the whole of a single hour’s lesson may not fall onto the standard mould, yet every item that we teach, every difficulty that we tackle, actually does. If a good teacher meets a crabbed passage, how does he proceed? He first, being a good teacher, gives his class clearly to understand what the difficulty is. If he were a bad teacher (and most of us have met such monsters) he would leave the class uncertain about the point to which he would have attention specially directed; this is the characteristic fault of bad lecturers, and it is commoner in the secondary grade and university teaching than in the primary grade. Having stated his aim, the good teacher prepares the ground by calling for his pupils’ voluntary contributions. This is where we note the most conspicuous defect of the primary teacher. He has almost lost the tradition which requires boys and girls to “get up” something by themselves; not only therefore will he not invite a voluntary contribution, but—ah! how much worse!—he will only ask a question of which he foresees, or thinks he foresees, the answer. This is indeed one of the several Socrates represented to us by Plato and Xenophon, but it is the worst kind of Socrates.

The fault of Mangnall’s Questions was not that they gave children all sorts of information to learn by heart—which itself might be very useful—but that they actually provided beforehand against the pupil’s discursiveness or expatiation; stopped his earth; circumvented him. Yet Mangnall’s Questions had at least the merit of throwing the work on to the pupil and not the teacher; for, as more than one observer had noted, children once used to learn a lesson and say it to the teacher, whereas now-a-days the teacher learns the lesson and says it to the children.

In tackling our difficult passage, then, we follow the type in making our call first on the class, and when we have led our boys by encouragement and a little questioning to produce all they can, we proceed to give our version, “present” new matter. After this, we “compare” other similar passages, lead to the general rule, and, as soon as we have the chance, make the class apply the newly learnt rule to a new instance.

The construing lesson

Proceeding thus, the old construing lesson has been of incalculable value as mental training; and it still holds its place against every other school exercise, precisely because it so naturally approaches the standard which was not propounded till the formal steps were set forth by the Herbartians. If what is called “science” teaching would only take a leaf from the classical book and model itself on the ordinarily good construing lesson, it would do much more to deserve the supreme place in the curriculum which some enthusiasts claim for it. The whole sum of profitable instruction is to teach people not a chaos of facts, but how to discover and apply pertinent considerations in particular problems. This is exactly what good instruction on the Herbartian model does for us, and there is no better exercise for it then the critical study of literature.

Notes of Lessons

“Notes of Lessons” should be frequently drawn up by students and occasionally by all young teachers, and should be submitted to the criticism of an experienced person. The less “stuff” they contain, the better. The traditional division into Matter and Method is generally unsatisfactory because the two things are hardly separable, and what appears as “method” in most Notes of Lessons is usually not method but procedure, telling not why a particular procedure is adopted, but the machinery that is going to be used. Wherever the subject permits, the Herbartian arrangement is far better, the least of its merits being that it forces the student to concentration. Certain lessons—discursive literature lessons or “construes”—will not without useless distortion follow this kind of formulation, but it must never be forgotten that the formula is applicable to the parts, if not the whole, of every piece of real teaching. The formula is not a mere trick.

Wherever possible, the notes of a lesson should indicate the next, or any succeeding step, which the pupils may be expected to take the more easily because this lesson has been learnt. It is just fatal to treat any lesson as entirely complete in itself. The process of Application, properly used, should make the scholar feel that the lesson opens up a new field, or new fields, to him. The best closing formula for a lesson would be “Next time we shall be able to discuss…See what you can make of it for yourselves.” This is what we mean when we set home-lessons to be heard at school, and it is therefore of immense importance that home-lessons should break new ground, in ever so humble a way, and with careful regard to age, health, and status, and not be merely “exercises” on work done in school. The mental attitude which we should desire our teaching to produce in our pupils is expectancy. Everything that deadens this is bad teaching. If we can get our boys and girls to leave the class-room wishing to know a little more, be sure the process of digestion will be healthy. If they are merely satisfied with their meal, the result may be good or bad; if they are surfeited, it must be disastrous.

Series in teaching is more important than the single lesson

The young and enthusiastic teacher whose training has perhaps led him to attach undue importance to the machinery of the single lesson will do well to remember that the series of lessons, his plan of teaching a big subject as a whole, is of much more consequence that the elaboration of each one of thirty lessons. He must think of every subject of the curriculum not as a body of facts to be acquired but as a mental habit or attitude to be cultivated. By all means let the items be carefully considered, each in its place; but it matters less if there are gaps here and there than if the general syllabus and general treatment should be pedantic or inadequate. In these days of brand-new syllabuses and curricula we do well to watch this point with great solicitude.

Misuse of the “Socratic” method

We may then fairly doubt whether the “Socratic” method, as commonly understood and practiced, has done our teaching much real good; and it is to be hoped that it will not devastate secondary teaching through the enthusiastic misguidance of imperfectly trained teachers. Questioning, in the hands of Socrates, to judge at least from Plato, was often an “eristic,” a merely controversial device, rather than a means of teaching. It was indeed, a kind of “sophistry” in the modern sense, and it could quite truly make the worse cause appear to be the better one. Socrates’ questions not unfrequently bemused and confused his victims; and then, when the master had fairly or unfairly—he did not mind which—proved them wrong, or at all events had intellectually stupefied them, he dropped his catechising and made long speeches; that is, he lectured, lectured if Plato records aright, gloriously. But this cannot be said to be a good working model for us. Socrates did not usually teach a class of boys. We must not discourage our young pupils by a patter of questions, having confutation as their result; and little profit is to be got from mere lecturing. We have to induce boys and girls to work; set them to master things, to bring us the proof and to rejoice in their own articulateness, not in ours. We must not silence them either by perpetually talking ourselves or be prescribing the exact form to be taken by their thoughts made articulate. That is, we must be moderate in our use of questioning as a discipline in instruction. We must encourage them to construct for themselves. The excessive use of questioning is a worship of mere machinery.

Excessive questioning reverses the natural procedure and deadens initiative

After all, it should be remembered that in the common order of nature it is the person needing instruction who usually asks questions, not the person giving it. Why should the nature of things be topsy-turvy in the schoolroom? It is not so at home. Why should the questioner in school be almost always the teacher instead of the learner? Our business is to make our scholars feel their lack of information, desire to ask questions; to encourage them to find out what they can for themselves, and to be keen to hear what we have to add to their stock. They must, in fact, question us; or, at all events, stand in the attitude of those who want to know.

If our pupils get into the habit of waiting for a question before they are moved to stir up their existing stock of applicable ideas, they will respond ultimately to no other stimulus; and they will even be unable, or at least disinclined, to produce an answer unless the question to which they are accustomed comes in the form which they expect. “They never move but by the wind of other men’s breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal,” if we may quote Cowley. That is, the knowledge is never truly theirs; it is still the property of their teacher, who is the holder of the key that fits the lock; who rubs the lamp in the prescribed way to make the genie appear; who knows that only a penny, and not a shilling, will fit the slot and disengage the packet of chocolate. A question, rightly put, contains, as we know, more than half the answer, and it is not good teaching to leave so much of the permanent initiative with the teacher. The too convincing proof of this lies in the fact that, on the whole, the pupil of the primary school is generally inarticulate except when just the right sort of question is put to him. His teacher can always “bring out” his knowledge, “elicit” it quite honestly, when the most genial stranger may fail. The boy’s ideas are only half alive; they put out tentacles, so to speak, in one direction only.

He is in the condition of certain of the sages of Laputa, not indeed by reason of intense speculation, but because his ideas sleep until some familiar sprite stirs them from outside with a magic wand. People in his mental condition, as Lemuel Gulliver describes them, “can neither speak nor attend to the discourses of others without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper in their family…and the business of this officer is…gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself.”

With us, it is the teacher who too often has to act as the flapper.

We tend to forget that all the elaborate rules about proper questioning are merely ancillary to the first of all teaching rules, the rule that calls upon us by every available means to induce pupils to think clearly and consecutively for themselves. For this purpose, the elliptical question, the question answered in one word, the question that evokes a plain Yes or No, may all be occasionally used with point and effect. But questioning is not in itself teaching; it is a device, an instrument, to be used with proper parsimony, and serviceable only in order to stimulate the pupil to independent effort.

The remedy: call for consecutive recapitulation

We shall not fall into the error of excessive questioning if we remember that our chief business is to give the pupil the power and habit of reconstituting his knowledge for himself, not as fragments but as wholes. Let us by all means ask necessary questions, particularly in the stage in which we are preparing the ground for new matter; but it is far more important that we should call frequently for a concatenated account of the whole of a point or lesson, with only such rare prompting as may be necessary to ensure that the recapitulator leaves no serious gap. With younger pupils the process must, of course, be chiefly oral; one or more should perform this summary exercise at various stages and at the end of every lesson. As they get older, pupils can be more frequently called upon to make their summary in writing; but the oral recapitulation is always exceedingly valuable. The work is then fresh in the minds of the audience, criticism is alert, and confidence is strengthened. Moreover, it is no small gain to cultivate the habit of thinking aloud; for most of us cease to think connectedly as soon as we begin to speak; we say what we have thought, not what we are thinking; we may chatter in the pseudo-Socratic manner taught in the schools, but we do not converse.

Let us then make our boys and girls stand up and give their own summary, perhaps after a few minutes for thinking it over, at the end of every lesson or every separate part thereof that lends itself to such treatment—history, geography, “science,” divinity, mathematics, even philology. Clearly, as our scholars advance in age, the desire which we have encouraged in them to ask questions in class will be assuaged by a larger stock of information and, above all, by a knowledge of other quarters from which information is obtainable. The practice of questioning becomes then chiefly a means by which the teacher finds out what his pupil knows, not so much a means of external stimulus. The youth of eighteen or nineteen may be expected to listen to lecturing which would quite properly send younger folk to sleep.

The “complete sentence” no remedy

The “Socratic” method has trailed after it another teaching device of more than doubtful value, and that is the insistence on the “complete sentence” in answer to all questions. It was discovered that submission to the plague of excessive questioning made the children less articulate and less constructive. It was noticed how incapable they seemed to be not merely of giving a continuous account of anything, but also of speaking otherwise than by hints and in jerks, as who should move only in answer to string-pulling. They are therefore sometimes expected to acquire copia verborum by being made to throw all their answers into full categorical form. But this is rather hindrance than help. If to my question “What have I in my hand?” a child answers “You have an apple in your hand,” or “It is an apple,” instead of “An apple” (which is what most sane people would say), he has merely expressed at length what was always implicit in the briefer reply. I have made the child evolve no new ideas, reach out to no new knowledge. I have succeeded only in putting a skid or brake on his wheel, making his ratiocination less nimble by cumbering it with machinery. But if I call on him to fix together several steps of teaching, he makes not one sentence but many, and constructs a ladder on which he reaches something quite new. To be sure, there is an appropriate and very useful place for the “complete sentence” in teaching, and that is in the “composition” or “rhetoric” lesson, which calls for the conscious manipulation of various forms of speech to produce particular effects. Small boys and girls must, at seven or eight, be taught how to make sentences, which is properly done when the teacher shows them on the black-board how they can summarise a lesson in several sentences all connected. But perpetual insistence on the use of the complete single sentence in answering, even in the infant stage, results, if in no other harm, in the production of unnecessary slowness and “priggishness”. The device is not even “Socratic”; Socrates was quite satisfied with one word, if it was the word that he wanted; satisfied even with an elliptical answer, which may be very effective. The quick play of question and answer is often most valuable just because of its suppression of all but the words necessary to from [sic] the skeleton of the working thoughts. There is no reason, let us say again, why the practices of every-day life should be turned topsy-turvy in the school. Questioning and answering in school will be most profitable according as they approach most nearly the form that intelligent conversation takes elsewhere; and it is certain that the “complete sentence” is not the invariable form even of the best-regulated conversation amongst the most intelligent teachers.

Shakespeare knew the value of the incomplete sentence. Its very incompleteness is often its very strength.

K.John.            He is a very serpent in my way;
               And whereso’er this foot of mine doth tread
               He lies before me; dost thou understand me?
               Thou art his keeper.
Hubert.                                      And I’ll keep him so,
               That he shall not offend your majesty.
K.John.  Death.
Hubert.             My Lord?
K.John.                            A grave.
Hubert                                            He shall not live.

Other devices for maintaining interest

There are many devices by which we may maintain interest during the process of teaching, though the main source of interest must always be the judicious use of a rational plan. But all teachers, and especially teachers of young people, find it necessary, for the maintenance of willing interest, to “illustrate” what might be, at least at first, or to the more listless members of a class, arid and dull. However engaging our subject may be in itself, the constraint of class-teaching is constraint after all, and the teacher must help his class to submit to constraint cheerfully. He has therefore to supplement the gifts which he owes to nature, the clear and pleasant voice, good physique, and the rest, by learning to interpret the signs of mental fatigue and unrest; by cultivating the power of clear consecutive narrative and ready speech; by using effectually graphic and “object” illustrations; by such means of stimulus as marks and place-taking.

The effects of the personality of the teacher will be dealt with elsewhere, but a word may be said about “illustrations” and other means of artificial stimulus which all can command.

“Illustrations”

“Illustrations” in the primary school tend to become a kind of fetich. In the desire to obey the precept “things before words, the teacher has often fallen into the error of acting as if “things” could be a substitute for words, as if ideas were naught. Accordingly, elaborate and complicated pictures are prepared beforehand and paraded rapidly before the eyes of the class in the hope that all the details over which the teacher or engraver has spent so much time may somehow get under the skin of the listless boy that gapes in the back row. Or an operation which is perfectly simple in three dimensions is obscured by being represented on the blackboard in two. The right rule in such cases is surely this—that graphic illustration should be used to help out the mechanical or verbal representation, not to complicate it. If an operation in needlework is understood when demonstrated with needle and cotton and working material, a diagram may darken counsel. The making of a beef-steak pie needs no diagram. But if we wish to isolate parts of a complicated process, as for instance in chemical demonstrations, the blackboard, with its sectional drawing of retorts and test tubes and wires and so on, and its indication of physical process, may be very useful. It is very doubtful, on the other hand, whether the graphic representation of a metaphor illustrating a series of concrete facts, such as that so ingeniously constructed by Mr. Somervell in Teaching and Organisation, may not lead to most serious confusion of metaphor or illustration with explanation, which is one of the most fruitful causes of error in every branch of knowledge, and notably in history and theology and philosophy. So too, in botany teaching, the enlarged sketch gives definiteness and permanence to what under magnifying glass or microscope is perceived with difficulty. It may be generally said that for teaching purposes black-board illustration is more effective in proportion as it is rapid, rough, and incidental. When a class sees a sketch grow rapidly under the teacher’s hand, it believes in it; a sketch made out of sight beforehand carries little conviction. Such drawing is a help to abstraction; it notes down the pertinent things and eliminates what does not matter. It is a kind of shorthand.

Teachers sometimes load themselves with items or “objects” to show to a class, and think a lesson is good in proportion to the number of “illustrations” so produced. And yet it is not the number of things but rather their pertinence to a clear mental result that makes such devices useful. Not only must the illustrations used in teaching be pertinent; they must also not be over-elaborate when they are pertinent. The simple black-board drawing of Vergil’s plough made before the class, the rough sand or clay model constructed under similar conditions, are far superior to many objects which have cost their makers hours of labour.

The perpetual parading of things before the eyes of learners is the misuse of a very salutary practice. Lemuel Gulliver saw the like in Laputa.

“Since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on. . . . Many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things, which has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man’s business be very great and of various kinds, he must be obliged in proportion to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back. . . . I have often beheld two of these sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their packs, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave.”

There are people, again, whose minds are mere storehouses of observations or “fact”. But there is no great advantage to be secured by photographing on the brain all that we see or hear; this may lead to mere dissipation of attention. We must try to remember the significant and pertinent things. Like Themistocles when Simonides offered to teach him the art of remembering, we may well say that we would rather learn the art of forgetting; for like Themistocles, we often forget what we should remember, and remember what we should forget.

Marking and Place-taking

In marking and place-taking, the main point that should be borne in mind is that we must be careful to conserve the self-respect of a boy who is habitually low in a form. We cannot always give honest effort its due. But, in allotting marks, we may at least allow an exercise that shows a minimum number of mistakes to receive full marks; by this device relative excellence need not seem almost unattainable to the ordinary boy who puts his best foot forward, nor the brilliant “freak” be corrupted by having no rival near his throne. Place-taking, a very useful practice indeed, has almost entirely disappeared from the primary schools, no doubt in the main because of the large classes that are common and the break in apparent orderliness which the practice involves. The instinct that retains it in the lower forms of the secondary school is a sound one. It stimulates competitive effort with few risks; it keeps interest alive; it cultivates quick-wittedness; it gives the boys a sense that they are sharing in the game which is other wise enjoyed by the master alone. With such precautions as those described by Canon Lyttelton in Teaching and Organisation, it is a fine and safe instrument of class-discipline.

Examinations

It is a matter for regret that a writer on the practice of education as it is organised cannot satisfactorily dispose of his subject without feeling that his views and recommendations must be qualified by considerations arising from the influence of public examinations. In the course of our day’s work we must repeatedly deplore that what we know to be the truly edifying and educative procedure cannot be adopted for the simple reason that the indifferent performance of our pupils in public examinations is too serious a professional disaster for us to face.

It cannot be too firmly maintained that no examination is really satisfactory as a test of the quality of instruction given which does not provide for the participation of the teacher, the only person who is conversant with the needs and the intellectual condition of his pupil. An ideal examination would combine the internal or domestic with the external or foreign examiner. There are many ways in which this might be effected. For instance, in every examination the teacher might propound (say) a dozen questions from which the external examiner would be required to choose (say) six, and to these add six of his own. At it is, we may have examiners who have never taught at all, who may even never have been themselves taught in form. In the universities a reasonable representation of recent teaching is obtained by the inclusion of examiners who have themselves recently taught, but not taught the candidates under present examination. We suffer, again, under the almost entire absence of oral examination, which would in many cases enable a candidate who had been either ill-treated or unfairly favoured by fortune to get his deserts. Moreover, our examinations are excessively minute, and, as a consequence, tend to be directed excessively to incidental and collateral knowledge rather than to the things that greatly matter; to exceptions, to rare and inconsiderable items, to novelties, knotty points, and so forth.

Of course the skilful examiner is careful to keep the balance true and to try particularly to find out how far candidates have mastered the various parts of their subjects in proper proportion as well as their outlying matter; but every one knows that many examiners are not experts in teaching, much less in education; and that the youngest and least experienced of scholars are often set to examine youths and young children, who are most seriously injured by making a wrong start.

The teacher can do a great deal to mitigate the effect of these evils by distinguishing carefully between examinations private and public. We examine our pupils in private for two purposes: first, to ascertain the effect of our own work, to check ourselves no less than them; secondly, to co-ordinate, concentrate, and confirm their knowledge. To this end oral examination is generally more effectual than paper work, the true type of examination being, as Professor Laurie says, intelligent conversation. Paper work, however, is most serviceable in securing greater deliberateness of thought and exactness of expression; and it is the more necessary as we advance in the school course and deal with subjects that make greater calls on reflection and cover a larger area of details from which the pupil has to select the material of his answer or theme. Bearing in mind the purpose of private examination, we can use it effectually both to build up mind and character and to correct some of the inevitable perversion of perspective which results from unscientific examination by external authorities. We must be careful so to conduct our inquisition that the pupil may draw help from as large an area as possible of the work done with the teacher; and that it should also be so contrived as to cover at least a little ground not traversed in teaching. By these precautions we give due weight to memory and capacity for arrangement, and at the same time test the fertilising power of our work. On such occasions, therefore, we very properly set unusual problems in arithmetic, riders in geometry, general questions in history, and in every way possible encourage work outside the strictly detailed syllabus.

Public examinations

Public examinations have been devised in order to establish a uniform and comprehensible standard of attainment and so to distribute public prizes and diplomas, and even certificates of fitness for advancing stages of instruction. “A life that is not submitted to examination,” says Plato in the Apologia, “is not a life for a man to live.” Now these public examinations are conducted by impartial persons; but however impartial such external authorities may be, they necessarily find it easier to arrive at results by setting traps to detect ignorance of detail than by laboriously measuring their candidates’ actual attainments and relative mastery of points of more general and therefore vital significance. They tend therefore to ask for recondite details, and so they force upon the candidate an unwarrantably concentrated devotion to exceptions and irregularities.

One marked indication of this finicking pursuit of the unusual is the compendious and crowded character of examination papers set by English authorities as compared with others. Too much importance is attached to a knowledge of details and particularly recondite details worked out by other people, and too little encouragement is given to general mastery of a subject and closer investigation on original lines. Hence a multitude of small, unoriginal textbooks minutely annotated; hence “cramming” and “crammers”; hence excessive uniformity of method; hence a general subordination of educational to inquisitional purposes. Against these and the like influences the over-aided teacher and over-aided pupil must struggle as best they can.

For reference:—A. Sidgwick and G.E. Buckle in Teaching and Organisation, and other contributors passim. H. Courthope Bowen’s pamphlets— The Training of the Constructive Imagination and The Training of Judgement and Reasoning, and Froebel’s Education of Man. De Garmo’s Herbart. Professor Adams’s The Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education. Welton’s Logical Bases of Education. Herbart’s A Text-book of Psychology (trans. pub. New York). Miss Mulliner’s Application of Psychology to Education (Herbart). Sully’s Psychology for Teachers. Felkin’s Introduction to Herbart’s “Science of Education”. Prof. James’s Principles of Psychology (briefer Text Book). Prof. Lloyd Morgan’s Psychology for Teachers. Compayré’s Intellectual and Moral Development. Fitch’s Lectures (see Questioning, etc.). Butler’s Psychologic Foundations of Education. Laurie’s Institutes of Education. Adamson’s Teacher’s Logic. Welton’s Logic. Thring’s Theory and Practice of Teaching. Abbott’s Home-teaching. Parker’s Talks on Pedagogics.